Good evening. I am Haline Murtha, Fairfield Town Librarian. Fairfield Public Library, Pequot Library, Fairfield University Bookstore, and Fairfield University welcome you to One Book One Town 2021 and evening with the authors of Punching the Air, E.B. Zaboi, and Dr. Yusef Salam. Thank you to Fairfield University for hosting this virtual event. This endeavor would not be possible without the generosity of the Friends of the Fairfield Public Library and all the One Book One Town donors. Thank you. The One Book One Town program, OBOT, strives to build a sense of community and promote literacy. Thank you to the entire One Book One Town committee for all your hard work. The 2021 One Book One Town selection, Punching the Air is a novel and verse. This book is based on the experiences from Yusef Salam's life. It tells the story of a teen poet and artist who was incarcerated for a crime he did not commit. The book aims to shed more light on the disparities in the criminal justice system. In 1989, at the age of 15, Yusef Salam was tried and convicted in the Central Park jogger case. In 2002, the convictions were overturned. By that time, the exonerated five had spent between seven to 13 years in prison for crimes they did not commit. Dr. Salam is the recipient of the 2016 Presidential Lifetime Achievement Award and is a poet, activist and inspirational speaker. Yves Savoy is a New York Times bestselling author. Her young adult novel, American Street, was a National Book Award finalist. Her other works include My Life as an Ice Cream Sandwich and Pride. Punching the Air is Fairfield's 13th One Book One Town title. I now turn it over to the authors. Thank you all for being part of this event. Thank you to Fairfield University for having us and we are honored that Punching the Air is part of your One Book One Town read.  Maybe we should bring it back. I'll fix that right now. So while we wait for Yusef to fix his camera, I'd just like to set the tone with a short video. Well, not so short. It's about seven minutes long. And before we get into our conversation, I want to just allow this video to give you some background info into Yusef's story and our collaboration. And then we could get started with talking about why we wrote this book, how we came together, and a little bit more about your story and your perspectives, Yusef. So please as more participants join this conversation, I'm going to share my screen so that you can watch this video. It's about seven minutes long. And please enjoy. This has brutally raped a white woman in Central Park. It didn't matter that there was no evidence. It didn't matter that the DNA was not linked to anyone who they saw as a suspect. There was a lot of confusion at that time because you kind of knew that those boys were innocent. We all knew it was false, but we were the ones that went to prison for those crimes. I'm Yusef Salam, and I'm one of the Exonerated Five. My name is Ibiza Boy, and I am the co-author of Punching the Air. Punching the Air is a book based on my life story, a journey that we as young men of color have gone through in America since we came to these shores, slavery continuing by another name. In 1989, it was one of the five young men known as the Central Park Five. We were railroaded by a system that saw the color of our skin as opposed to the facts of the case. And oftentimes that's what these stories are about. That case left an indelible mark on me because it framed how I viewed other black boys in my neighborhood, in my community, and in my classroom. And it took a long time for me to understand what the criminal justice system is and the historical relevance of injustice and seeing black children as criminal. It wasn't until 13 years later that the truth actually came out because the system got it wrong, and it continues oftentimes to stand on the side of wrong. Ibiza and I reconnected with each other years after we were in Hunter College together. When he told me that he wanted to work more closely with young people, we decided that we should tell his story. Punching the Air is the story of 16 year old Amal Shahid, who is an artist and poet. After one heated moment, one fateful night, he is accused of a violent crime and sent to prison. From there we learned how he ends up coping, how he uses his art to find his voice and to just deal with what's happening on the inside. You know it's the exploration of the two Americas, separate and unequal. We wanted to explore that a bit in Amal's character, because like me, he now is a young man fighting the system, becoming unfortunately awakened to what I call the American Nightmare. I am ink. He is paper. I am pencil. He is notebook. I am text. He is screen. I am paint. He is canvas. I am man. He is boy. I am criminal. He is victim. I am alive. He is almost dead. I am black. He is white. One of the things that I wanted to bring into this story in a very real way was the connection that family has to these individuals. Oftentimes you may see a person going through a trial and don't realize that they are part of community. They are part of family. I didn't go through prison myself. My family was there. My brother, my sister, my aunts and uncles. My mother was there all the time. And oftentimes she went through a worse prison than I went through. I am a mother of teens.  So I understand the vulnerability of children when they make the wrong choice. This is not necessarily a story about a crime. And it's not necessarily just about race. It is about a boy contending with himself and finding hope in healing through his heart. You know, when I was in prison, one of the things that really helped me was art. It was that medium that I had always loved that allowed me to really become a master of art and get lost in a page. You know, with Amal, I wanted him to also speak to what we're experiencing in this country, that the arts have been taken out of schools. His artistic expression is not given the value that is needed. When children are told that they are worthless, they begin to think that they were born a mistake. While black people are only about 13% of the U.S. population, black men are 34% of incarcerated individuals in the United States. And that's a huge disparity. When you explore the school of prison pipeline in the book, and it's one of those things where you start saying to yourself, how is that possible? Then you realize through the data that they actually plan how many prisons to build based on the fourth grade. And so if the test scores in the fourth grade is a precursor as to how many prisons need to be built, that's a scary space to be in. But that is an actual fact. There was no in-between time to say goodbye. I went from kid to criminal to felon to prisoner to inmate. We're moved from the county jail and on to a bus. And from the bus we're going to the juvenile detention facility. There are two guards on the bus, one in front, one in the back. And this almost feels like a field trip, almost. Except the quiet is choking my ears. The absence of voices is like cold hands wrapping their icy fingers around the sound. And maybe there was never this much room on slave ships. The thing about Amal that we wanted to bring out and expose is how he is aware. He's able to give speech and idea and thought to these things that are showing up in the world today. That black is seen as ugly, whereas white is seen as good. He had this awful experience, but he had been having awful experiences. One on top of the other that were constantly trying to tell him to keep in a box. But one of the biggest things that I want young leaders to know beyond a shadow of doubt is that they matter. Is that we need you. We need you to step up to the plate. We need you to participate. We need you to realize your greatness. You are the hope of the future. And once you realize that the future is bright, the future becomes alive and well. One of the greatest feelings of being able to share my story through this character of Amal. It's like a brilliant way to be a gift that keeps on giving, to be able to add to the struggle in a manner that isn't my story, but is the story of others that gives life to their stories, that gives value to their stories. But also I think one of the best things about this story is that the front cover of this book is a teenager, a young person, a child. But then you hear that is being told through the mind and eyes and the heart of a person who actually survived this tragedy to lift up and to pull up and to pull through others who may be going through a struggle and to give them hope. Hi everyone. Thank you for watching. Absolutely, absolutely. You know, watching that video never gets old. It's such a powerful introduction to the story, you know, punching the air. And it's an introduction to your story as well. Are you always surprised how many people don't know your story? Yeah, you know, it's weird because it speaks to the truth that we don't own history. We don't own our narratives, right? This story that happened 32, almost 32 years ago was swept under the rug. And young people only got an opportunity to become acquainted with it, to really, you know, realize what this story was about through when they see us, you know. And of course, all of the platforms that we've been using to really talk about this issue, not necessarily the issue of what happened to us, but the issue of the criminal justice system, the criminal system, the system that legally sends people to modern-day cotton fields and what that's all about. Now, what do you mean by modern-day cotton field? So, it's interesting. In our book, we share the 13th Amendment. And, you know, African-American, too, is where it's at. And one of the really, really more powerful things is that the language that we find in the Constitution as it relates to the 13th Amendment, section one, it says neither slavery nor involuntary servitude except as a punishment for a crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States. So, slavery is abolished except for people who have been convicted of a crime, right? And then it says Congress shall have the power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation. You know, historically, when you look at, you know, activities that cause people to fall into being accused of crime, I don't even want to say fall into crime, being accused of being criminal, whenever the system arrests us, we're automatically seen as guilty, first of all, in having to prove ourselves innocent. And then the second thing is that oftentimes we don't have the money to fight the system. And so when you look at the prison industrial complex, the place that black and brown bodies have been disappeared to is this new Jim Crow system. It's the modern-day cotton fields of America called the prison industrial complex. So at 15, you were hanging out in the park like most 15-year-old boys do, like most teenagers in New York City do. And it wasn't just a matter of wrong place, wrong time, right? No. This is a park and it's a public space. And considering New York City, we both grew up in New York City. And usually we, there are no backyards to play in there. It's not even safe to play on the streets. Like, you know, I'm in the suburbs now, like most kids do, they ride their bikes freely up and down the streets. So you lived right across the street from Central Park, the famous New York City Central Park. And back then, Central Park, it was like the tracks, so to speak, the proverbial tracks. There was the wrong side of the tracks. You have the Upper East Side. Is it the Upper East Side? No, the Upper East Side and West Side of Central Park. Yeah. And tell me about that neighborhood in particular. 110th Street. And I know that neighborhood very well. Yeah, 110th Street. It's funny because if you go to 110th Street and Fifth Avenue right now, it's the, they've changed a few things, right? They have, it's called Duke Ellington Circle now. And so it's the, even the name of the place that we grew up in, Schoenberg Plaza, the name has been changed, right? And I think a lot of it is to kind of whitewash and put a bandaid over the fact that it was a place that had been vilified because of the fact that that's where I came from. That's where Kevin came from and Corey came from. And, you know, that northern corner of the park is stripped of the same opportunity and beauty that you would find on the southern corner of the park, on the east side or the west side. It's stripped of that same beauty that you would find in the middle of the park on the east side and the west side. The north is like, oh, that's where black people and brown people have been pushed to the margins of society. And so it was a long time, my whole youth, we experienced, you know, the worst of experiences when it comes to an icon in Central Park.  That stuff changed, you know. And cosmetically, it looks a little bit better before people who remember the old neighborhood, they know it's just cosmetics.  