Welcome to today's episode of the Mindset Mentor podcast. I'm your host Rob Dial. If you have not yet done so, hit that subscribe button so that you never miss another podcast episode.  Once again, mondayemail.com. Every single Monday I send out an email with extra tips and tricks on how to improve your mindset to improve your life. So if you want that, you can go to the website. It is absolutely free and I'll email you every single Monday. Today I'm going to be teaching you something that will bring so much more peace to your life. It will make your life so much easier and it's not easy, but it will make your life so much easier. And it's very simple, but once again, with it being very simple does not mean that it's very easy to do. Today is probably going to be a deep episode. So buckle up. I hope you're ready for it. Today we're going to talk about forgiveness.  I don't want to listen about forgiveness. Cool. Follow me on this journey because I know some of you listening, probably a lot of you listening, still haven't forgiven people for something that they did to you three, four, five years ago.   They don't deserve my forgiveness. No, no, no. I'm not talking about them deserving your forgiveness.  If you are noticing that you are still holding onto something and haven't forgiven that. So let's start off at this place. I believe at the core of every single person, everyone has innocence. Everyone is good. I believe at the core of myself that every single person is good at their core. I don't believe that there's somebody who's born into this world and as a baby, they're just automatically bad. They automatically steal. They automatically hurt people. I believe, and I'm going to take you on this journey today, that that's somebody who has lost anything that takes them away from what is good and the innocence that they have hurts them in some sort of way. And we don't necessarily stay innocent, but our core can still say good. And so when I say we don't stay innocent, things happen. Life happens. You cannot go through this world without some form of a scar. Things happen. Trauma happens. Society happens. We get kicked in the face. We get scars, all kinds of things. The world happens as we continue to grow up. And what we're all searching for in this world, in my belief, is inner peace. We're searching for some deep feeling of that just release as, you know, it's like, I remember Ram Dass talking about a guru that he followed said, death is like taking off a tight shoe. And that's what I mean by that. It's like we have this tight shoe of who we're supposed to be, how we're supposed to be, how we're supposed to act. And then it's just like, it's like that release after you take off a tight shoe. And so what I think we're all searching for is that release, that peace that it feels like when you take off a tight shoe, right? I don't think that we're searching for happiness. I think that we're searching for peace. And the reason why is because I believe that happiness is a fleeting emotion. What do I mean by fleeting emotion? You can be happy right now. You can get a phone call and it can completely sidetrack your happiness. You can be gone like that. But peace, peace is a state of being. It is a feeling that is below at the core, below all of the monkey mind, the thoughts, the, the happiness, the sadness, the pissed off, all of those things below all of that is a sense of peace. And I think that's what all of us are actually trying to work towards. And you cannot, this is important. You cannot have peace if you see the world as guilty and bad because you operate in the world every day all day. You cannot have peace in your life if you see the world and see other people as guilty and bad. This is the reason the core of my belief of why I think the news is so terrible for humans is because the news perpetuates this thing as if the world is bad. It is people are guilty. It is unsafe. When I don't believe it's that way at all. Are there bad things that happen? Are there people that do things? Of course. But what I'm saying is I think that's like 1% 99% are really, really good. It's probably even a higher than 99%. It's like 99.9% are really, really good and 0.1% are just lost. And the key to unlocking peace is to try to every single day see the world as more good than anything else and forgive no matter what. Forgive no matter what. And anyone who is bad, if we look at the core of everyone is good, the statement that I say at the beginning, we were born into this world good, anyone who does bad is lost from their true self. It's not who they truly are. It's that they are lost from their true self. They don't actually know what they're doing. They are lost. And so anyone who has hurt you is also hurting themselves because they are lost. And to hold any resentment towards somebody who has hurt you only hurts us. It doesn't hurt them in any sort of way. It's like Mark Twain says anger and resentment is the acid that burns the vessel. When you hold anger and you hold resentment towards someone, it's like holding on to acid. It's not going to hurt them. It's only going to hurt you. And so someone who, let's take for instance, someone who breaks into houses and who steal stuff. At their core, I don't think they actually truly want to do that. Now, you might have a different belief. If you do, that's fine. This is just the way that I tend to operate in the world and something that's brought me a whole lot of peace. Somebody who, and I'll give you a perfect example. Years ago, when I had an office and I had sales reps that would come in and stuff, I had somebody come in and in the middle of, I don't know, us being there, us being in and out of the office, somebody broke in in the middle of the day and stole our TV and our Nintendo Wii. If you guys remember the Nintendo Wii's back in the day. And that night I had a team meeting and I remember if you've ever had somebody break in and steal something from you, it's a very weird feeling because you feel not really safe in what was once a safe place. And I remember somebody had mentioned it at the team meeting and they're like, Hey, what happened to the TV and the Wii? Like it's gone. And I said, Yeah, somebody stole it today.  All of this stuff. And I remember just thinking if they stole it, they must need it more than me. And that's what I had said. Oh, they stole it. They must need it more than me. Am I excited about it being stolen? No, but I could get another one. So if they stole it, they must need it worse than me. So take it, I guess. And so somebody breaks into houses and steal stuff. I don't think the person who stole my TV and the Wii were necessarily somebody who at their core was like, I'm doing something good. Like they know that's not who they want to be. And you know, that could be somebody who a child who wasn't loved correctly. It could be somebody, a child who wasn't taught what is right and what is wrong. And if somebody is, if, you know, it's somebody that is hurting and they think that by having it, they will have more peace. But then they realize that thing never brings them more peace. And when you see that that person wants more peace, they're just lost. You can kind of look at them from a place of a little bit more love. I'll give you a great example, right?  Of course I can. And that's my prerogative.  I can still be pissed off about that if I want to. And some people do, do that. And that's fine.  But I can also look at that and say that was someone who was lost. You know, if my father passed away from being an alcoholic, he was someone who was lost. And then I can look at his point of view and realize that he was an alcoholic because he walked into the room minutes after his father shot himself in the mouth of the shotgun when he was 12 years old. And instead of looking at the 48 year old man who passed away from being an alcoholic and left me in this world without him, I can instead go, you know what, that was just a 12 year old kid who never overcame an extremely incredible trauma. And I can have love for him in that case instead of feeling hatred towards him. Whatever choice we decide to choose is fine in that situation. But for me, I just see it as someone who was lost and maybe didn't get the love that they needed to and they didn't get the therapy that they needed to or they didn't change their mindset around it. And so in turn turned to alcohol and it ended up the way that it ended up. I believe that everything happens for a reason. And so I believe that that happened the way exactly it was supposed to happen. And so don't see the person who did it, see the hurt child that's behind it. And that's kind of what I tend to go to is when I see someone who's hurting me or acting a certain way or doing this, I tend not to see them as the adult that they are. And I tend to see them as the child that is hurt behind it because at their core, they are good. So if they are hurting someone in some way, they are lost in some sort of way. There was some sort of break from what is right and what is wrong and what is good, I guess is a better way of saying it and take right or wrong out of it. What is good, their core and who they are. And they broke away from that. There was something, some sort of trauma, some sort of action that made them fall away from that thing. So, you know, if you're looking at it and somebody cheated on you, that has nothing to do with you. You might think that it does. I've been cheated on before in the past. That had nothing to do with me, but it has nothing to do with you. A lot of times what it comes back to is their lack of love for themselves, which came from a lack of love from their parents. And then they have to go search for it in someone else because the next quote unquote conquest, the next person they get to hook up with whatever it is, is making them feel in that moment, not actually at their core, like they're getting some love that they never got when they were a child. It is a search for love. It is a search for acceptance. It is a search for self worth. And so in this world, there is only sanity and there's only insanity. And when I say insanity, I don't mean like mentally, clinically insane. What I mean is sanity is a state where you do when you're, when someone is in a place of sanity, it is a state where you are doing right for yourself and you're doing right for others. That is sanity. Insanity is a state that hurts others. And so when someone is hurting others, they are in a state of insanity. And when you hurt others, you only hurt yourself because you carry that wrongdoing with you. So if you look at it, some people might say this little bit different. Some people might say there's only love and fear in this world, right? So love and fear, love would be sanity and anything that is not love would be insanity. And so everyone is just where they are. Everyone is doing the best with what they have. And so for me, it's very easy when I look at people who fight over political parties and stuff. I've said this many times before in the podcast, if I had, even if I don't believe with someone's views, if I had their exact same life, every single second of my life was exactly the same as theirs. My parents, people I talked to family, every single second of my life was identical to theirs, I would have the exact same beliefs as them because everyone, wherever they are is doing the best with what they have. If you were in their exact same shoes or the exact same childhood and exact same parents and raising, you would have made the same choice. If you went through all of those things, you would have made the exact same choice. Someone's actions are always a reflection of their consciousness. And so when you start to think of that, that when someone, when you hear that someone's actions are always a reflection of their consciousness, you can actually start to see, oh, if someone, someone's actions are bad, that means their consciousness and what's going on behind the scenes is bad. It is far from where they, they're lost from that state of good.  