And of course, as we know anything about New York, in New York was like, it had, it was polarized, right? One side of New York was extremely poverty, extreme poverty. And the other side was extreme wealth. And it literally could be like right across the street from each other in some cases. And that was like the park too. So the reason why I asked you that is because punching the air is not your story, but it is inspired by your story. It features a boy named Amal who finds himself. Well, I can't say that because I don't like that saying wrong place wrong time. I can't quite articulate why I don't like that when that supply to especially boys of color black boys when they find themselves and you know, gave it criminality. What is it in your opinion? What's what's wrong with that statement wrong place wrong time. In my opinion, I mean, I look at things from a very spiritual perspective. So I know that everything like if something is going to miss you, you can never get hit by it. Like you can literally have it in between the teeth in your mouth and you will literally miss it. It will never hit you. But if something is going to hit you, you will never be able to avoid it. And so as we look back, we can see the beauty in the story called the Central Park jogger case. But when you're going through it, you can't see it, right? It seems like you're being cursed by God. When the truth of the matter is that you're being shaped and molded.   You can talk about what happens on the inside to the people on the outside so that they can truly understand what it is. And so wrong place, wrong time for me also is problematic because I know that everything that happens to you happens for you. Even if you may not realize it, life is shaping and chiseling you and causing you to become one of the survivors. They call it the survival of the fittest, right? We become one of the fittest as we survive and as Cardi B would say, knock me down nine times I'll get up 10. We keep getting up because we know that that is causing us to live life and be better at it. Letting us know that next time we can know when to duck, know how to fall, know that we can get back up. Now, I was an elementary school kid when the Central Park Dover case was placed in 1989. I was a East New York Brooklyn as a sixth grader and I found out about this case like many New Yorkers did. But as a kid, I was engaging with it in a certain way. My teacher had us new current events projects where he would bring in newspapers and we would cut out the articles, paste it onto a loose leaf and do the 5Ws to who, what, when, where and why. And I remember that article, I don't remember taking it and doing the 5W somebody grabbed it before I did. But that was a huge news story and I do remember that word wilding being on top of a newspaper headline. And it was just so pervasive. And I know that anyone who watched it can birds documentary got a sense of what New York City's atmosphere was like. Yeah, we talked about this before but I like to revisit this idea that in 1989 was 32 years ago. And two young people that seems like a lifetime ago, I mean this is their time, right, this is born. And two people who are older they may remember it, you know, as elementary school kids or high school kids like yourself. And you are still here to tell tell this story. And in 1989 32 years ago prior to that it was 1957. Yeah, right. Wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So everything that we are we learned about the 1950s. The Civil Rights Movement and Selma and Dr. Martin Luther King. That was 30 years before the Center for Part 5 gyrate has happened. So when I think about that I realize of course, you know it sounds so shocking, thinking about it now in hindsight, but in 1989. We as a country were 30 years away from 30 years past the Civil Rights Movement and only 20 years past the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. Wow. When we think about 20 years ago now it was only 2000. Yeah, yeah. So, as shocking as it sounds for your case to have had happened. It wasn't so we weren't so far removed from all the racial incidences that had happened in that country in our country. And when that happened to you. So, once we think about time like that, it makes sense that progress still has not happened. And even when we're seeing racial injustices now. You think well why is still still happening is 2020. Well, you know, how long does it take for people to change in a for a society to change. Right. Now, I've never and I like each time that we do these events that I throw in something. I throw in something new that we haven't discussed, we keep it fresh right. Yeah, it's unfortunate that we can't see the audience right now there's over 300 people watching. And I guess this would be a packed auditorium. If we were in Fairfield, Connecticut right now. So we can't see the audience so we are having a conversation amongst ourselves so we like to keep it fresh because I'm, you know, it's so where do you think we will be 30 years from now. 2050. So what we know, and this is just from film, right films that are trying to continue to speak truth to power. What we know is that we've been trying to make progress. We know that we have been playing the tango two steps forward, perhaps five steps back. And the worst part about it, I think is that systemically, we have to address the issue. And what by we I'm talking about white folks. And when I say white folks, I'm talking about the establishment in particular, we have to address the issue which founded this country with the words. We the people, because we weren't considered black and brown folks were considered full human beings. Right. We were considered three fifths of a person. And the laws that have been created, a lot of them, a lot of the laws were created after slavery was abolished. And so you had the new Jim Crow laws and so forth and so on Jim Crow era laws. You know, vagrancy laws, things that would lock people up and send them back to chattel slavery at that particular point in time. And I bring that up because when we look at what we are, we are a new people, I think. And as a new people, we represent the kaleidoscope of the human family. And this new kaleidoscope of the human family wants true freedom justice and equality on all sides. Every single person, whether you have the complexion as they say for protection or the complexion for acceptance or you have the complexion for rejection as they say. All of those people want equality for all because they know that it's far better to live in peace than to not live in peace. But the problem that we have is that the same laws that have been created by the system that was originally designed to keep white supremacy, white male dominance and oppression, the law of the day, is the same law that was carried out and has been carried out by the oppressor. And so to serve and protect on the side of cop cars throughout the nation, black and brown bodies wonder who are they serving and protecting if we are always being murdered, if we are not being given a fair chance and opportunity. Who are like on the side of cop cars in New York, you go, you have an addition to serve and protect. You say you have the words courtesy, professionalism and respect. You know, if we were treated with courtesy with professionalism and respect, we would be everything would be great and noble. I mean, literally people respond with Newton's third law of motion for every action is an equal and opposite reaction. And so we find ourselves trying to figure out can we change when the real change that has to happen is systemic. It is literally ingrained in the very nature of the country that we reside in where racism is the law of the day, right? Racism has been practiced since these shores were invaded. It was practiced when they stole the land from the natives who were here. It was practiced when they brought stolen bodies from Africa to work from can't see sun up to can't see sun down. And it's still being practiced when people still are walking around echoing the words states rights and echoing the words blood and soil and shooting us down and getting a slap on the wrist, murdering or murdering us with impunity, you know, I think historically, there's been a big push to try to never allow us to truly be free. And that truth has to be met with abolition and that abolition has to be explained in a way so people understand that we're not talking about lawlessness. But we are talking about bringing about a system, true systemic changes that will allow for all of us to coexist, you know, in a land that we are all coexisting on in the first place.  And I'd like to remind people that abolition was a radical idea, even during slavery. You know, we had slave, you know, not we but the country, you know, a huge population of the country 1315% of the country nation was in place and to think what if people are free, it's just an incredibly radical idea that people were terribly afraid of. And when we apply it to the prison industrial complex, well, what are we going to do with these criminals, and all of that we just requires a lot of innovation and creative thinking about how we want our society to look. Right. And it takes people, you know, artists, poets, free thinkers and public intellectuals like yourself. And part of that movement and part of that process and work is creating something like punching the air. And I want to talk about this book. Now this is a young adult book that's aimed at young people. The other day we spoke to an audience of fifth graders, and we were able to make this idea accessible to young people who were as young as 10 years old. And while we may not have mentioned rape, you did say assault or hurt a woman and they understood that. Yeah, and I reminded the audience that I knew about your case in the sixth grade. I was 11 years old, and understood a little bit what was happening with the Central Park jogger case. And, and people tend to, you know, shy away from sharing these books with younger people and middle school kids. We did talk to middle schoolers. But I want to remind people that one of the Central Park five now the exonerated five and you can name them so the audience knows who they are. One of them was in eighth grade. Right. Yeah, was 14 years old. Can you name them for the audience is you you Seth and yeah. So the youngest one, I believe was Kevin Richardson who lived in my building. I really know him in terms of like hanging out with him like that. But, you know, I had seen him in the in the neighborhood, but he lived in my building. The next youngest was Raymond Santana who was 14 as well. You know, Raymond Santana did not live in our building but he lived in the community at large.  All these boys were rounded up. Yeah, that night in Central Park. And the question for hours and hours until they were exhausted. Until all of them, except you made a videotape force written confession, your mother came to your rescue. But ultimately, all five of you were tried and convicted and serve your full sentence, right, except for Cory, who served almost Cory served his full sentence as well. Cory served almost all of his sentence Cory often describes his sentence as not just a five to 15 year sentence, because the laws were beginning to change then, and he knew that if he stayed there, it was literally going to be a life sentence. If the true assailant had not confessed. Yes, forward to him. The story is amazing and I always like to repeat it. The two assailant came forward to Cory wise and Cory wise was the one who was not listed as one of the possible perpetrators in the Central Park jogger case. And ultimately, it was proven that someone else, unfortunately, did that committed that heinous crime someone years older than all of you, right, a man, an actual man and not a boy and a man who acted alone. And after years of paperwork and suing suing the city, you all were exonerated. It's an incredible story and I, I understand why you're not tired of talking about it for 20 years. And we met in college, we met in college in 1999. It was after you were released from prison. And it's the kind of person or young man that you were to have been convicted of falsely convicted of a crime serve your time. You were on probation and falsely registered as a sex offender and you still went to take you went to take classes at a rep college at a reputable university system which is City University of New York. And looking for that professor I wanted to take that that professor's class, Professor Marimba I need. Oh yes, you came looking for her I came looking for her and that's when we met. And eventually 20 years later we decided to work on this book together which is a fictionalized version of your story while Amal did not commit the same not.  And this is a situation where boys are being boys but they, the results are not the same. And before we take questions from the audience. Why don't you read clone and I know you'd like to read that because it says a lot about perceptions and you talk about how the media. The public perception of you all. Yes, indeed it's on page 56. Clone. Every since that day in the fifth grade, my teachers watched me so hard so close that I felt like I was trying to break out of prison, even though it was just school.  They believed those lies about me and made themselves a whole other boy in their minds and replaced me with him. Punch in the air is a novel in verse poetic form poetry form, and there are illustrations in here. And this is for a very specific reason it's because you said was or is himself a poet and an artist. And I, when I ran into him a few years ago and we decided to work together, I was inspired by his book of poetry, and one particular poem called I stand accused. And he told me that this was a poem that wrote at 16 right. Yes. And you decided it in the courtroom can you tell us about that. And so it was it was crazy because on the heels of this case. And on the heels of us being introduced to the world in such a really harsh way. I often equated to being awakened to the American nightmare. And, you know, all along we were going through this trial and of course we thought that the system was going to see that this was lies that have been heaped upon us. In his false confessions, we were hoping that the system would see that they were false that there was no consistency in any of the stories that were being told here you had a 14 year old Raymond Santana reading his false confession, saying something to the effect at 1700 hours mean a group of my colleagues began to walk south. And the beautiful thing about that is that through the documentary to Central Park five he looks up after he's reading that and says what 14 year old boy talks like that. And then back in 1989 and 1990 they believed it right. And so once we were convicted, we didn't have the opportunity to prepare. It was like, we were being re arrested all over again handcuffs were placed on us we didn't have the chance to hug our loved ones for the last time as free people if we were free. And they took us to the back. And, you know, we cried and we held on to each other. And at that moment that we were told that we would be coming back to be sentenced. And when we were returning back to the courthouse, I was trying to figure out how to say anything in my defense, you know, here it was we were being railroaded by the system. We have been seen as guilty, having to prove ourselves innocent. And instead of throwing myself on the mercy of the court, I stood up and I stated the words I stand accused which began with a quote. And an adaptation quote from my hero Malcolm X.  Sitting here at your table doesn't make me dinner. Just like being here in America doesn't make me an American and maybe I'll do the first verse or first part. Just like being in America doesn't make me an American. Let us begin. Stress is the anger that is built up inside. Rage is the anger that is no longer built. Taking on the sucker that soon you have killed, American free will doesn't mean you can kill. And take another person's life you live your life trife. I'm a skill builder so on skills I do build. Created giving knowledge to this wise black man. Soon to enhance, my words across the land. I'm a smooth type of fellow, cool, calm and mellow. I'm kinda laid back but now I'm speaking so that you know. I used and abused and even was put on the news without clues. Some gave clues selling out like fools. Now check it. Who did what and who did who in? Put in a situation that you don't know what to do and some brothers go wilding. We're not down with them. Who would have thought I'd have to lock in? I stand accused. And you know after I stated the rest of the verse and sat down, the judge's anger was so pronounced. It looked like he wanted to take the law into his own hands and just allow anybody to say anything because what happened and I didn't realize this at the time but it became part of the court record. It became part of, you know, a statement that found its way into other movies, you know. And for me it was, I felt like it was my last chance I would ever be able to say anything. And those were my words. Thank you, sir. We're going to. Oh, we have a three more minutes before we open up to questions. I do want to read another poem and then I, I'm going to read African American Euro. Why don't you read coming to America on page 62 just to give people who haven't read it. A little sense of the words here. When I turned 13 grandma told me she take me to Africa. I told her Africa is not a country and she slapped my shoulder and said I'm too smart for my own good. Umi said I should go to connect with my Muslim brothers and sisters on the continent and grandma looked at her sideways. She said her church was organizing a trip to Senegal and we'd go to a sub to someplace called Gary Island and there'd be something called the door of no return. It's where slaves had to go through to get on a ship sailing to America, where African people lost everything and stepped out into a future they didn't know. So when the officers hold that door open, leaving out of the courtroom. I think of that trip that never happened and the door of no return. My whole damn life before the courtroom before that trial before that night was like Africa and this door leads to a slave ship and maybe jail, maybe jail is is America. Coming to America. The officer holding my arm digs his nails into my skin, squeezing so tight. It feels as if he's got a hold of a blood vessel or something because my heart, my heart is suffocating. I clench my jaw and tighten every muscle in my body. I want to be like steel, like iron. I am hoping that I am super human.  Did you feel like you ever want to be superhuman in that whole process? You know, absolutely. I think the beautiful thing about it is that I was able to dive into some of what people might call superhuman abilities. You know, I often talk about meditation and the fact that we have to meditate with our eyes open because wherever your mind goes, your body follows. It's really ramping that thought process up to a higher level than just theory. You know, it becomes the saving grace. It is the same idea when a child is being told, stop staring out of the window, stop daydreaming, right? But the more that you can daydream, but really almost magically move objects in your mind to spaces that you want them to be in order to produce and create a truth and a reality for yourself to live and thrive in is where it's all at. You know, ah man, being superhuman in these spaces is being able to withstand the onslaught of assault and abuse that comes because of these kinds of accusations and the system believing it.  You know, all of us didn't go through that same thing, but the things that we did have to grow through were similar in a different way. You know, we didn't want to be able to be superhuman, be able to jump over the walls and be free. You know, and we could only do that by using our minds to make sure that we could go where our minds followed. Beautiful. Thank you, you Seth. I'm going to go ahead and answer the questions. I mean, not answer, but I'll just read the questions out to you and I'll answer some and you can answer some. But someone wanted to know how did we write the book together? Like you always say, you're the rapper and I'm the DJ. Absolutely. Absolutely. You kept the beat and mixed it up when it needed to be mixed up. And I was right on time with the words that I would use in order to really capture the moment. I think that telling this story, especially in the way that I understand it, is not an easy way to tell it. You know, many times people want to hear, okay, this is what happened first, second, third, fourth, fifth. But for me, it's the insights that I think really bring light to the darkest places in these stories and in society. And it's that insight and that light that we're trying to utilize to make sure that we like the Central Park Jogger case is not really just a story or a case of five individuals. It is the story of what the criminal justice system is about and has been about. And it's also the story of how that same criminal justice system is being placed on trial in our times so that we can make change. Omar T. Pasha was the illustrator. Yeah, so he brought in an outside illustrator to do the beautiful illustrations because Yusef is an artist and he has his own illustrations. And on that fateful night, no one could deny that Yusef was an artist. And for people to associate that heinous crime to you as a 15-year-old boy, wearing what you were wearing is just mind-boggling. Can you share with the audience what you were wearing on that night you were accused of raping? Absolutely. You know, these are pants. These are the pants that I was wearing. They have not been washed. These were worn one time. And as you can see, instead of blood that would be on it, if I had in fact raped a victim, assaulted a victim, left them for dead, bludgeoned. In the matter that the system said I had, you would have seen blood and not artwork all over my pants. That's what you would have seen. You would have seen this lady lost three-fourths of her blood. You would have seen that. And instead of that, you see art. And instead of that, you get an opportunity to peer into a life that they try to extinguish, right? And I'm saying life, but really it's a light. It's the light that is inside of all of us that they try to extinguish. They want to replace your value and your worth with no value and no worth.  And part of victory happens when you remember who you are, when you remember that you were born on purpose and with the purpose. And it's interesting. Those parents are worthy of archive, to be part of an archive or museum or something because it's such a testament to 1989 New York City because you have the landscape right there. That illustration was of Bob Marley and you had 1989. 1989. Okay, Claudia is going to help us with some of the questions because there are quite a few questions here. Well, first I want to read what somebody wrote because I just think that the attendees can't see these questions and this is just so beautiful and I think it tells both of you how much the book has meant to our community. You are both a true gift to our world, the extent of which we probably don't even properly realize or acknowledge. Thank you for sharing your stories and speaking truth. Please know you are changing the world. You have changed me. Thank you. Wow, right. Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. You know, when I hear, when I see and hear questions or statements like that, it lets me know that we are on the right path that change is happening. And it looks like we're doing maybe inchworm change, but I think any movement forward is a movement beyond where we were. And that is real change. That's important. Really touching. Another question. I love the book. I so wish that we found out what happened when the white kid woke up. I was left wanting. Why was that part left out? That's the question inspired by your case, you Seth, because the victim could not speak for herself. Can you share anything about that? Well, you know, the beautiful thing I think in that question is the perhaps wanting for there to be a part two. But also, you know, when you think about my case in particular, you know, the Central Park jogger didn't have the opportunity to speak for herself. And even when she came to, you know, her survival was a miracle, right? The unfortunate thing about her survival is that the system came to her rescue and told her that they had the people who had done this to her. And that was a lie, right? The system then began to continue that same lie by explaining the now truth that came out, that it was a soul. It was a single assailant that did this to her. And they explained that truth with a lie saying that her injury was inconsistent with it being a single assailant, right? This guy confessed to this crime 13 years later and had his memory was super accurate as to what he did, how he followed her, where he hit her in the head. That initial incident where he hit her in the head was captured by the forensic scientists. They knew that she was hit in the head on the path. He then talked about how he drug her off into the woods. They had a photograph that they knew the victim was drug into the woods. And it was a drag mark that was inconsistent with it being a gang that could only have been the assailant and the one who was doing the violence to the assailant. I mean, the end the victim, the assailant and the victim. A single drag line. And then of course you look at the crime scene and the crime scene is bloody. The crime scene is horrific. The crime scene, you know, you look at those pictures that they showed in the courthouse and they were trying to, one, tug at the heartstrings of the people who were supposed to make a decision as it related to our case. But when you look at it from hindsight, you realize this woman, she should not have survived. And thank God she did. Because had she not survived, this would have been a murder charge, right? This would have been perhaps a manslaughter charge, but they probably would have sought murder and probably gotten it, you know? And, you know, the fact that she wasn't able to talk but the system talked for her. The fact that when she was able to finally talk, she had no memory of this incident at all, you know? But the truth of this case, the fact that DNA evidence was there, the fact that the same officers that were involved in the Central Park Jagger case were involved in the East Side Rapist case, who was the guy Matias Reyes who raped the Central Park Jagger. Similar incident that he tried to carry out a few days before in Central Park around the same area. Similar incidents that he carried out and succeeded with days after, weeks after, months after, because he was left to commit more crime. Yeah, and that, and it's the same way that Jeremy Mantis in Punching the Air, you don't get to hear from him because the system already spoke for him. It doesn't even matter what he says because the entire system has had found Amal to be guilty, regardless of this young man's voice in the same way that the victim in your case, her voice didn't matter. Yeah. We're getting a lot of questions on the process of how you wrote this book together. And one of you do the first draft or more the editor, did you both do the writing role. There's been a lot of questions about that. Well, I will say I am the writer the actual writer in this situation, but you set is the storyteller. I could not have created a character like Amal in his situation without you sets input in real life experiences. Working together it didn't matter about the details of what happened to him while he was incarcerated didn't matter. What happened what mattered most to me is his insight and his hindsight and his wisdom. And how he talked about how he made it through and that's why Amal is the character that he is Amal is different from the character in Walter Dean Myers monster. That book focused on the case. This book focused on the journey simply because you set has an incredible journey. And while this journey this Amal is not usef Amal faces some violence while incarcerated usef I asked usef did, did you get beat up, you know, like six years and he's like well I did get punched this one time. Right.  