But in the story, when he's being murdered, the thing that he says is forgive them father for they know not what they're doing. And so that's a good example of somebody who understands the consciousness of the people around him. Forgive them father for they know not what they're doing. And so he could see past the actions that were in front of him and what was happening to the consciousness that those people had. So for us it'd be very, what I'm trying to do more often is to stop seeing past, to see past what's happening right in front of me and what people present themselves to be and start to see past it to see what the consciousness of that person is because people don't know what they're doing most of the time. A sane person would never do those actions. So it must mean that there is some form of insanity. Once again, when I say insanity, I don't mean clinically insane. I just mean that they're lost. They're off the path in some way. And so our truest self would see a sick person that's in need of healing. And the ego sees an evil person that's in need of punishing.    And none of this has to do with any religion at all. So I'm not saying healing and they need God or they need this religion or that religion. I'm just saying that they are off of the path. An ego though.  The ego sees an evil person that's in need of punishing everyone in this earth just wants peace. Everyone is always doing what they believe will bring them happiness or make them feel better. And what you judge and you condemn, you strengthen. What you judge and you condemn, you strengthen. To judge and condemn the thief then strengthens the identity that they have of themselves as a thief. Think of that for a second.  And at the end of it, when he was convicted, the one whose son was murdered went up to the child who murdered her son and said, I forgive you. That might be the biggest step of forgiveness that a human can do. This child murdered her child and she went up to that child and said, I forgive you. Because what happens is when we judge and we condemn, we strengthen their identification as that thing. So in her case, if she had, you know, judged and condemned, she would strengthen that person's identity as a murderer, which they did murder, but doesn't mean that they have to be a murderer forever. They can, people can change and they can get back on the right path. But to judge and condemn somebody is to strengthen their identification of that thing.  It doesn't take them any closer to healing. It actually takes them further away because I am strengthening that thought of themself. So, you know, a thief and a cheater, I don't actually truly believe that they feel good about what they did. They know their truest self knows that it is wrong. So to judge a person and to label them as a thief strengthens their belief that that's what they are. To judge them and to condemn them for being a cheater strengthens that that's what they are, which means that they are more likely to do it again, which means that I am just perpetuating the problem by viewing them as that and by saying to them that that's what they are. They see it in themselves and they see it in their thinking and the who they are and everything and for an outside perspective to come in and say that to them does not help them heal in any sort of way, but to forgive and to love somebody and to actually whether you say that to them or not and you say, hey, I forgive this person, whether that is, let's just say you never even say it to them. Let's say someone cheated on you and you forgive them at your core and you say, you know what, they were lost. They were somebody who just needed that they needed their self worth was low. They're searching for love. They're searching for self worth. I forgive them that in turn, even if it's never said to them ever in my mind, that consciousness shift in your mind starts to change the world. And that's all that we really need is for more conscious shift consciousness shifts, conscious shifts consciousness shifts inside of us to help heal the world a little bit more. So when I say to love and forgive somebody because they didn't know what they did, what I mean is to love and forgive them. They didn't know what they did and a loving and forgiving them is actually making change inside of yourself more than anything else. So you're doing the forgiveness for yourself. And if you do that and you take off this little bit of dirt that you've been holding on you for the longest time and makes you cleaner to go out into the world to actually operate from a better place of consciousness and in turn every single person that you talk to is going to be impacted in a different way by that. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, go ahead and share it on your Instagram stories and tag me in at RobDialJr, R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R. We'd love to see what your thoughts are, see where you are watching this and see kind of what you guys share from it, what maybe some takeaways that you got away from it. So once again is RobDial Jr., R-O-B-D-I-A-L-J-R.  Make it your mission to make someone else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.


Ano ai e na kupa o na kai evalu o ka moana nui a kanaloa?  Aloha mai kā kou. Tadei we begin our episode by acknowledging the oceans, the lands, the waterways and the natural environment that our ancestors inhabited and cared for as stewards of these precious resources. We recognize the history of these unceded lands and territories that we now reside upon. Hawaii i is an indigenous space where the descendants of the original people are today identified as Kanaka Maui. We recognize that it was through coercion, force and the breaking of formal treaties that this land was illegally seized. Her Majesty Queen Liliuokalani temporarily yielded the Hawaiian Kingdom and these territories under her duress and protests to the United States to avoid the bloodshed of her people. For many of us Kanaka Maui, these moments of history continue to ignite our every move as we strive for sovereignty over our lands, our culture, our language, our knowledge systems, our rituals and religious ceremonies, our artistic practices and ourselves. Today, I acknowledge, give gratitude and honor ke i'a aina, this land, Nakai, the oceans, Kavae, the waters, Ko'umau ku funda, my ancestors and the historical relationship that we as indigenous peoples have with this aina. This place, Kapai aina o Hawaii, mahalo. For the Consortium of Asian American Theatres and Artists' Confest Virtual Series, return to the source. This is our sixth episode called Where We're At, COVID-19 and Community, where we're going to talk about COVID, protest, insurrection and the state of where we and the rest of the country are. I'm your host for today, Katie Thorb, producing artistic director of the generic ensemble company and vice president of Qatar. First, we will begin with an update from our Confest Steering Committee. Aloha. My name is Leilani Chan. I am co-chair of the National Asian American Theatre, Conference and Festival, lovingly called Conquest, along with my co-chair, Kali Okwa Baker, and Kahia Olalo, who is our local coordinator. And we have a few updates from you. Aloha. Aloha. We have a couple of updates for you. As you know, we originally had planned Confest to be in Hawaii last year, but we of course postponed it to 2021. And as many of you may not be surprised, we do not feel that it is prudent or safe for us to continue with planning for Confest to be in 2021. So, we have worked very hard behind the scenes to make decisions, to postpone. And as you can see, we will be doing Confest in May of 2022. And I would like to hand it over to the High Leap University athletes on our host institution, which would be the University of Hawaii at Pahanoa. Well, hallo anu e Leilani. So, as you can see, we are looking at another year out. Currently, the University of Hawaii system is online. Most of our teaching will be online. And so will, for us at Kennedy Theatre, our performances and productions have pivoted to a digital format. So, we are continuing with the endeavors we started last semester in creating experiences for students and our community, online platforms. Most of us had anticipated this being the case this semester. Our campus is quite bare right now. Not too many students are on that campus because of the online classes. And all in all, it's the responsible thing for us to do to postpone a large gathering of this kind. And so we look forward to the next year and year and four months maybe of planning, continuing our plans and picking up where we left off so we can join together once again with our fellow artists, fellow scholars and welcome everyone here to Hawaii. I want to share a little bit about where we are as far as the pandemic is concerned. And I'm going to ask Kahai Ollelo if he can share a little bit about Hawaii and our reasons for postponement. Of course. You know, I think the narrative about Hawaii and the pandemic is that we're doing fairly well compared to other parts of the country. So I don't want to bog down the conversation with a lot of numbers. But the reality is that narrative of Hawaii doing well is really in service of tourism. And we'll go into that conversation a little bit more in a bit. But, you know, even without that dynamic, travel is happening to Hawaii right now. We are experiencing numbers of daily arrival numbers of approximately 10,000 arrivals per day. And yes, there are, there's meant to be safeguards in place to make sure that people are tested. That system has shown failures. And it's a little, it's very hard for our community on these islands in the middle of the Pacific. There's been so much, so much has changed and continues to change. The vaccines have been caused for, you know, this new wave of optimism. But, you know, the reality, again, is it is a slow rollout. It's going to be at least the summer of 2021 before most of us on this call will get the opportunity to receive the vaccine. And, you know, that's not even mentioning the high level of resistance among our community members who just don't want to or don't trust the vaccine. So with all of that, you know, just in consideration of your safety as folks that might be interested in coming to Hawaii, for confessed, but more so for the safety of our people here in Hawaii, who are, you know, the most impacted communities being the most recently arrived immigrant communities. Pacific Island peoples that's also seen within the Filipino community, living in multi-generational homes and having members of those homes going out into the community because they need to, because they need to earn the money to support their families. But those industries being in, yeah, and those industries being primarily the retail industry and the tourism industry, where it's, again, you know, hoping to welcome you here to Hawaii and have the important conversations and really highlight the work that's being done by all of you and by us here in Hawaii. We so desperately want to do that and it feels like so necessary at these very challenging times, but it's just not right for us. You know, we just, the idea that having you come here is, it just feels a little too close to the tourism that's really dominating the conversation here in Hawaii. So, although we want to make sure that I confess, isn't a typical tourist experience, right? It's still, it's just not right. And I don't think this should be, this should come as surprising to anyone if you've tuned in, yeah. But so we ask for your continued patience and just know that we are continuing to work to make, confess, so just such an exciting and vibrant representation of our communities. Mahalo e kaha'i, yeah, and we'll get to touch a little bit more about this and talk about how our local community has been impacted by COVID-19 and the fact that local people, the poe of this land are really upset at the orders to stay home while we see the tourists frolicking on the beach, right? So, and coming and going as they wish and us continually getting the blame and having to be the ones that make sacrifices. So we do not want confess to be associated with those practices. And yeah, so we'll have a little bit more time I think later on in the show to have that conversation. But at this time, I would like to bring on our kata board president, Leslie Ishii. Mahalo. Mahalo, Hairi. And Mahalo for that, what we consider here at the Consortium of Asian American Theatres and Artists and essential practice. Thank you for that beautiful, that powerful land acknowledgement. Thank you to you and your co-chair, Leilani Chan, and kaha'i for all three of you, for your leadership in running the steering committee and guiding our board toward this essential and really thoughtful planning so that we can all enjoy Confest in the near future. So thank you for your leadership. So with that, Mahalo also it's an honor to serve as the board president of kata. We are so grateful that you are all tuning in with us today. And I want to express my gratitude for your membership and your donations are so deeply appreciated as they support programming like this important series where we bring you the current work and updates regarding issues of our Pan-Asian Pacific Islander, Native, Indigenous, MENA, and Bi and multiracial artistic communities. The updates such as the BIPOC practitioner and BIPOC, meaning Black, Indigenous and Theatres of Color COVID-19 impact survey is one of the ways that kata is working in coalition with other BIPOC leaders and networks to garner our own data by and for us designed in partnership with UCLA so that we can tell our own story and how this pandemic, as you all just expressed, continues to disproportionately impact our communities. So this spring we will bring you updates and phase two of this vital project. Another update. I have also represented us on a national committee that worked to make sure nonprofit theater specifically myself advocating for BIPOC, BIPOC theaters, the small and mid-sized theaters and arts and culture organizations to be included in this current federal relief package and stimulus packages going forward. So please, please do stay tuned with us at our website or Facebook page as well because we will be bringing you information sessions regarding eligibility and your ability to submit for this funding. So again, as you watch today, please and engage in our programming, please continue to share out, continue to view and make tax-deductible donations. And as I mentioned, go to our website www.kata.net to become a member so that you can stay connected, break isolation especially in these times of this pandemic as we work on a national and local level to bring you these updates and the work that is in service of you all as our members, our greater community, our artists because we serve you, we work on your behalf and we can't do it without you. So thank you again for tuning in today, mahalo. And at this point, I will pass it back to our wonderful and brilliant host, Katie. Thank you.  So ever since people of Asian descent came to the United States, we have continuously been associated with infection and invasion. First coming to the fore in the form of anti-Asian sentiment against Chinese enclaves, Asian people began to symbolize degeneracy and squalor through depictions of opium addiction. Chinese immigrants became associated with smallpox, plague and STIs. Angel Island, the port of entry for all Asian immigrants at the time, became a major health checkpoint. This idea of Chinese and other bodies as contagions led to the Chinese Exclusion Act as well as numerous other exclusionary laws and practices aimed at immigrants from Asia. This general anxiety about infection and invasion from Asia was personified in the yellow peril, an insatiable, feckless caricature symbol of the Orient, hell-bent on taking over decent American soil with its inscrutable and calculating ways. The yellow peril has been equally concomitant with its counterpart, the model minority myth. In terms of health, this has led to a dichotomy of contagion versus imported, often colonial, care from much of Asia. Whether as diseased opium addicts wanting to colonize California or as Filipino Florence Nightingales, Asian-Americans have often been seen in close proximity to health. Our association with disease periodically returns. Swine flu, bird flu and SARS are just some recent examples where disease too readily becomes associated with Asian-ness. The most recent of course being COVID-19. Touted as the Chinese virus by our own seditious president and this image is a image that is in that Chinese is in Trump's own handwriting. Rather than taking steps to limit the spread of a much anticipated pandemic, white supremacists have taken aim at people of Asian descent as scapegoats. One in four Asian-American youth have experienced anti-Asian bullying since March 2020. Over 2,500 incidents of anti-Asian hate were recorded between March and May alone with some estimating anti-Asian hate crimes rising by roughly 2,000%.  In the first two months of the lockdown alone, 60% of Asian-Americans and 30% of all Americans polled reported to have witnessed anti-Asian bias. As a community, we have endured not only the effects of COVID-19 as a pandemic, but we have also felt the pandemic of white supremacy that has so clearly and overtly been infecting the United States. But we continue to resist, survive and thrive and today is all about that. So we first wanted to do some geographical check-ins in the context of this anti-Asian racism as well as the indefinite hold on live performance. We wanted to see what kata members are doing and faring both as theatre artists and Asian-Americans in Pacific Islanders during the lockdown. So first, let's hear briefly from people in each region. Let's hear from joining us in Honolulu again, Haile-Okua and Kahai. I promise that we had more time to discuss this. Here we are back. We're back. So, you know, minutes ago, the new mayor of Honolulu released a statement that he will not move O'ahu to tier one. Despite the continued spiking cases over the past week, he also opposes another lockdown. And I can't understand why we are opening up Hawaii, even though the numbers point to the fact that the requirements for tier one have been filled. I have to wonder who benefits from this decision, right? Who stands to benefit and who suffers, right? It seems to be that we as a people do not have control over those decisions. And I think, Kahai, if we can talk maybe about numbers and how that numbers game is played. Yeah, definitely. You know, reporting of numbers as it relates to this tier system of the recovery, so much of the recovery as it's focused on in that plan is the economics of it. Is how does tourism benefit from this? How, you know, we can't talk about shutting down. We just talk about moving forward. I think that that was the main statement of our mayor is we just we're looking forward. And, you know, we got to look back and even before we do that, we got to look at what's happening right now. So the numbers, as Haile mentioned, we are in the numbers that would qualify us to move back down to that tier one for higher precautions for smaller group convenings. And, you know, even at that, it feels like that system was created, you know, in a very performative sense that it's really just for the optics because nowhere on there is it addressed that tourism might have to shut down, that we might have to, you know, do significant lockdowns. It's really hard, you know. And for me, just on that number, that number reporting specifically, the fact that they are absolutely manipulating the data. I don't want to sound like a conspiracy theorist here, but the numbers that we are now focusing on have removed sections of our community just in service of keeping that tier system in place. The incarcerated community was completely removed. And this is at a time where the private prison system has done a horrible job at containing the virus within their institutions. You know, and that's also not to mention in Hawaii, we have a disproportionate community of native Hawaiians within those institutions. So why are those numbers not reported? Because, you know, oh, they're removed from a general community context. But that doesn't satisfy any of us. It's because there is interaction. We all know that our local people work at these institutions, right? They work in the prisons either in the medical field or as guards or, you know, in food and beverage, right? There is contact, right? And so just stating the facts. So we got the incarcerated community not counted. We also have non-residents not counted. And don't forget the entire military population that is not a part of those counts. So the numbers that are being shared with us is really only Hawai'i residents who do not fall into these categories. And so there's a skew there, right? It's not conspiracy. There is a skew. And we all know that it's a game of numbers, right? We all know that's how statistics work. I think the other thing to mention, you know, is it's difficult to not see this true. A lens of, you know, the history that has been. So when we look historically, the dissemination of or decimation, I'm sorry, of kanaka in these lands and also other native peoples, we see this as an extension of settler colonialism. It, you know, and it is those settlers who are making the decisions about how we move forward, right? And as this pandemic is happening, right, we have a huge hospital right now who their nurses are considering striking right now because they have not been able to find agreement in the contract renewal, right? And a large part is that they're raising the red flags of safety concerns. They have been reusing their N95 masks. And, you know, that's just one of the things that has gone public. So, you know, if we have our nurses saying that it's not safe and that they are not being respected in the middle of a pandemic, what hope can we really have? It's how do we have optimism about that situation? You know, contrast that, you know, highly you brought up the point of settler colonialism right now that part of that manipulation of numbers and, you know, all in service of tourism, part of that tourism element is that, you know, the fact that we're all working from homes. There's a big marketing push to change your strategy from working at home to work from Hawaii. Right. Right. To come here, please come here and, you know, live out your pandemic here in Hawaii from communities that are just dealing with huge explosions of the virus. That's the message that's going out and that's what the manipulation of messaging is causing. Yeah. You're saying that the $1 million mark home and above, they're seeing a boom right now because you have these executives, you have these individuals who can work from home moving here from the continental US. And so what does that do to our market for our people here? Right. And that settler colonialism comes with a lot of wealth dynamics that, again, right in the middle of a pandemic, we're seeing that the inequities of wealth. Just one other point I wanted to bring up, you know, we