And I wanted young people to see that, while his situation is terrible. There are ways that you can get through. There is spirituality there is art. There is having a different outlook, even when you are, you know, facing the worst circumstances. So yes, the words are from me but the ideas like DNA came from usef the idea that it starts with a birth comes from usef the love Amal's love for his mother comes from usef all these bits of insight and wisdom. All came from usef and I had the task of putting them into words and shaping them into poetry. Hello. Thank you so much for for being here tonight and sharing this wonderful book with us. The highlight of our one book one town programs is always the author event. We do a lot of discussing of the book that we choose about to hear the author speaking about it. Just bring so much meaning to it. One of the events we're having is actually a writing and mixed media contest, because the power of art was such a wonderful and hopeful message of this book. And I wanted to just ask you, the theme of the contest is what act of self expression brings you solace in tough times, and it can be a piece of writing or painting or a dance video or cooking. What advice would you give to aspiring writers and artists? How do you find the courage to really dig deep down and have give a personal expression of what it means to be you in the world. Wow. It's weird because for me, that expression has been able to be found through prayer.  How do you, how do you bind yourself, right? We are all trying to hold it together, and so therefore we bind ourselves in order for us to be able to make it through the days, through the weeks, the years that we have. And you know, I was thinking the other day and someone asked me a question, and I said, you know, we come from a faith that teaches us that we're supposed to be in the world but not of it. And so to be constantly in connection with the Creator is to constantly plug into the source of all energy, so to speak, so that you can understand spiritually what you're supposed to be doing. Continue to reinvigorate yourself with the high vibrations that you need to be able to show up on time and, you know, with the right thoughts and the correct vision insight. And so it seems like a little bit, I guess, weird for me to kind of put that part out there, but for me it's always been prayer. It's always being able to re-center yourself and refocus yourself, you know? And sometimes that prayer doesn't necessarily have to be physical where you're going through motions, but it could be that mental meditation that I often talk about, you know?  Sorry, I was muted. I want to share this with the teacher. A lot of teachers in our town use this book in their classrooms, which is a wish of ours, so we're so happy it happened. So let me read this from a teacher. I read this book out loud with my entire ninth grade class here in Fairfield. It was so very powerful and great discussions ensued. The book is so rich in terms of illusions and symbols. We had so many talks about Amal and his name meaning hope. Dr. Stolom, how do you maintain hope during such a dark time? I think you partially answered that in your prayer. How do you continue to have hope for our world without getting bitter? I know that everything that happens happens for a reason. It's happening on purpose. I got the opportunity to listen to Dr. Maya Angelou when she expressed how she was able to deal with different things happening. She talked about it from the perspective of being angry and bitter. She said you should be angry, but you must not be bitter.  She said it eats upon the host. It doesn't do anything to the object of its displeasure. I'm saying this in terms of my answer because there's alchemy that happens. You can lose hope, but when you lose hope, what's really happening? You are becoming overwhelmed by circumstance. But if you do something with that anger, if you do something with being overwhelmed, there is the power. And so she says, use that anger. You dance it. You march it. You vote it. You do everything about it. You talk it. Never stop talking it. My deep faith is a testament. And my story I want to say is a testament to holding on to hope. To holding on to knowing that you're blessed and highly favored. To knowing that all praise is due to the Creator. Because anything that happens to you is because of that blessing, of that high favoring, of the hedge that is around all of us. And I say that from the perspective of constantly tapping into each of our spirituality. We think that we're fighting against racism, which is very black and white. But the truth of the matter is that we are not fighting against racism. We are fighting against spiritual wickedness in high and low places. Because once we see it as that, and now we can really see, now we understand because to just see it black and white causes black people to look at all white people as racist. And that's truly not the truth. That's not been the truth with me. That's not been the truth with my experience. That's definitely most certainly not been the truth even after I came out of prison. That's just like bad cops. Bad cops are not all cops. I know that as a truth. How do I know that? Because I had very, very interesting dealings with police officers being pulled over by the side of the road. Not realizing that I was going past the speed limit. Being almost arrested and going to the DMV at the urging of the cop who had to give me a ticket. And then finding out when I got to the DMV that they dismissed the ticket. And that same officer was waiting for me outside the courtroom and shook my hand and told me he didn't have anything to do with my case. But this was his opportunity to do something for me as a person who is to protect and serve community. And so it's those kinds of rich experiences that I think one has that they can say, wow, just like the poem, footprints.  That's the beauty of it all. Beautiful. Claudia and I have done a book discussion. And one of the questions that came up was the title. And punching the air, the imagery in the book. And that can be so many things. I mean, a punch could be out of frustration. It could be in victory. There's also the butterflies that are in the book that are moving the air. Can you talk a little bit about that beautiful phrase as a title choice? That I'll let you pause for a little bit. That that is a line from a couple of those poems. We decided on that title because it has double meaning. It can mean an act of frustration and it can mean an act of victory. It's trying to hit something that you feel, but you can't see. Like racism and discrimination. You want to punch it in the face, but it's just not there.  It's harming you and it's keeping you back in so many ways. So, and it also speaks to Dr. Youssef and the rest of the exonerated fives victory in becoming exonerated. It is, you know, and I don't know. There's like a, what's that film when he goes at the end of the movie and he goes like this. I keep seeing that when I say punching the air, but it is victorious and it is an active. It is both an act of aggression, frustration and victory all rolled up in one. You know, what's, what's cool about the title as well. I remember when Evie was saying, I got it. We got to punch an air and I was like, wow, that's so deep. That's so powerful. I was thinking about the concept of shadow boxing and not necessarily shadow boxing. Like you're preparing for a fight or something like that, wanting to not like you're fighting against what your, your purpose is, what your journey is. Right. And then once you realize that your journey is happening for you, there's a victory in that and that victory punches like, man, here I was, you know, fighting, fighting the system so that I couldn't and wouldn't. But the system created me and caused me to be this, this powerful person. Right. That is in some ways seen as a celebrity. But in other ways, it gave me this platform where we can utilize not just our experience, but use the ability to talk truth to power and continue to shine our light in the darkest places in society. Evie, my sister just texted me. She said, the movie is the breakfast club. Right. It's so old, but I just see it. Thanks. And I forgot the name of the cat, but don't worry about it. It has nothing to do with punching. Okay. I think we're ready to wrap up. You tell me this has been a lot. I did see a question there. I do want you set to address it. When we're asking what that sign is that says bring back the death penalty. Oh, just let young people in the audience know what that is. That. So in 1989, two weeks after we were accused, there was an ad that was created and placed in New York City's newspapers for the whole of New York to see. And really, I think it was really for the whole world to see. It was such a powerful ad and it was created by an individual who actually became the president of the United States of America. This is a scaled down version of the ad by Donald Trump himself calling for the death penalty to be brought back. Specifically for our case, you know, this is this is, um, you know, in here, maybe three, three fourths of the way in. He says criminals must be told that their civil liberties end when an attack on our safety begins. And I think that when you think about, you know, the, the idea that is being discussed here, it is definitely the idea of some people being protected and other people not being protected.  The system doesn't make mistakes. This is what the thought is. And this is what's pushed out there. And in this particular case, it is the absolute opposite of that. That is the most noble truth that we were innocent and that we were used almost figuratively and metaphorically to, to really push that truth out there because 13 is the number that is the most unlucky number in this country. 13 years later is when the actual truth came out and it didn't come out in the same way. It didn't meet the same fan fanfare that was met with 1989, you know, there were over 400 articles written about us within the first few weeks of this case. But we did have some victories in the media. You know, this is one of the jurors that said we got the wrong kids. Now imagine we had done someone else's time. We were there. The real criminal is actually in prison. He got 33 and a third years to life. But he unfortunately can never be charged with the assault and the rape of the Central Park jogger because of this thing called Statue of Limitations. And so one of the things that I think that maybe I'll talk to my colleagues about in terms of the changes, the laws that we are trying to change, especially in New York, that perhaps can have ripple effects around the nation is that we need to change the law of Statue of Limitation specifically as it relates to rape because that is the worst crime that you can do. And for there to be a limitation that after seven years somebody can come forth and say, oh, I did that and not be charged is the, it's a, it's a, it's a gross injustice. Well, promise us that you'll come back. We know you have, I think you have a memoir coming out and maybe I think you have a picture book coming out in September. Is that correct? We will be looking for everything that your future work and hopefully you can come and visit us in person. We'd like to thank everybody who participated and attended tonight. And Mary, I'll let you have the last word. Just to thank you. You know, doing a townwide bead in a year when we have not all been able to be in the same room was challenging. And when we were going through different selection choices, your book just absolutely came to the top. We knew that it was the book to bring us together. And the fact that you were both able to be here and take the time and do this with us. It just means the world. It really does. So I can't thank you enough. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much for having us. It was our pleasure. We'd love to be back together or separately. It would be nice. But we need to have that party for you that we could have had if you were here in person. So have a rain check on all of that. Absolutely. Absolutely. We're coming. Make you stick to that. Good night, everybody. Thank you for coming tonight. Good night. Thank you so much. Good night. Good night.


Hi everyone, Joe for Jaspy's casebreaks.com coming out to you with 2019, 2020, Panini, Donner's, Basketball, Hangar Box Edition, Random Team Break number six with four mixer spots being given away at the end of the break. As always, we're going to do the break first. Big thanks to all of these folks right here for getting into it. And they're the teams right there. Also, quick little special just for tonight only. In addition to the four mixer spots being given away, the first two people without mixer spots will also get $50 break credit at Jaspy's casebreaks.com. So a little extra bonus there. There's another one up already. So this is break number six. We've got to do seven and eight plus sell some spots straight up in the mixer itself. And then we're in breaksville. We can do that tonight if you want to. Give it away to Anthony Davis in a two. Check it out. All right, break first. Roll it, randomize it. Nine times, six and a three. One for each list, two. And ninth and final time. And a different dice roll for the giveaway at the end, by the way, in case you were wondering. All right, so six and a three, nine times for the teams. And ninth and final time. After nine, Grizzlies down to the Thunder. All right, there's the first half of the list right there. Anthony with the Grizz, this is 2019, 2020. So it could be some John Morantz in there. And Aaron Clark, Palakins right there. All right, let's get all this on one page. So it's alphabetized by team, trade window closed, let's print, let's rip. So we're looking for exclusive rated rookie signatures, green flood parallels, which are exclusive to this hanger box set. There's the final print out right there. Thanks for hanging with us on a Tuesday. Rakes going up on a Tuesday. There's a nice LeBron James and a Jersey series, Ricky Rubio, Son's Edition. That'll be for Phoenix Aaron S. Can LeBron James do it? Another one folks, looks locked in. Here are your green floods right there. There's Admiral Schofield, rated rookie green flood for Kim's Hume in and the Washington Wizards. Bogdan Bogdanovich, RJ Barrett, great expectations. Right here, Yanis, fantasy stars, some rated rookies, nice Kobe white rated rookie and the rest, not a bad box at all. There's Kobe white rated rookie for the Bulls, Kenny with that one. Bulls have a new coach, maybe better fortunes with that new coach. So there you go, boys and girls. Thank you. On the whole point of this, who's going to win those mixer spots and maybe a little bit of money. So let's get everyone's names from Chris down to Sumeen into a new list with a new dice roll and we'll match you up just as it looks right there on your screen. Let's roll it. Let's randomize it. Three and a four, seven times, one, two, three, four, five, six and seventh and final time. Last of luck everybody. Now from seven down to 30, I appreciate you giving it a shot. Now the next two, not in the mixer but a little bit of money, break credit, Sean Matik and Matthew Shearer, $50 break credit and going your way. And we got Chris, Sumeen, Kenny and Aaron. You are in the mixer, chance at a Anthony Davis RPA. So there you go and there you have it. Congrats again. Sumeen, Chris, Matthew Shearer, Sean Matik, we get $50 break credit. Thanks everyone for trying. To the rest of you for trying. Break seven and eight if you want to try again, can get you into that mixer, maybe a little bit of break credit. That break credit is tonight only by the way. I'm Joe for jaskyscasebreaks.com. I'll see you next time for the next one. Bye-bye.


Oh my goodness. What is its name? This is Tigert. He was a stray, somebody dumped him. He was living in a garage for a while and we adapted him and he's friends with all of our other nine kitties in the house. He's so fluffy. Look how big he is. He's a Maine Coon. Oh wow. And he's just a gentle giant though. He's there. They did good kitty. And Pam's got one too. Oh my goodness. There you go, he's restless. This is midnight. Midnight, okay. Oh. Oh. Yeah, she's been here all day. Oh. Now Stacy's got a dog. Everybody go get the pets. I said pets are invited. Oh, he's works. Oh, what's your puppy's name? Benjamin Gorgias or Benji. Oh. I don't know either. And Emily Flynn's got one. Jasmine. See, Ellie, where's your guinea pigs?  And Lily, who have you got? Oh, look at this. Oh, they're all adorable. Duncan. Duncan. Ariel, who are you and Brandy? Brandy, you got a big one. That's a little too big one. This is Archie. I got him last month. So he's just turned five months old, two days ago. He's adorable. What kind do you have? What kind is he, Brandy? He's an Aussie doodle. Australian Shepherd and poodle mix. Oh my goodness. Ariel, what's yours name? It's Louis and he's a Cavalier King Charles spaniel. What, let me see. Full of kisses. Can we see him a little bit more? I love Cavalier King Charles. He's like squirming. Oh, look at him. Oh, yes. Oh. And there are guinea pigs now. See, Ellie, tell us as those guinea pigs, what are those creatures? This is one of our chinchillas. This is... And here is Dumpley. And this is Dumpley. He's our guinea pig. We have one of our chinchillas. And this is my husband, Curtis. Hi. Hello. Hi. If you'd like to go get the puff, we can leave Dumpley here and he can be on everything. No. Okay. He's gonna end up being a great sideshow. I know. I love everybody's babies. This is my favorite part of the conference. Yeah. Well, thank you all so much for such a wonderful conference. I think I always leave the conference so excited about going back to work to do more things, which seems so weird, but I think I get so many ideas and I just get so excited and ready to go, ready to help our students, help our staff and help you all. And so thank you all so much for your topics. It's been a lot to think about. It's been a lot to learn about and I can't wait to go to work tomorrow. But I don't have anything to add. I was really energizing. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, if I could do a quick plug. I don't know how many of you were in that last EEG session, but I'll just push the envelope because it's important. I'm gonna screen share for just a second here. Oh, yes. There we go.  What? Sending a picture of your chinchilla to my daughter. That's what I was doing with my phone. Hold on, I'll get another one. Okay, well, everybody's wallowing in the cuteness here. So I did wanna put a pitch in for next year. We're doing our 2024 conference in Provo, Utah at Brigham Young University. We'll do a hybrid conference. So if you can't join us in person, which we hope you can and get the funding, but you can join us online as well and share and the merriment and learn and just enjoy the community. So the other pitch I wanted to make was coming up for 2025. So that's gonna be our 15th anniversary for US UTDA. It's amazing how quickly time goes, but yeah, we've really developed quite a community. I'm impressed with everyone's engagement. So we're looking for a local host. The US UTDA handles all the financials and planning and stuff, and we just look for people to help us with the local logistics and things and then we help pick the hotel. There's really no big obligation involved, but if you're interested in putting in a bid to host, we can send you a template and we'd love to hear from you. Our deadline for that is January 1st, 2024. So we hope we can get this organized and we're gonna do a joint conference with the NDLTD. Charlie was with us in the CEG session. And so it's gonna be really exciting because it'll be a joint international slash national conference. And I think that's all I had to talk about, Emily. Let me stop sharing. And John, is this the 2025? That's an international with the NDLTD, is that right? Yes, so if anybody recalls back in 2017, we did our first joint conference. That was our 10th anniversary with the NDLTD in Washington, DC. And so we had whole bevy of people from all over the place. And John was there. Yeah, so on this time, we'll do a hybrid experience. I know BYU has some good technical folks and things. And we'll do a lot of the activities on campus. We have reserved a hotel for lodging and we'll do one of the, I think the main welcome reception, the first thing we'll do. They've gotten away from the 10-year mark then, is that correct? 17 would be 27. Oh, that's interesting. Well, I don't know. Just looking at the calendar, when we started our conferences, I think it was 2010. Was there first 2011? I think we'll be able to look at the conference archives. But as far as I know, yeah, we're counting accurately. And so this is our 13th year and we'll be 15th in 2025. Yeah, I know that the NDLTD was supposed to be meeting in the United States every 10 years, is what I thought. Oh, I see what you're getting at. I don't know. We'd have to talk to Ed Fox and folks. And maybe if Charlie's on this call, maybe he has some more insight information. Or talk to Ramesh Gowell, I think that's his name, their conference as chair. But they're always happy to have participation. And so we're really delighted to do some inter-organizational cooperation with them to make this happen in 2025. But I don't know what their schedule is. Yeah, they like to come full circle. But I think that generally they've been trying to focus on really far outplaces like India and places that have never held the conference there before. And it really opens up a lot of eyes and brings a lot of good information to people who would not have otherwise have been exposed. And 25, is this going to be in DC again? Or where is it going to be? We're looking for bids. So if you want to hold in Tennessee and you're interested, it seems to me years ago we held one of the E.T.D. symposia in Knoxville there. So everything that was the very first one, the very first meeting that I attended. And there was before anything, Andy Altidia more formal. It was the first one. Yeah, yeah, that was a lot of fun. So Emily, I don't know. Do we want to, let me look at the time here, 4.23. Yeah, I guess in a few minutes we'll break out with the raffle. But the, I was gonna say, I don't know if we want to open this up to comments, questions, concerns from the people. What did you feel about the conference or what do you want to do, Emily? That sounds good to me.  