brought up the fact that Kopi Olani Medical Centre has nurses that are better shrinking. Kopi Olani Medical Centre was started by Queen Kopi Olani to benefit the women and children, the native Hawaiian women and children of Hawaii. Likewise, we have Queen's Medical Centre started by Queen Emma to, particularly, to deal with the native population being decimated by the smallpox virus. And again, we want to talk about repeating history and trying and like the unwillingness to learn from our history, our shared history. You know, I talk a lot about optics at this time. And really the optics of a month ago, the first recipient of the COVID-19 vaccine in Hawaii was at Queen's Medical Centre, started by Queen Emma to benefit the native Hawaiian people in a pandemic. You know who that first recipient was? A white man. And that dosage was administered by an Asian woman. I think again, you know, optics falls away at some point and really, you know, we want people, we want first responders to get that virus. We want all of our community to get to get that vaccine coming. But you got to think what is or, you know, what are the messages being shared right now and what are the stories to tell from that? Yeah. So I guess we just really hope that there's going to be more focus on the Indigenous people, the Pacific people, the people of this land and healing us and getting us the vaccine and getting us to a place where we feel comfortable leaving our homes and we feel that we can get back to a new normal before opening the doors and inviting wealthy people to buy up land which makes things increasingly harder for local people to own their homes and to have opportunity to be home owners. We know that our houseless problem is off the charts right now. I mean with the increased evictions and whatnot. So I think what we hope for is that we're able to take care of ourselves first before we think about people's enjoyment to come and enjoy Hawaii, to have a vacation. This is not a time to take a vacation, right? I'll just share a personal anecdote. We went to the beach recently and here on the windward side of Oahu and there was so many tourists on that beach without masks, right? And they're running around and having a good time and eating out at restaurants and doing all of these things and we are concerned for our wellbeing. I mean, we don't want to catch anything. We don't want to be another statistic. But people are taking vacations and that is a source of, that is a reason for concern. And that's a big part of our need to postpone, confess and because of our desire to care for our community. And there's always a point, right? So just a little shout out to the Hawaii Commission, the Hawaii State Commission on the Status of Women for just having all of this in mind and proposing a feminist pandemic relief package focused on Indigenous people, focused on working families, focused on the immigrant communities that are houseless and really centering recovery around our needs and not what our corporate overlords, excuse me for saying that, but instead of centering on their needs because that's really what we're getting right now and which makes it increasingly hard to trust the government's response at these times. But there has to be some positive and there has to be some good work that's happening within our community. So just very quickly, Haili, do you want to just highlight anything at UH? So I think I will just say that we are doing our best to pivot, to navigate, to get through this. We've had the opportunity to do some online productions and that has been a source of happiness for us. I think it has helped to kind of reinvigorate our activism and reinvigorate our artistic productivity even though we're working in these confines. And yeah, we're home, so we're able to kind of ruminate on all these things and help ourselves create for this time. And I don't want to run on too long. We probably said more than enough about Hawaii and we need to be careful, right? We should be careful. So I do again want to turn back to Leslie Ishii and she's going to share a video report from the unceded lands of the Klinget people of Douglas, Juno and Anchorage, Alaska. Leslie. Hi, I'm Leslie Ishii, artistic director here at Perseverance Theatre and also the fairly new board president of the Consortium of Asian American Theatres and Artists. And I am zooming in from the unceded lands of the Ako Kwan peoples and the Ako Kwan, the neighbors to the south. And we honor culture, tradition, language, ways of life of the Alaska Native peoples, elders, ancestors and their descendants. And so, Guna Shish, Hawa and Doi Aksin. And I also want to acknowledge and honor the denial of peoples where we also conduct our work up in the Anchorage area of Alaska. Anchorage. So, Chinangeli, yes. And it is my total honor and pleasure to welcome Joe Bedard, our board president at Perseverance Theatre. Welcome, Joe. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. Thank you for that wonderful land acknowledgement. My name is Joe Bedard, Kaikok Kaikpa. It's my Inupiak name given to me by my grandfather and the mother side who is from Cuyak, Alaska. Up in Inupiak territory. Kaikok Kaikpa means kayaker without a kayak. It's my grandfather's sense of humor way of saying I'm a city native. That's a different story. Yeah, well, welcome to this conversation. We just have a brief moment as we're in this episode with Katta Confest and the Return to the Source series that Hal Ram is hosting. And we're asking the question for this episode, where are we now given the conditions of this ongoing pandemic? And I thought we've had such important informative conversations. I've learned so much from you. I thought it really important as we're building coalition and solidarity with other BIPOC communities to invite you to share your perspective on where you think we are. Well, we are, from the board perspective, looking like we're going to, as a theatre company, make it through this pandemic. It is just an extraordinary amount of work that the staff and the leadership have put into getting us to this point. And it's a story of resiliency. And I'm glad to be part of that. The pandemic in essence has made our business model public health hazard. And as you know, I was, I worked in infectious control and infectious disease warden while I was in the army as a medic and a nurse at Triple Army Medical Center down the way. I learned a lot about outbreaks, pandemics and worked with you, Sam Rid and CDC folks for many years. And those virologists and epidemiologists are doing fantastic work and I always have doing fantastic work. I'm always struck with one of the virologists who told me that if the American public knew how many outbreaks and pandemics you Sam Rid, which is the army version of the CDC and the CDC as well as the World Health Organization stop in a given month, month after month, year after year everyone wouldn't know what to do with themselves. It just takes one to get out and here we are. It's a one in a hundred year situation but for Native American and many minorities around the world and indigenous peoples around the world this is an old story that gets passed down generation to generation. So, as I've said many times the outbreak and pandemic experience for western world, particularly baby boomers give or take and beyond hasn't experienced that but the greatest generation all the way back it was part of their consciousness of having to deal with smallpox outbreaks mizol outbreaks, polio outbreaks. The president of the United States during World War II, FDR was a polio survivor and it put him in the wheelchair for the rest of his life so it was just part of the American and western consciousness until it wasn't vaccines and antibiotics and healthcare advancements created multiple generations of folks that had no idea that this was a thing versus our grandparents were like oh yeah old hat but for the indigenous peoples in North America and probably around the world dealing with outbreaks and pandemics is ingrained into the culture and I'm not going to get into any of the statistics I always make everything feel like quack quack bad news but suffice to say the 2009 H1N1 swine flu pandemic that went through which was the same genetic RNA as the Spanish flu in 1918 that's why I was such a cause for concern according to the native hospital here in Anchorage the fatality rate amongst Native Americans is four times higher than the world rate and that is purely a function that many western diseases were not introduced into human indigenous population until 1492 and then there was biological warfare that was used in the genocide of indigenous peoples I'm not going to get into that either we'll go look it up but where the arts can help fill that void is something that we and I have discussed a lot and that from a First Alaskans Institute conference we had a Maori contingent guests come up and share their experiences, their resiliency their emergence and their rebuilding and decolonization for their peoples and why they wanted to come and share with us they did wonderful work in public and post-secondary education and digitizing that revitalization of their languages and their culture and their arts and they wanted to share how they're doing it because they also want to learn how they're doing healthcare up here in Alaska and what else we're doing with our native corporations are non-profits and of course the First Alaskans Institute and something that they shared with us was the First Alaskans Institute asked respectfully if they could borrow and by all means I'll share with you here today is what is good for the indigenous peoples, what's good for the rest of the world. We're having to figure out and work through these problems these catastrophic genocidal problems of the past and the systemic racism of today the representation issues of today and the full line yards that you could go look at the catastrophic statistics missing and how we are addressing that, how we are working with Wolfley resource situations is the solutions we have come up with in those areas is good for the rest of the world and one of the things I'm interested in the arts is decolonizing the arts in indigenous, many indigenous cultures certainly the ones I know of in state of Alaska there's no compartmentalizing of art there's no compartmentalizing of literature there's no compartmentalizing of science there's no compartmentalizing of work and home life it's all one piece there's no separating and nothing it's a hell of a hook it's a 10,000 year old design a eagled design here's the hook and here's where the line would go and you'd put the bait right here this is a piece of art, it's a piece of science it's a way of making a living and it's a way to represent and communicate maqimau pāIK. Pāikau pāiki mażair tātarini llicatawon pwena, oresinganfireka hėsi tupiya tbār maqimau tupiaki tupiaia tupiaia tupiaia, maqimau tupiaia paikau tupiaia tupiaia tupiaia tupiaia tupiaia tupiaia. but it is a perfect theme from Science, Art and way of being and communications as they make egoans and ravewren ones and wobraons and it's a piece of art that it's a way of being and here at Holl häufigahaha **** theatre we're decolonizing and trying to decolonize our s manchmal so we make share what's good for perseverean theatre əpiaa, əpiaa əpiaa utul. O, əpiaa əpiaa, Joe. əpiaa əpiaa əpiaa. Be enough to share these few moments where it's an honour and a pleasure to see that beautiful wisdom that you're sharing me with us. I'm sure, just as you're one of the first one to share this, it will set the whole episode forth in the right purpose. So thank you so much for joining us. Qeana, əpiaa əpiaa əpiaa əpiaa əpiaa. Yes, gana shish. Oh, my goodness. Once again, gana shish, hawa, ndoiaxin, gianna, tujopadar, our board president at the Perseverance Theatre. Whenever I have the great opportunity to speak with him, I am in great, great volumes of wisdom. And today, just so you know through Perseverance Theatre, he has written a very powerful statement giving the current events of the insurrection, which I know we will talk about a little later in this program. So, once again, my deepest gratitude to Joe for joining us. So, with that, I once again, I am tuning in from Klinkatani of the Aqaquan and our neighbors to the south, the Aqaquan. We honor their traditions and culture as Joe was saying for our resilience, bringing forth all these ways of life and honoring them. And as we move now, if you've seen Hawaii to Alaska, and now we move a little further west to Los Angeles, it's my great honor and pleasure to bring back to our screen the wonderful and talented Leilani Chan who has just let her leadership nationally, locally where she is, and how grateful we are that she's been one of the founding members of Kata. So, welcome back to the screen, Leilani. I look forward to your report. Thank you so much, Leslie. And I think my report back is going to remain a bit Pacific Northwest as well. As you know, Tieta, my company and my home right now is based in Los Angeles, land of the Tongva and the original caretakers of this, the Los Angeles area. And Tieta, my company is a nomadic company. So, even though I'm based in Los Angeles, we're very much connected to communities in Hawaii, of course, Oregon, Minneapolis. And I wanted to just, since the pandemic has happened, we wanted to connect with as many of our community members as possible. And I think you might remember, Leslie, the Confest in Oregon. We, at OSF, we brought down community members from Portland, connected with the IRCO, the Immigrant Refugee Community Organization, and Refugee Resettlement from Oregon. And so, those families and youth came down as part of the pre-conference and post-conference of Confest, and they got to see plays at Confest. But I believe, what year was that? 2016? 2016. And I believe we knew the new president was coming in, but the money that hadn't been set yet. I wasn't sure what the timing was, but I knew that these communities who had just been recent arrivals might not be many more of them coming in. And so, I was very much interested in connecting. It was just before the election. And so, at OSF, one of our long-time board members was concerned about all that was getting ripped up from Muslims in a Muslim band business. Yeah, and then right after, I believe the TCG conference was up in Portland, and we were also trying to reconnect with the Muslim community then. And then there was the violence on the mass, which meant our entire Muslim community in Portland was at the mosque responding. So, we ended up working with the Butanese community in Portland instead. But I've had a chance to reconnect with Chanpon Silipasai in Portland. You remember her? Yes. Part of the dynamic team of Asian American women, Southeast Asian women in Portland and in Oregon, Chanpon is part of the American Immigrant Lawyer Association of Oregon, which is an advocacy organization. And I had asked her, is there hope? Because in the platform of the new Biden Harris administration, they promised to lift the Muslim band and increase the refugee numbers. And I said, well, is the cap just going to be open and we're going to be welcoming refugees again? So, both she and my other partner colleague, Carol who worked here with the program for torture victims. They work with asylum seekers and both of them like what is going to happen. Carol said they're not coming. No, she's not preparing for a huge influx of refugees coming because the support services and nonprofit organizations have been decimated. Some of them no longer exist. Some of them are operating on very few staff members. I remember Catholic Charities had to let go a lot of staff members all over the country.  So Carol's saying that that's not going to happen for many years and that there's already a backlog of people waiting to come into the country. And then Chan-Pong said what we can do is that the Biden-Harris team has promised that in the first 100 days they're going to be investigating where things are at and what's going to happen and what they can push. Her advice to us is to remain vigilant and be ready to really push because especially with the Georgia election making the Senate Democrat majority we need to really make sure to hold our officials, our government officials, responsible for comprehensive immigration reform and that we need to be vigilant about that. We're going to take several years before we recover from the damage that's been done. So thank you Leslie for talking for being here with me about that. Any questions? I know that the Biden-Harris ran with that on their platform so yes we can keep them accountable and there are other there's other coalition building around that and certainly connected to the detention centers currently around this country as well. And that's another point that Chenpuan brought up was the way our communities are affected are different but we can organize together to make sure that those detention centers are closed and the families on the borders can be reunited and we're going to need to be vigilant even though there's a change in the administration. And we can talk more about this when we all come back together. I think we're going to move a little further east on the Turtle Island and now we'll bring back KT to do a report out on Austin, Texas. Thank you Leilani. I'm as Leilani said I'm Colleen from Austin, Texas which is on the unceded land of many people including the Alabama Kushata the Kato the Kwa Wiltikan the Kamanchi, the Kikapu, the Lipanapache and the Tonkawa, among others. So COVID has been very interesting in Texas both as an Asian-American person as well as a theater maker. The Texas, some people are surprised to learn that Texas has the third largest Asian-American population in the country after California and New York although it is of course lower per capita percentage than many other places including New Jersey and of course Hawaii. But because of that we are in a very interesting situation in terms of representation Asian-Americans in Pacific Islanders also are the fastest growing population in Austin and so which is also a complex issue because Austin itself is rapidly gentrifying and Asian-Americans are kind of both part of that and also have been in Texas for longer than a lot of people might know so the one of the things that hit close to home was the stabbing that I had mentioned earlier in the history of disease in Texas I mean sorry disease in Asian-Americans and that happened in Midland which is north of here but it still felt like very much nearby and so Austin Asian-Americans have in some ways been a kind of model minority-esque population but also we have been trying to organize more and resist when possible and then that also kind of moves on to how we've been faring in this uprising over that started in the summer that we're going to hear more about next but of course there were Black Lives Matter movements in Austin that were in relation to many movements that happened across the country but one of the things that was I guess hit again was a local important point was a fatal shooting between two private citizens both of whom were white men at Black Lives Matter I don't know why it always makes me feel weird when I talk about this is how there is a fatal shooting because in Texas you can bring firearms to demonstrations so there was someone who was marching in solidarity with Black Lives who was carrying an AK rifle and a ride share driver drove into the crowd and shot the white man with the AK rifle who was pushing his fiancé who was a Black woman in a wheelchair so it's been very strange and complicated not most of which is due to the fact that Austin is a very blue city in a very red state although it has been interesting to be in Texas in the first time since the Johnson era I believe when on election night we actually went deep into the night which I guess was I don't know around 11-ish not knowing whether to call Texas and that is the first time that that has happened in my 15 plus years living here meanwhile the Austin theaters have been organizing very heavily over zoom to try to make sure that emergency support is available to theater artists our theater scene has completely shut down we do still do virtual events but aside from the rare kind of drive-thru or socially distanced outdoor thing many of our gig work dried up part of that was due to South by South West being cancelled and that is one of the biggest income generators in the Austin area so that's been very difficult especially for a lot of theater people who end up basically making a lot of their day job money due to festivals and so on and so forth but that's where we are right now I'm really looking forward to the conversation later on because I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about what has already come up but so next we're going to go continue in our journey east although it's more directly north than really east and we're going to hear from twin cities Minnesota with Mina Natarjan sorry Natarjan from Pandia theater thank you hi Mina hi Katie thank you so much appreciate hearing from all of you it was beautiful I'm such an honour to hear from everybody across the country and my heart goes out to all of you and I'm calling in from Minneapolis and it is an honour and privilege to live and work on the traditional homeland of the Dakota people and to be in community with Dakota, Anishinaabe and other First Nations people in the twin cities and COVID has really affected us for sure especially BIPOC people in Minnesota and it's affected indigenous communities more deeply in most other communities it's also affected African-American Latinx communities more than other BIPOC communities and we have multiple Asian diaspora populations like Mung and Karin and South Asian communities here and anti-Asian sentiments and actions have been on the rise here you know I've got a very close friend and so I've heard lots of unreported documentation of this I have a very close friend who is Vietnamese-American and her mother was harassed in a grocery store and so many other incidents just like this where people have been deeply affected by the anti-Asian you know because of the rhetoric that's happening in this country and also I'm also the co-artistic and executive director of Pangea World Theatre where we live and work and we live and work on a street called Lake Street and I'll say a little bit more about that because it's significant here and COVID has affected so many of the non-profits and artists we work with in the twin cities and so many of our larger institutions have laid people off during this pandemic Pangea's entire staff consists of artists a practice that enables us to provide artists with steady income and support as they pursue their craft and so many of our contracted workers have lost their other work as a result of layoffs and businesses and so now they rely solely on Pangea for income during this time and we've made a commitment to our staff that there will be no layoffs and no one for a load and of course we've had a loss of income during this time we've lost ticket sales we wouldn't hold a gala last year so many things that have happened to all of us across the country as we face this extraordinary pandemic that's happening right now for us the pandemic of racism is very very real in the twin cities May 25 was when Mr George Floyd was murdered and it was really a line in the sand for us we saw a black man being