Oh, you wanted me to sing. I thought you had a musical number planned, John. I'm not the big singer, my buddy Daniel is, but yeah, and I play alto sax and if I feel inspired or have a few more drinks or maybe if I feel inspired. Can we go back here? You play sax, Cam plays trumpet, I play bassoon. That's true. Maybe we can come up with a musical number. In the early years of US UTDA, we did along with our conference activities. We had some form of entertainment. I remember Angie McCutcheon was big on that. She was our first director. And so we hit like, I remember one time they had a dance group. Maybe there was an Ohio meeting. And maybe it was in Miami, the first, not Miami, excuse me, Orlando, Florida, one of our first meetings. It was our first meeting actually. So I don't know. Yeah, we're keen on new things. So if you want to do the song and dance. Well, for proposals, you know, fishing for entertainment. We'll have an ATV musical. There we go. We have to compose some original music for a theme song. One song can be, we are not the ruler people. So other people tell us your thoughts. Were you inspired by all this? I know I was, my gosh, I was. Lily says that we need to use chat GPT to create a theme song for the USTDA. As long as it doesn't give false information, you know, there is actually an application. I've been filling around with it. Google has a music application. And it does so you can in text, put any kind of style you want or whatever in era. And it'll like churn up, you know, some sort of, you know, AI generated music, which is fairly convincing. I'm not sure the sound quality, the samples and all, but, you know, the technology is definitely getting very interesting. Oh, no, I hear that. But I have done it. It's one of my, it's one of my, it's in my repertoire. I also do cake by the distance by cake. And welcome to the jungle and bust the move. And yes, do Austin German. I love that you have such a developed karaoke repertoire. It's not just one song. It's like five. And it has to be, I can't sing. Like I'm a horrible singer, but I can yell or talk. So yelling and talking songs, I am great at. My husband can actually sing. He was in musical theater in high school and he's my best friend, Jim can sing. So when I go with them and they sing actual songs, I get up and like belt out, jump around my house of pain. So I think we should do this. Ellen is taking notes, I'm sure, for Provo. Is there anything else people are interested in talking about and in Provo we're doing while we're at our next meeting? I actually just hosted a karaoke night last night for my, for the youth group in my church. And they were surprisingly like excited and did a really good range of songs. So it was, you know, that's an interesting idea.  And I remember like Indian dancers one year in England and oh my gosh, so we could like, you know, do some really interesting things if we wanted to. Good food for thought. Yeah, we might be able to arrange like one of our campus performing groups. Oh yeah, we need the Mormon Tabernacle Choir to come and perform for us. Well, I actually play for several choirs. I might be able to get one of them to come. Wow, wow, all right. Well, let's think about this. Do we have a theme for next year's conference yet? Here we go. Yeah, we're working on it. We're working on it. That's the thing. I'm gonna paste the numbers from ticket orders up here. Let me see if it's the word. Yeah, okay. I think that went into the chat here. So I'm gonna ask Sally just so we don't detain this too long here. Oh yes. And I know people are excited. So winners have to be present for this as we mentioned. And so some of the numbers, we have an extra large pool in case people weren't here and we didn't wanna waste your guys' time. But, Sally, maybe you can pick a number. I'm gonna look up on the master sheet who it belongs to. And then if everybody really wants to verify that, and you look at the email of your ticket, it actually on the top says your order number. And so we just generated random numbers. People picked the pool. And so that's how we're proceeding here, like the lottery. So pick one of these. One of the numbers that I've got my spreadsheet up here, I'm gonna either tell you there's a winner or if they're not present, and I'll cross them off as we go through. So what's your first number here? I'm gonna go with 9101. Okay, we have a winner. So that is Pamela O'Sullivan. Is Pamela present in this session? Yay, congratulations. So we're gonna do the swag items for the first, obviously we're gonna do your total of seven winners. So the first five winners will have swag items. And the last two are gonna be two free registrations to USDT 24. Okay, so let me just highlight Pamela here. Get my yellow highlight on. Okay, good. So that's the first winner. Okay, number two, a second. Number please. Basie, would you like to pick or show us? Basie, you pick this one. You guys take turns here. Yeah. Is Stacey with us? Yeah, I think she needs to unmute. Oh, okay. Sorry, I was trying to get the spreadsheet and I muted when I was away. Let's see, let me pull that back up. Oh, I was gonna say on the chat, we have the numbers. Yeah, jump it up. You have them in the chat? Yeah, just pick a number from the chat window. And I pick 9101. I'm gonna put it in here so we know. I'll tell you if we've already went through. Um, I'd pick 9092. Okay, 9092. Oh, yes, we have here. Okay, and is Lane Bowman with us? No? Okay, she did. Let's pick another number then. Okay. Is that you, Sally, or? I'll pick this one. Let's go. Start at the top, 9047. Okay, is Marguerite Bond with us? Marguerite? Okay, going, going, going. Oh, I think someone's saying yes. Well, I think Marguerite is here. Marguerite is here? Yes. Congratulations, Marguerite. You are our next winner. Yay. Okay, next number, please. I'll pick 8929. 8929. Okay, is Kristen Terrell with us? Kristen? Yes, I'm here. Congratulations. You are our next winner. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay, Stacey, I don't know if you have any swag items to show the people. I'm not looking at the screen, but while you guys are doing this, and if you wanna hold up some sample things, that would be cool. Okay, next number, please. I'm gonna do 9229. 29. Do we have Thomas Elliott with us? Thomas? Thomas Elliott? Going, going, gone. Okay, fortunately he's not here. Okay, next number, please. 9101. 9101. Oh, we already did that. It's Pamela Sullivan. How about 9347? 9347. Yes, is Ron Resilis with us? Ron? Ron, are you here? Going, gone. All right, let's get next number. 9200. Okay, is Heather Butler with us? Heather? Yeah, Heather's here. Hey, yes, congratulations. Heather, you are our winner. Okay, highlight that one. Okay, next number, please. Let's say 1234, we got one more swag prize. Okay, how about 9229? I said that one already. Oh, yes, Thomas Elliott, this is here. 8929. 8929, sorry, 8929. Okay, 8929. Oh, we already did that one. That's Christian Terrell. Oh, shoot, how do I miss that one? Oh, 9274. Okay, 9274. Okay. Hang on, 9274.  Oh, Ms. Resilis Barouz with us. Hey, congratulations. Another winner, highlight that one. Okay, that's 12345. So for the last two, it's for the grand prize drawing for free registration. So the next number, please. Oh, I'll go 9173. Did we do that one yet? Let's see, 9173. No, we have not. Is Ashley Mezzersmith with us? Ashley? I don't think so. Going, going, gone. Okay, next number, please. Take another one. Stacey, your turn. Um, the, oh my God, how about 9274? Whatever you do. We already did that one, that's, um, yes. All right, 8756. Okay, is Erica Sanders with us? Yes, I am. Yay. Congratulations. You are our winner for a free registration next year. Let me just make a note here. Registration on that one. Okay, Ann, our final winner, final number. Stacey? I'm actually going to defer to John to pick this number. Oh, yes, good choice. I've got the list in front of me with the names. I don't want to do it. Okay, all right, I'll do it. Okay, I will go with 9323. Okay, is, I'm Catherine Johnson here with us. Yep, I'm here. Hey, congratulations.  So thank you so much, everyone. Isn't this exciting? Wow. So Stacey, I guess we'll, um, I'll get address information to you for our swag, uh, bag winners. And the registration folks, I'll send you an email to confirm and we'll keep that, um, keep that mental note and actually, you know, send you a free registration once we get these registration systems set up for next year. And my email address is here, um, as well on my name. So if anybody wants to send me their, uh, contact information directly, that works as well. Okay, yeah, and I'll follow up with you, Stacey, with the finalist winners email contact information. Where are we on time? Oh yeah, 437, we can run till five.  I want to see more dogs. I can't. I'll bring my one of my, we've got three dogs in the house. I have a question, John. I've been calling to these a long time too. And I remember very early on it was mostly librarians and now it seems like we've got a really good mix of, you know, librarians, grad office and whatever. Do you have a sense of what, where we are percentage wise on the, on that? Yeah. We've been hovering around 50%. Sometimes it's 50 or 60, one way or the other. But I can just thank going back to the era of Heidi R. BC-Kelm, who was one of our panelists in this panel discussion earlier today, was really instrumental in helping us engage the graduate school side of the house. And, you know, of course, she's a graduate dean herself and we got involved with the CGS. I think that year that she got on the board, we actually had the keynote speaker from CGS. And that really got a lot of buying in with the graduate school people. Because, you know, traditionally like NDLTD and certainly when USCETA started out, a lot of the folks were related with libraries and it just depends on how, you know, institutions organize themselves, you know, typically centralized or decentralized environment. And then who does the reviewing, you know, there's the grad school, the library and who does the repository. And oftentimes it's just a shared mix. But yes, we have really increased manyfold our representation from graduate school people. And I'm really, I feel blessed for that because we need both sides of the house. And a lot of times we help facilitate those communications between those two groups between libraries and graduate schools is because of the kind of practices that we, you know, endorse and so forth. Good question. It's been great. It was a really good conference this time. Not that the other ones weren't, but this was a particularly good one. Yeah, I think we hit a smaller quantity of presentations but we focused on quality. And I think we've really, hopefully achieved that. Ellen put some people, oh, sorry, go ahead, Sally. Oh no, I was just gonna ask Ellen what sort of geek things do you have in your office? I could turn my camera so you can see it. So I have a lot of these, I don't know if you can see them. I have a lot of these little like pop figures. Wow. I have a group over there. And then just a lot of pictures and things just all over. Since I spent a lot of time here, I'm gonna have things that I like. So yeah. John, I just wanted to say, I suggested in the chat that if anybody has ideas for themes for next year to let us know. And so we've gotten some on AI and technology. So I think we've got some good stuff to review later with the board to see where we wanna go. Thank you all for sharing. If you have any other ideas, please feel free to put it in the chat. Yeah. And we really would like to further engage you all people and people that are in the CEG group and user formatting and so forth in our processes. So like when we think about themes or the type of information that we wanna talk about for the next conference, we're gonna try and engage people in that process as well and not just keep this as a board function because I really need to come from the community. And hopefully with Emily's help and our US ETDA representatives and the engagement group, we can solicit your recommendations and create really interesting conferences, the things that will be useful to you. Okay, I'm gonna go get one of my doggies here before we adjourn. You guys can talk amongst yourselves. I'll just provide some additional merriment here. I'm enjoying all of the pet pictures over in the chat. I, Luna looks like he or she should be or they should be like under the president of a company or something. And I especially love the home dogs or in sunglasses out for a drive. Thank you. Excellent. Oh yeah, Luna looks like she should be like the head of some company. Not a pet, but my boyfriend. Oh, stay good. Come on. Here we go. Abby. Bella, Bella, Bella, Bella. Here we go. Bella, come here. Come here. She's a good girl. Yes, you are. Abby, come here. Come up in my bed. She's a good girl. Oh, good girl. It's you. Yeah, there's a good girl. Oh, she's sweet. Yeah. And we got one other. OK, you guys go play. We got one other elderly one who was sleeping on the couch. And we should leave him be. So is Abby a lab? She is a mix of a lab and maybe docks. And she's got these short little legs, but a kind of normal sized body. And she's actually the first one I had of there, Bella, who is more of a, I don't know, she's one of those lion hunting dogs. I'm trying to remember what they call them. South African sort of breed. Anyway, she is so hyper. We got her playmate.  