lynched right in front of us very close to the place that we work very close to where we live you know and then they followed an uprising where the streets that we lived worked the streets that I spoke about earlier were burned down and the uprising that followed and many of these the destruction was caused by white supremacists as well many of the businesses and restaurants we worked with closely burned down you can see the slides here these are restaurants that we very closely worked with where we contributed the economy of these businesses and these buildings are very close to the third that was also burnt down during this time and so for us after a moment of pause after we were you know looked at what this was about after we considered to our staff nobody could go back to business as usual we had to do something about this artistically and also be in community with our artists so we turned to the artists community to respond and I'm going to present a project that we have called Lake Street Story Circles and Lake Street Story Circles is based on our creative place keeping work on Lake Street so we live and work on Lake Street and we commission 10 artists before COVID during this Lake Street Story Circles project and all of these artists pivoted when COVID happened and then because of the pandemic of racism the murder of George Floyd they pivoted yet again to figure out what they wanted to do in a socially distant safe kind of way so the Lake Street Story Circles all the artists held story circles in their different ways and then they created out of the project and these projects were videotaped and we kind of turned to the video as a medium for this time so I want to highlight two of these 10 projects and you'll see a little excerpts from these two projects and the first one is by Filipina American Sandia Gustin it's a project called Corner Conversations and she held her story circles on street corners the street corners of Lake Street and many many streets on Lake Street and what she did was she listened to people's wishes for Lake Street where she grew up so can we start the first video to show you Sandia Gustin's Lake Sapa Sandia's work When I was 11 years old I had a newspaper route right here in South Minneapolis where I grew up I walked the streets only slightly spooked in the wee hours of the morning 5 a.m. coming way too soon day dreaming you say knowing the familiar brick and mortar the places where my father danced where I danced where we ate where we played where we were now this place with the acrid stench of burned out memories the dehumanization of the place and of the bodies that frequented the lives that still move forward the stories the wishes the dreams las historias los deseos los sueños he moved to Lake Street to keep his 12-year-old black son safe to avoid the games he said so why is he questioned outside of his workplace at the Minneapolis Public Schools bag fully visible only a cigarette eating away at his lunch break can't even send my bills in can't even access my mail can't access my life you know me? I just want some soul food food for my aching soul food for marching on hmm well I'd say I want a job a fair job where people are treated with respect you know not discriminated against gardens to sink my fingers in well soil not like my homeland but soil to remind me you know my gut that I belong here gardening gardens to feed my family to feed my community oh yeah an art to add beauty to connect us like the mural that used to be on the old Migizie I just want to feel safe are you listening stop just feeding us help us get jobs help us get housing did you ask my opinion did you ask my opinion do you remember my name we didn't do this you know we know who did we know who did this just don't forget about us because we're still here so that was Sandi Agustin and her project what she did was create these masks and she created these masks made of giant sheets and created and put people's wishes for Lake Street on those giant sheets and that's what you saw at the end there so it was brilliant it combined this you know COVID it combined what we had to do with social distancing and it also combined what happened in Minneapolis it was such a relevant piece of work and Sandi Agustin created an artist that we deeply love and respect and lives in this neighbourhood and works in this neighbourhood as well and the next artist that I want to present to you is Rebecca Nicholson and she created a writing circle on Zoom and her piece is called an Awakening a Reckoning, a Search for Bread and here is an excerpt of that piece and here is Rebecca Nicholson and that piece will speak for itself Thank you so that was Rebecca Nicholson and just created a really powerful piece of work and you know I guess we are asking this question what does it mean to be in community with centering Black artists and Black Lives Matter and so if you would like to watch all of these videos support a 10 artists commission 10 artists in this Lake Street Story Cycles project and they are all on the Pangea website and they come from a variety of backgrounds and really all the work is in and around Lake Street and really is deeply about place it's grounded in Lake Street it's grounded in Minneapolis it's grounded in story it's grounded in each other it's grounded in place and so it's a real opportunity to watch in our place and the other thing that we did was we commissioned the artists in our staff to also create work and they all responded with what's happening with strength, with spirit, with resistance power, politics vision, relationships, history, healing and so and survival and joy and so I would really love you to watch those pieces as well because they are more than a piece of these pieces are sacred and as a result of what happened we commissioned close to 20 artists and supported about more than 100 artists during this time and in addition I just want to say a little bit more about what we are doing in that area we're part of a movement to rebuild the area that you saw earlier in both the video and the photos the spaces that are burning in the video and also the photographs that we showed we've created a nonprofit organization with all the businesses with other organizations in the area that we live and the organization is called Longfellow Rising and we want to rebuild, we want to fight displacement, we want to build with stakeholders in the area we're all collaboratively trying to build spaces of justice and peace during this time both in terms of vision and actual building and we want to build it in a way that is truly a pluriverse honoring the uprising that followed the police killing of George Floyd Longfellow Rising is really committed to racial equity committed to worker justice cultural vitality and building belonging for everyone not just some and this really feels more important even after what happened this Wednesday at the capital how and what do we do all of us to resist the forces of hate and how do we react what we do is so important right now and how can we build solidarity with each other across difference and also across different cultures and that's really what Pangea is about and that's I think what Kata, all of us in Kata are about is how do we build the solidarity across cultures how do we build so that we can all build a better world and all of us are in the circle so thanks so much and I look forward to hearing from all of you and now I want to turn it over to Ariel Estrada from New York who's going to present us with what's happening in the east coast and probably New York thank you so much for listening to me hey there we go, I'm no longer muted thank you so much Mina for introducing me hello and I'm definitely going to talk about New York my name is Ariel Estrada my pronouns are he, him, his and I am broadcasting from the from my apartment here on the traditional unceded land stolen from the Loanabe people now known as New York City Manhattan I am, if you're visually impaired I am a middle-aged Filipino-American man I'm wearing a black shirt and a black jacket with my green screen behind me this being home and zoom or zoom-ish I will likely have a visit from one of my two cats Didi and Go-Go as well I am an actor and arts administrator and a founder and producing artistic director of Leviathan Lab creative studio for early and mid-career Asian-American artists here in New York since 2009 our work in 2001 is 21 is going to include a workshop of my solo performance work adapted for all-on broadcast called Full Contact stay tuned for more details from us on that and we have a bunch of readings a bunch of new Asian-American plays including 2020 Kilroy's Lister, Roger Q. Mason Gaven Trinidad, Cherry Lucy and more and you can always check out our work at LeviathanLab.com I also serve Kata as its marketing and membership coordinator and I'm also the online producer for this very series you are watching right now which will broadcast every second Sunday of the month through April 2021 Finally I am also the diversity and inclusion coordinator at Actors Equity Association equity association which is the labor union representing American actors and stage managers in the theatre One more thing, I also work for a group called NYC Theatre Standards which similar to the Chicago Area Theatre Standards looks to create a safe and inclusive working environment for the off-off Broadway and indie theatre scene here in the city I'm going to give a very fast and quick and dirty overview of the state of the industry here in New York which as I'm sure you all know was the epicenter of the early days of lockdown In the before times NYC which is experiencing around even as recently as February 2020 wonderful times the what we were calling a golden age of theatre particularly Asian-American theatre Broadway was back in full swing after the three days of shutdown that happened after 9-11 plus everything that happened after and then the three days of shutdown after Hurricane Sandy in 2012 In 2018 Broadway experienced its best year ever with 1.825 billion in grosses, I sure wish I could have that money in the off-off and in the off-off Broadway and independent theatre scene performance venues like the Obie Award Arts presenter the Tank where I served as marketing director from 2017-18 we've got places like Dixon Place and the soon-to-be infamous The Flea among others and they all joined LaMama as major incubators of new work for playwrights we have organizations like The Lark and writers groups like ensemble studio theatre Young Blood and the ubiquitous Maiye Theatre Writers Lab who self-describe as the largest collection of Asian-American playwrights in the known universe and they were developing and producing some incredible new voices and many will recall in that season in this just previous season 2019-20 there were at least 10 plays that were being produced or were about to be produced off Broadway most of them were Maiye Writers Maiye Writers Labbies including the Multiapole Award winning play Cambodian Rock Band by Lauren Yee Queen Gwen's Poor Yellow Rednecks Hansel Jung's Wolf Play I could keep going as well as APA playwrights who were not members of Maiye Celine Song's Brilliant Endlings which was in New York Theatre Workshop being one of the main ones and it was absolutely wonderful now additionally to all that in the before times there was a new and sorely needed artistic, social and economic ecosystem that was being created in the APA Theatre community one that was providing a very clear development pathway for individual artists and organizations starting at Off Off and Indie moving up to Off Broadway and then possibly moving up to Broadway and then even possibly after that the TV and film industry here which is in New York the second largest TV and film industry in the country after LA now also in the before times there were three major Asian American Theatre companies Maiye Theatre Pan-Asian Reputory Theatre led by Kata Board Member and Co-Treasurer Tisa Chang New National Asian American Theatre Company led by past Kata Board Member Mia Karibach and all three other companies had jumped up to Off Broadway contracts smaller and about 10 years younger nonprofits including Mai Company Leviathan Lab Legendary Biarch Lee and her company National Asian Artist Projects which focuses on musical theatre and the Manasso focused Hippocrate Theatre which is one of the producers of our 2022 Confest feature shows Eda questions for my father we just featured that about two episodes ago in the series by IIZ now all of those companies were produced regularly by mid-career artists and then finally, especially heartening to me were all the new Asian American Theatre companies that were coming up there was a proliferation of them and they all worked beyond Asian Americans as a monolith and these new groups reflected the diversity and cultural specificity of the APA community there's Ako Dax Amatoraku Za focusing in on Asian American Theatre or sorry Japanese American Theatre artists and Kabuki versions of plays from the Western Canon super cool mission they're very ambitious and very beautiful human beings David Lee Huyn, Jonathan Costanian and Carolina Doe and their Vietnamese-led song collective and they're doing some really exciting work right now mixed race initiatives like Hapa Mag and Riso Hapa they're about to go through a name change that's led by my dear friend Alex Chester influencer and actor and Broadway Diversity Project by School of Rock star Diane Fielin the Chinese American focused Yangtze Rep led by Changgrin Fan over in Boston we're seeing the emergence of Asian American Theatre artists of Boston and we're just sort of everywhere now there's so many of us and it was really cool but more importantly what those new theatres and inspires continues to inspire me was that they're all operating from a we're all in this together model where we share resources and space and knowledge and in Leviathan's case I actually fiscally sponsor some of these artists and collective so they don't have to start from scratch and where our attitude is the more Asian American Theatre the better and we're not working in competition but collaboration of course it wasn't all sweetness and light according to the Asian American Performer Action Coalition's latest visibility report on the 2017-18 season overall thanks to Hamilton and all of its tours we had a higher amount of diverse hiring overall but there were still racially discriminatory employment practices rife in the business with 61.5% of roles going to white actors and 6.9% of roles going to APA actors when you consider that New York City is about 15% and growing every year Asian Americans that's just not acceptable it was even worse with MENA actors Middle Eastern North African actors at 2% casting 0.02% for indigenous actors all unacceptable numbers now I think that's the next slide oh yep here we are 305 days later that's perfect now after Mayor de Blasio his honour declare a state of emergency on March 12th which was also true of most of a lot of other states as well the off-broadway alliance first followed in short order by the Broadway announced shutdown which continues to this day officially goes till March till May 30th 2021 and we all expect yet another extension at that time off-off Broadway and in the indie scene that also shut down along with all restaurants hotels, sports and performance venues many of you have read the Americans for the arts reports saying that nearly 2 thirds of arts workers have report being unemployed and that from April to July of last year we lost 1.4 million arts sector jobs 42.5 million in revenue in New York I think those statistics are actually even larger we're experiencing 100% unemployment and even traditional survival jobs where actors are out of the picture unemployment insurance is run out or is about to and many artists I know have moved out of New York hopefully to return one day but with red relief programs nearly non-existent that possibility is pretty low for being honest the actors fund is helping I hope you're all donating to them in their work orgs like the Episcopal Actors Guild which has certainly saved my beacon and fed me literally at points it's a drop in the bucket for what the community needs while our discussion today is primarily focused on the pandemic the murder of George Floyd and the subsequent protests for racial justice collective liberation and police reform have inspired a reckoning in our own theater community along with we see you white American theater hashtag we see you what and their demands for a more culturally competent theater we're seeing reckonings industry wide with abusive practices practitioners and organizations for again I mentioned them earlier perhaps most infamously and well publicized in the off-off scene with the flea and their recent appalling and ethically repugnant jettisoning of its early career artists programs I bring this up specifically because sadly this is likely a warning of things to come as the industry recovers and we're going to see a lot of pushback from gatekeepers including as with the flea the busting of workers rights movements and taking a page from 45s playbook defamation suits intended to discourage silence intimidate I think the next slide please more about that industry recovery according to actors equity it took 10 years for the industry to recover from the three-day shutdown and subsequent reduction in business from 9-11 took about 8 years to recover from Hurricane Sandy and the three days of shutdown in 2012 we are currently on day 305 of the shutdown Dr Fauci predicts that New York City Theatre will be back as soon as September 2021 and this is only my opinion here but given the disastrous rollout of the vaccine the more and the new and more transmissible strains of the virus and therefore more fatal strains and then the literal insurrection by white supremacists last week at our nation's capital with all that in mind first we think we are looking at a partial return in the first or even second quarter of 2022 and please hope that I am wrong so look for dramatic changes in how the business is going to be done including efforts to stabilize organizations both large and small venerable to relatively new look for them to stabilize through mergers and coalitions and unfortunately also look for them to try to stabilize through efforts to undermine workers' benefits and their rights in December 12 online opinion piece when Broadway comes back five ways the pandemic will transform the live theatre industry Fortune magazine noted that we'll see the following five trends on Broadway which will of course affect the industry at large and the opinion piece by Fortune which reflects their thoughts it's not a particular endorsement by Kata or myself and nor do we feel that this is the definitive future for the industry but that said Fortune has some pretty interesting thoughts including one with tourism and decline look for the artistic work to shift for the telling of New York East Coast stories to entice New Yorkers to attend come back two artists were going to begin to migrate away from the high cost pretty low benefit living of NYC as a theatre artist with a particular focus on theatre cities and their relatively low costs of living including Atlanta and the now blue state of Georgia, Cleveland, Ohio and Minneapolis, St. Paul congratulations Mina and Lily over at Theatre Moo three look for a shift of focus away from New York in general and the ascendancy of regional theatres with those organizations taking the lead both economically and artistically for online theatre for better or for worse is here to stay and that leads us to five because of that and one more time I reinforce that this is Fortune's opinion not Kata's or even mine jurisdictional boundaries between performers and the performers unions are becoming more and more blurred Fortune to my knowledge is one of the first major publications to actually express this opinion out loud or actually in print look for the they feel like they we should look for the performers unions to consolidate and they say quote a merger of equity in SAG after us seems very plausible even if it isn't intimate intimate unquote now any of those trends would be an earthquake levels of change in our industry combined with some of the things that we're all doing we see you what and other movements we're looking at a complete reimagining of how the business works I hope that this quick and very dirty overview of the industry in New York helps you as we won help each other to get through this survive this hopefully thrive through this and to plan and work for when the industry returns and how begins its long road to recovery again I'm Ariel Estrada on La Nafe Land in NYC and very glad to be here tonight with my brilliant colleagues here in Kana and I am very glad to switch it over to the group discussion where we can start discussing all these issues at length thank you Ariel and thank you everyone for sharing from where you're coming from I know that whenever we have conversations I just am completely blown away some of you I talk with weekly and still when I hear all of your reports as one body of information it's overwhelming and encouraging just to know how engaged and concerned we are as artists and as human beings so then there's the question of kind of referred to it but there are all these concerns and you know both challenges and hopes that we're working through and then meanwhile last week you know less than a week ago huge group of white supremacists stormed the US capital I will say for me it was terrifying it was not surprising but it was still terrifying and in the context of everything else that I've been experiencing and feeling and then that I know that you know we just heard from you all I'm wondering how we're feeling about this and our role and or not in what's to come wow that is such a hard to answer difficult and you know the first thought that occurred to me when when I saw that happening on TV was the fact that if it had been round of black people who had been there they would have been body bags coming out of that later I mean then and the actual reality is had those conversations about that kind of event happened in black and brown communities had that kind of social media presents been there two weeks before leading up to it it would never have happened because they would have shut it down way beforehand they would have had the forces available to keep the protesters out the fact that that these terrorist acts were being discussed for weeks, months, years and being incited by the very top levels of governments all in the support of I'm going to say it again all in support of white male fragility yes yeah please I was actually going to ask you because yesterday we were talking about how it echoes the overthrow of the Hawaiian kingdom that you had mentioned earlier in your report out can you talk more about that yeah mahala for the question mahala for this opportunity for us to share and share so deeply and in a profound way I'm grateful for this opportunity to be in conversation with you all I think that we see the suppression of native peoples and ideas and this kind of support underlining support of domestic terrorism and white supremacy just by the fact that there was not arms out riot gear out there and you know when I saw everything that was happening I couldn't help but think about how many nations America has done this to and how this is very representative of