You know, the circle kind of, how do they call that? You know, they go. Yeah, it's fun. The zooms, yeah. So there's never a dull moment here at home on the farm. I just saw Finnegan. What's that, Sally? I said, I just saw Finnegan. He looks very dapper. Oh. Is he wearing a Puma shirt? Or pullover? Very cute. Yeah, I want to look at the bottom beyond the PDF too. Yeah. Yeah, that link I put in chat, I think that's where they put all the papers from 2019. So some of it's, I think, still very relevant. Some of it's a little bit outdated. Hi, John, Erica here. I don't know if you've already answered this question. When are the recordings going to be available on the website? Good question. Okay, we'd like to know that too. For immediately, we're going to start working on transferring everything from Zoom over to the US ETD server. We've got a Google drive, basically. And so I can then, we'll make available the raw footage unedited to this group from our server initially. And our plan is to do a little bit of video clean up just on beginning as an endings. I don't think there would be too much involved. And then post those to the US ETDA YouTube channel. Hopefully by sometime December, that's always the goal is like a couple months after the conference to get them up online. But we'll give you guys the private access initially. And they won't be available publicly. And then maybe we'll just touch base with our members, our paid and how do you want to call it? Institutional and individual members, most of which I think are here present at the conference, but we'll just hit up those two groups.  So. Okay, thank you. I don't think there's gonna be a lot of slack on deletion this year. It was really tight. Well, I'm glad the technology worked, yeah, me too. Last year was an interesting challenge. I still managed to clean up the videos enough that they're quite listenable and we don't have the delays and chatter. And these are the things that happen. We're always striving to do better and I think the biggest lesson that we've been learning is go through every little nitty gritty detail, including like breakout assignment and recording and in their dress rehearsal before we actually go live. And then we'll feel much more comfortable and then we'll just avoid little technical gaps. But yeah, generally everything has worked out flawlessly. I'm very impressed. And thank you very much to Aura Young and the University of North Carolina, Sherylat for providing the Zoom stream and the recordings and so forth. I see lots of applause. I think Aura had to go, I don't know if Aura's still here but she's logged in. But we're gonna stop the recording because I think she had to leave early. But yeah. You gave me the power, John, so I can stop recording whenever you want. Okay, that's what I thought. Okay. So yeah, I don't know. The other thing, like in terms of the types of activities we do for the conferences, whether it's the type of presentation material, the type of discussion formats that we do, we'd like to hear from you all. Not necessarily this instant, but as you think of things, we're also going to send out a post conference survey. I have that prepared. And so probably this evening, I'll send that out en masse to all the registered attendees and we really would appreciate your recommendations and feedback on how you thought things went, what went well, what didn't go well and how we can improve in the future and topics that you'd like to hear about or talk about. I'm hoping I can actually make it in person next year. I was supposed to go last year in person, but then the COVID got me some. I also missed a wedding, which was happening right before the conference. So hopefully fingers crossed. I stay less sickly. Oh, I need bubble wrap. Yeah. I'm back with Fritz the cat.  He's another stray. They're all strays that we adopted. Hi Fritz. Yeah, Terry, I need an entire bubble life. I'm just, yeah.  You see the constant injuries and trips to the emergency room. And... Hey, Sonalia, does that beast you have good for a coat or do you know yet? Oh, well, actually, I know this. So Puff, my chinchilla puff is like a color pattern called mosaic. So the chinchillas that are used for the coats are either the standard gray or the TOV, which stands for touch development.  I know this because it's just one of those things I know I would never, ever, ever own a chinchilla coat but yeah, Puff would be maybe make a nice Barbie coat. He's a little old. And you would need a whole lot of them and it would be very expensive, like a whole lot of them would be very expensive, especially for Puff, because we got him for free, but his color pattern can go for like $900 for what's basically like a fancy squirrel. $900 for a fancy squirrel. Yeah, we didn't buy it. Someone we knew had to re-home him, so we took him. We have another chinchilla that would actually be a good chinchilla, so. But thank you for asking, Larry. I was able to share my creepy chinchilla information. A lot of knowledge there. Yeah, just someone asked if you could eat them. And I'm like, I guess you could, but I mean, everyone thinks that they're gonna be heavy, but they're mostly like fluff and bones and eyeballs. So there's not really anything to eat. It would be like eating a quail, but with less meat. It's kind of hard to think of your pets as food, I know. I think of everything as food. It reminds me of the film Roger and Me, and that was in Michigan in the Port Lady, after GM left, she was selling rabbits and her sign said for pets or for food. And I'm like, oh my God. Elizabeth, yes, they do take dust bats because you can't get them wet because they have such dense fur. Like humans have maybe one or two hairs per follicle. They have 15, at least per follicle. So they have such dense fur that if you get them wet, they never really dry out and their skin can develop mold. So to keep them clean, they take dust bats. That's fascinating. You could write a dissertation on such a topic. I really could, I really could. Also they're nocturnal, which is nice because when we were working, both working out of the house, we didn't feel like they had separation anxiety, but then it becomes less attractive at like three o'clock in the morning when they decided to get in the wheel. Yeah, that's fine, but yeah. They also love to eat plastic and rubber. They ate all the buttons off of one remote control before we noticed and we just had to spend the rest of the time with that television, trying to figure out like what was on and up and things. Oh, also one of the nearly, like the other one nearly electrocuted himself because he chewed through a power cord. I was out when this happened and I got home and my husband met me at the door and was like, he looked and say that. He opens the door and he was like, everything's okay. And I was like, was it not going to be okay? It was the great issue. The burdens weren't going to be okay, but he was okay. He just shocked himself really badly, but he was okay. So, oh another great question. If you think it went accidentally, do you shave them? You, we would take them to a vet where they could hopefully clean them. And it depends on where they hopefully could dry them out enough because we wouldn't try to do it on our own. So if they ever get something in their fur, the only reason you would ever, ever, ever wash them is if they get something in their fur that just won't come out. And then at that point they usually do cut it out. But if they do get wet, if it's just like a couple of drops of water, that's okay. But if like they got really wet, we would take it to a vet. John, are all these chat streams going to be included with the videos? Yes, sir. Yeah, actually I was recording on one of the breakout sessions yesterday. And so it gives you a package of the video, the transcript and the chat transcript as well. So we will be posting that information as well. And we've gleaned, like I said, I gleaned yesterday all the wonderful web resources, the URLs from the workshop. And that has provided a lot of substance or more than double the entries in that accessibility web page, which I really encourage you guys to go check out now because now it's a very nice resource. Good. Emily, any parting thoughts? I'm see we're at 454 here. So we'll let people go in back to their normal lives and you know. I can't think of anything. Thank you all so much for coming and spending a couple of days with us. I hope that you got a lot out of the conference that it sparked creativity and reinvigoration and just sparked some thoughts of things to keep in mind as we continue through the rest of the school year and beyond. And I hope that you all stay engaged with us through the formatting users group, the community engagement group and just by email, reach out to people on the call, reach out to people in the group. We'd love to talk to you. We'd love to learn more from you and to help each other. It really does take a community and I think we're a pretty cool community to have. So please don't hesitate to reach out to us really at any point. And we really hope to see you next year at the conference in Proko. We're looking forward to it. Thank you so much on the way and thank you everyone. This is a really dedicated group here. You stayed to the end, right to the nitty-gritty ad. So congratulations to our Rafa winners. Thank you everybody. Everyone take care. Until next time. Bye everyone. Bye. All right, Emily.


so here we have a really cool flexible phone right here with Royale and it opens up this really beautiful so how big is the screen when it's closed how big is it when it's open? well I unfolded it's around 80 inch of the flexible screen and when it's closed 6.6 around that 6.6 so similar dimensions to the new way right? yes similar very similar resolution same yeah high resolutions more than 300 but this is higher the same resolution similar I don't know their spec yet so and you make the display yes we are the flexible screen makers we have our own mass production line and our own patentated technology to mass produce the flexible screen and this is flexible OLED yes it's flexible with plastic based on the plastic materials and a flexible OLED technology and how do you make sure it doesn't get scratched so we have a special cover solutions to protect the screens to prevent a scratch and it's just a cover you can replace it easily or not so easy to replace for the user you can replace it like a normal screen protector different ways different ways so what is the CPU here? so we are using Qualcomm's most recent Snapdragon 855 chipset flagship chipset 855 already is inside yes so is it coming later? it's already now yeah inside so it's the fastest on processor yeah fastest and most recent the best processors in the world now and the most important thing also is that you are selling for 1200 today? in Europe it's 1388 and then US US is 1318 1318 yes US dollars and that's a development model yes so it's not consumers so currently consumer model we are selling in Chinese market and for the consumer model globally we'll for example in Europe we'll the consumer can expect it pretty soon this year how much is a consumer model in China? it's 8000 RMB yeah more than 8000 $1,200? similar actually or $1,200 or $1,300 yes so how can you get this into mass production? so actually for a while because we already start mass production of the vector screens we develop these portable phones and now we are start shipping the products globally to the consumers since last December and but mass production means a million how do you get how many you sell so far? sorry but actually I can say we have a very overwhelming orders from the consumers so you cannot make enough we can't we can't you can make we so that's why we are fulfilling orders now so can you can you fold it again so when Huawei just had a press conference right they talked about the engineering to do this part is very difficult what do you do there? so this hinge design is very important for the foldable smartphone of the product actually we have our own cute hinge design so that can support this foldable phone to make it very reliable folding but the radius is a little bit wider right? yeah a couple millimeters and there's a gap here but you basically have to price it yeah very cheaper because we have our own mass production line for the flexible screen because the flexible screen is produced by our own mass production line and we have a different technologies for the flexible screen so that we can make the cost of lower much lower even than Samsung and then Huawei where is your factory? where is in China? in Shenzhen? yes in Shenzhen make the display yes and everything else? yes and also some part we have our supply chain to work with up so here in this can you open it up so where's the PCB and where's the battery? so all there's a special designs on all the products the battery and including the batteries, cameras, everything so the battery is somewhere yeah maybe you don't say everything hard works right and can you show some of the other displays you have? oh yeah so because we must produce the flexible display and the flexible screen so actually we have other applications one is the wearables like the hat so yeah similar yeah and we can use the Wi-Fi to stream any content from the smartphone or preload any content inside to play any content is good for the event for the parties but anywhere you want to show your personality right? yes actually we went to the World Cup final in Russia in Moscow last year the first yeah the first I just think he was outside and there was no call that's not a big call yeah and then there's another application of the flexible screen so this is the flexible screens for the applications of the fashion like this handbag you see because it's flexible and very light so they have a handbag yes it's kind of a handbag you don't now need to change the handbag if you want different patterns just to change the contents you want to preload any of this for sale? oh this is when we are working with our business partner and trying to open a new business with fashion companies so how big is the real company? oh currently we have a more than 2,000 employees globally we have offices in China and also Europe and also the America and all this is just about flexible display? flexible display, flexible sensors and the products so you're going to do printed electronics also? pretty yeah that's flexible you get them there? yeah all right


This bootcamp takes you through several mathematical concepts and techniques that you need in order to do the introduction to statistics course. Sometimes your calculator displays something unexpectedly alien with maybe the letter E, a plus sign, a minus sign, and you're not really sure what to make of it. If you haven't seen this before, that's just scientific notation. It's a way to make a number with many digits more concise, and we'll see how that works. So don't worry about it, don't panic, it's quite normal. Scientific notation, as we'll see, can help us take a very, very large number and squash it into a calculator display that wouldn't be able to hold it otherwise. So here we have an example where we take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, big number, multiply it by 99 to make it an even bigger number, and what does the calculator tell you? 1.222, 2222, 11, E plus 10, scientific notation. The calculator in the image over there doesn't even use the letter E, so you might be even more confused. Different calculators and different apps will give you different displays for scientific notation. But basically what we're told to do here with the plus 10 is go to the right 10 spaces, okay, 10 decimal digits over to the right. So the number starts out 1.2, we move the decimal point over and over again and over again to the right 10 times, and we end up with an answer like 1, 2, 12, 222, 222, 122,110. Of course that's not exactly accurate either, but it's close. Because of the constraints of the size of the display, we didn't have enough digits telling us what that the end of the number is, 110. It's really 111, but it's close enough, and if we needed to, we could keep the answer in our calculator or in the computer and manipulate it further in order to get a more accurate result altogether, that's if this is an intermediate result. But the whole point here is just to tell you, don't worry, scientific notation is easy to figure out. Let's see how scientific notation helps us with a very, very tiny number. We've got 0.03 raised to the power of 5. So that's 0.03 multiplied by itself 5 times. And the calculator output, as you see here, is 2.43 E-8, so that's scientific notation. We know that because of the E, but even if the E is not there, we'd be able to figure it out. And minus 8 means that it's a very tiny number. We're going to move the decimal point over to the left, not to the right. The minus sign tells us we're going to move to the left, 8 spaces. And we end up with, let's see if we can figure this one out, 0.000, 000, 0243, that's the number, the actual number. But it's expressed more concisely with scientific notation. How do we read scientific notation if we need to read it out loud? Well, E means times 10 raised to the power of, that's what the E means there. It's not the word exponent, it's not the base of natural logarithms, it's just a way of expressing scientific notation. And so this one would be 2.43 times 10 raised to the power of negative 8. We'll see more about that later. More examples, 999, 888, 7776, that's a large number, but then we're making it even bigger by multiplying it by 8, 8. That extremely large result would be expressed in scientific notation by 8.799, 021243, E11 or plus 11. And again, since it's so many digits and there was really no room for it in the calculator, it's there's rounding, a computer would probably be a better idea here. The second example, we have 0.34 raised to the power of 9 and that's a very small number. We end up with 6.071699277, E to the negative 5, so it's times 10 to the minus 5. And it's a minus sign, so you move the decimal place 5, decimal point 5 places to the left. And you end up with 0.000607, etc. And because of the way things are displayed and because every calculator and every application has a different amount of spaces formatted, it's going to look different in different calculators and in different ways and sometimes they will be rounded. The third example, very quickly, we're going to look at it again, what does it mean? If we see 2.187 and then minus 11 or as you see on the display on the calculator in the image, 2.187 E negative 11, that means it's going to be a very, very tiny number because we're going to move the decimal point to the left 11 spaces. Remember, don't get confused between scientific notation and exponents, exponents can be on any number and it can also be on E, the base of natural algorithms. And scientific notation is always multiplied by 10 and it's powers of 10. The exponent is illustrating powers of 10. Even if it says E, E is just to indicate that we're using scientific notation to collapse a very large or a very small number. The previous example from the previous slide, you see the calculator image there, 2.187 E negative 11, that's the same as it could be displayed as just negative 11 without the E and it's the same as saying 2.187 times 10 to the power of negative 11. And we get 0.000, a lot of zeros and then 2.187. On the other hand, take a look at the two examples following. If we say 3 E minus 2 or 3 scientific notation minus 2, what we mean is 3 times 10 raised to the power of minus 2, which is 0.03, move the decimal point to the left two places. What we don't mean is that the negative 2 is an exponent on the 3, which would be the equivalent to or equal to 1 over 3 squared, which is 1 over 9, which is 0.111. Okay, so not the same. To find more boot camp modules, visit the STAT course at the URL you see there and go to the navigation bar on the left, click boot camp and you'll see all kinds of things that are good to do prior to the statistics course. Many of you have already done this before and maybe only need a refresher.