the American way of governing and taking over with arms and those images of the U.S. military coming into Kou was apparent in these images that we've seen of this kind of white supremacist rising up across the continental U.S. and so all of those thoughts come flooding back all of those experiences and flooding back and there's just this eha, there's just this pain you know inside when I think about the dismissal of kanaka and owiwi and indigenous peoples and then the abuse of other people of colour whether it be through slavery workforce exploitation it's just it's hard to digest and it's hard to process I would say and all of that stuff just gets exacerbated all the inequities all of that just gets exacerbated in all of this and I agree with what everybody was saying and sorry if I'm going along but if there was people of colour on social media making statements like these white groups were saying and doing it would have been squashed we would have never seen them make it up those stairs let alone into the capital so there's just a lot of a lot of work that needs to be done you know and yeah I think it's also the fact that people of colour movements would have been like there have been so many people of colour movements that have that have been peaceful that happened this year that led to that resulted in I don't know what I wanted more fatalities but that resulted in more state motivated state initiated violence and that's the fact that the state stood down in a way that is alarming not that I want the state to stand up most of the time but it is so telling who the state does not fatal violence on and who it does and I think these last 12 months have been so instructional and clear in a way that I think more people are seeing not that it wasn't there before and then I'm also I don't know if you all noticed that there was a whole thing about a Chinese scroll that was torn down in the capital that stood out to me because it was very interesting I've been doom scrolling and not much art was destroyed all of the statues are fine however the congressman Lewis exhibition was completely ransacked and meanwhile this Chinese scroll was pulled off of the speaker's wall maybe it was on his speaker some congressperson's wall and torn to shreds with this white woman saying we don't need that Chinese shit that's like a direct quote because it's a member of the prector there and I don't know it's just in that the crowd basically stopped and ran after this black man he was a cop a robe was intended for Mike Pence but still there are just so many echoes of history that are so theory and terrifying to me when you say state you don't want more state violence but deeper than that it's the structure of who is motivating the state it's primarily white driven white run so I almost am starting to say instead of state say look at the white run white led language office and while I don't condone any of that violence absolutely not it was an interaction it was not a protest it was not a direct action it was interaction I do have to say I look at the I'm trying to understand it's almost not rational so my brain keeps going running around but I'm trying to look at that footage on news and hear the people that were trying in violence but for help and I look at how granted they have white privilege but our structures don't work for anybody and those poorer or struggling white people who are the tools of the white leadership in power hard look at that too that we're all often made to be tools or alibis for the white structural power that's in place so our structures do not work for anybody and we have to also really make sure I think of you myself now we're in Hawaii, we're in Alaska and most of our state is rural I think of Minneapolis and you all know most of your state is rural California most of your state is rural and these are folks that also feel disenfranchised and disconnected and our structures don't reach everybody they marginalize let alone our BIPOC artists, communities and wider communities but I think about the marginalizing and disenfranchise and I have to remember their world when it is as well but that's what I'm coming away with that our systems and the power structures they don't work for anybody anybody and that's part of the reason why we're seeing an increasing number of our indigenous communities goal to the right and become Trump supporters when I see when I see Kanaka flying Trump flags from their pickup trucks it is it is just that image is so hard to how do you get there but we know how they get there it's because the systems are not there to support them it's because at every level and this is not restricted to Republicans or Democrats it's the system as it stands focused on again the inequities of wealth and power in this country we can't we can't just explain it away and be like oh that's just my right wing cousin overall but it just highlights how important our work within the communities are it also points to the global fascism arising all over the world many of us are connected to our diasporic communities across the world and this is not a phenomenon just in the United States I do think though that the fact that when fire in the United States and the western world has a lot to do with what how our communities have developed across the world but it's also empire within the United States with indigenous communities and communities of colour as well and like you said Leslie I feel like it doesn't it's not good for anyone it's not good for anyone across class I mean it's class warfare also this idea of systems the idea of the education system the idea of journalism all of which supports something that doesn't work for any of us but the thing that I felt really happened about though that I've seen over the last is the how we've built movement with each other is how Asian Americans I've never heard of this but how Asian Americans had to do with what happened in Georgia as well it's also like what happened with how Asian Americans have really spoken out for the movement to abolish those horrible horrible camps and the suru for solidarity event that was really about let's take those camps away let's take those babies out of those camps and let's abolish, let's not do that to everybody and I feel like that's where our strength lies is how to build those solidarities with each other and how to build those solidarities with everybody not leave anybody out of the equation because it doesn't serve anyone yes and I know with this book I just want to share this that the research is coming out now as I work with the University of Alaska Southeast researcher around the impact of COVID but we're also lifting up that this is what indigenous native peoples have been sharing since time immemorial that when you work in community you have sustainability you have the ability to thrive and so my point to many spaces that I know now is please do not make us choose between sustainability and justice sustainability or liberation our ability to thrive or liberation it's all connected we must always think and strategize with all of that together it's not either or we have this disenfranchisement this disconnect it feeds the internalized depression it feeds the oppressor to feel like all I have to get mine to know the visualism of white supremacy it's actually part of the remedy will be in community by being in building community rebuilding community as I'm listening to everyone I'm thinking of what I learned from an urban bush woman workshop which is how do we use this in our work and at the same time I say say that I'm like how do I work like it's just everything going on I go from paralyze to like overdrive with a day and I'm just so amazed at the work that everybody is doing and mean I want to know more about how you've supported all those artists because this pivoting is like we're already pretzel twisted into making grants work for what we want to do creatively and then having to pivot now to support artists on this online learning curve we're all on I'm also thinking about organizations that are when we work with communities of color and at risk communities we're sort of on the verge of social services a lot we have resources in our programs and can send people in directions to get help the pandemic has even made that more I'm thinking a lot about what you're doing at Kanjia, Nina and all of us I know one of our cultural community here Plaza de la Vasa which is an East Valley we've been talking to some of them and so they're shut down and not getting any rental income or ticket sale income they're having to provide Wi-Fi for the neighborhood children a lot of them are undocumented children or children who don't have Wi-Fi at home so they're coming to the parking lot get Wi-Fi so they can go to school I'm just seeing so many of our institutions and cultural organizations having to provide these services in addition to the work and just shout out to everyone those physical spaces going and our organizations going so yes how do we use this in our work and how do we keep working you know it's hard I love what Joe Bedard said as we complete this program but what he said was how do we be our whole selves it's not just like if anything COVID has shown us we can't compartmentalize everything I mean our work, our life our art everything has to reflect each other our communities have known that for a very very long time that's what we do I think that's a beautiful note to end on how do we be our whole selves and do the work and keep working and I feel so honored to be with you all to think through that question and to share what we've been what we've been surviving and trying to thrive in so thank you all so much for sharing and connecting about all these important issues from the last year and then we hope that we as Kata folks have managed to show the urgency and the depth of the work that we continue to do despite and in response to multiple global pandemics extreme political instability and insurrections and all of these things so we're going to close out the episode for today if you would like to learn more you can check out our website at Kata website but first we would like to thank our funders and we have so many funders we are so grateful to all of them and then we would also like to thank Ariel and Max who are our producers on this show please donate to Kata in order to support future activities and projects like this one as well as to continue supporting the Confest which will be happening as we just announced in May 2022 and please consider becoming a member of Kata to take advantage of the community that we offer as well as some resources we can provide I just love being part of Kata so I can't get enough finally please tune in for our next two episodes on February 8th again it's the second Monday of every month we'll be returned to our stories Festival Artist Showcase hosted by Joan Osato and on March 8th we'll be directing an ensemble creation Asian American Directors and Conversation in practice hosted by Mina and Andrea Asaf so thank you all for joining us stay safe, stay well and from all of us at Kata we thank you so much please tune in for our next two episodes on March 8th and please consider becoming a member of Kata so thank you all for joining us stay safe, stay well and from all of us at Kata we thank you all for joining us stay safe, stay well and from all of us at Kata we thank you all for joining us stay safe, stay well and from all of us at Kata we thank you all for joining us stay safe, stay well and from all of us at Kata we thank you all for joining us stay safe, stay well and from all of us at Kata we thank you all for joining us stay safe, stay well and from all of us at Kata


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