Welcome to Sheboygan County government working for you my name is Adam Payne County administrator and co-host of this program with Chairman Roger Distruty and as you know every month we strive to bring a different program or department and generally a department head to talk about it here to so you can get a better flavor for the roles and responsibilities of your Sheboygan County government and today we're very pleased to have Mr. David Lafine back who used to be our coroner so that name probably rings the bell but is now our new medical examiner welcome Dave. Thank you very much. Please begin by sharing a little bit about your background and setting the stage. Well I'm a Sheboygan data born and raised here in Sheboygan married 41 years and two children for grandchildren so I've been around here all for a long time. Born and raised here though. Born and raised. So did you go to the school in Sheboygan or Plymouth or Falls or? Sheboygan schools. In the city of Sheboygan. Very good. And elected coroner a little over 28 years ago. Correct. What was it that made you interested in pursuing being coroner? Well by profession I'm a registered nurse and at that time some of the local physicians talked to me. They wanted someone with some background in medicine to be the coroner so I took it and I thought well I'd enjoy doing it. I like people. Medicine is my my background. Just the feeling of being able to help people in a time of need. In a unique area I mean Sheboygan County has 18 departments and the corner or now medical examiner is one of those departments and as Dave has heard me share a number of times I always find our discussions when we discuss the annual budget one of the more fascinating discussions because then we'll generally get into your unique role and responsibilities and it is a unique area. We don't have people standing in line at the door to be coroner or now medical examiner and fortunately we've had you now for 28 years. It's one of those fields you have to you have to have a feeling for it you have to be able to deal with a lot of circumstances that most people don't want to deal with. They don't want to they don't want to deal with death and sometimes the trauma that's involved with death. I can only imagine the different investigations and the work you've done. Well the County Board as Roger Distrudi certainly knows because he helped lead the charge and you helped suggest or recommend it you were looking at retiring from being coroner. Not necessarily looking for another four years and the County Board for a number of years had been considering going from the elected coroner role to the appointed medical examiner role. Counties could have both. Please talk a little bit about well what's the difference between an elected coroner and an appointed medical examiner. The difference well first of all Wisconsin's a unique state in that the allow or pass legislation many many years ago to allow Lee medical examiners Lee medical examiner meaning someone who does not have a medical degree that opened up the position for counties who you have their choice between an elected official or an appointed official. By state statutes counties with populations of over 500,000 have to have a medical examiner. The other counties have the option. When you someone who desires to be a coroner you have to take out the local papers nomination papers and that depends on the size of your county on how many signatures you have to have here in Chavoy County with our population just over a hundred some thousand you have to have a minimum of 500 so that means anybody that wants to be corner you Roger you could have taken out paperwork got 500 signatures got your name on the primary ballot there's other opposition they had to do the same he who got the most votes moved to the general election if there was no contender then the person that person would become county corner for four years and that would just proceed year after four year term after four year term and this this past year after ending 28 years I didn't know if I wanted to go another four years as you had mentioned and I feel very strongly that should have someone who has background medical background a nurse other persons that are in the medical field otherwise the eclectic system you would have to you could be John Joe John Doe off the street could be anybody anybody you couldn't you know I don't want to degrade any profession but you could you could be the corner and not even be able to understand the circumstances going on and I felt strongly that I did not want that to happen couldn't change it but I recommended to the county board as you know that they go to a medical examiner system which other counties in shabu in Wisconsin are doing out of the 72 I believe we now have 36 or 37 counties that are medical examiners it's becoming more and more probably right that way the county has the option and holds a direction for that position right right and the reason that Dave is before us today is after the county board made the decision to go to a medical examiner and allow us to point someone with qualifications specially a medical background what have you to be an effective medical examiner then Dave approached me and said you know I'd be interested in helping with this transition I don't know for how long but I certainly know the job and there was no question about that so we feel fortunate to have someone with 28 years of experience a medical background helping us with this transition and of course when Dave decides to retire or we we part ways obviously the county board and I as county administrator will be in position to hire and appoint a medical examiner with a medical background so I think it was a real positive direction so back to the key question of difference in responsibility you mentioned the qualifications can be quite difference between a corner and a medical examiner what about the general work that you do responsibilities are the same we do the same thing I'm doing the same thing I did before medical examiner corners the whole idea or premise behind it is to look into certain deaths that are in the state statutes that are described all homicides all suicides all motor vehicle accidents board accidents things like that all unnatural type deaths and there's certain certain deaths such as someone could die from a say congestive heart failure but they fractured their hip two days prior to that because of other weakened condition by state statutes we have to look into that death also so position or job wise nothing changes difference you is a medical examiner your iPhone that I have a little bit more responsibilities to the county as far as meetings office protocols things like that that a little bit more stricter office practices and then the way I handled it prior to and and with 18 departments we have predominantly appointed department heads but we do have elected department heads like the former corner the county clerk is an elected position the treasurer is an elected position the register of deeds is an elected position the clerk of courts is an elected position and fortunately we have some pretty good people as a whole but the difference between appointed and elected is if one or more of those leaders aren't doing a good job aren't showing up for work aren't meeting their responsibilities they could have a four-year commitment and we really can't do a lot about it until the public votes again and votes them out of office so with the appointed approach you truly have much greater accountability that if someone isn't meeting their obligations are doing the job effectively to make a change great snapshot great overview Roger I'm going to turn it over to you thank you Adam although none of us has a great hope that someone on medical examiner will be at our doorstep death is a fact of life and it affects all of us I'd like to ask you a little bit about the specifics of how you interact with the public you and your staff do and I understand there are five manners of death would you explain that sure sure five manners of death you're talking about is natural death accident homicide suicide and there's one category called undetermined and that's that category is when they're there you can't call something an accident and you can't call it a suicide and you're sure it's not a homicide but you're also sure it's not a natural death so in those cases you you mark it as undetermined rare few and far between but it does happen and how many deaths a year does your office investigate okay years for the past several years we were investigating well over 500 we took a look at the state statutes how they were written how medicine has transpired in the last number of years with the advent of hospice nursing with the advent of nurse practitioners and how physicians handle their office and we I felt after looking at that it was maybe time to take a better look at how we look at the deaths when we have somebody that's in hospice care you know that they're being cared for by hospice nurse they may be in a setting where we used to go such as a CBRF which is an acronym for community based residential facility where they don't have any nursing staff on hand so if someone died there we would always go to those type of deaths now quite a few of those individuals are under hospice care so if that's the case feel very comfortable that the care is good and the medical condition is well documented and the hospice nurse or the nurse practitioner has had direct contact with the physician so I felt it felt it was no longer needed to do those and that was a quite a big number turned out to be little over 300 cases last year that we did not do because of a change which saves the colony money doesn't interfere with families prime time with their their loved ones and family so I think it was a good a good decision how we interact with the families as you asked each each death is unique and individual and each family is unique and individual and you approach these people carefully and and get a feel for how they handle it some are very happy and relieved that their loved one no longer suffers some are completely broken up so you use compassion and and maybe just a touch on the hand to let them know that you care you limit your conversation to what needs to be done others you sit and talk with for nowhere you know I've laughed with families I've cried with families I've prayed with families everybody's unique you know and I think my deputies have the same feeling for this as I do and I think I think it's a good good interaction with them and what would be some of the examples that require you to go into an investigation to determine the cause of death an accidental death why why the accident occurred what type of injuries were involved in the accident if it's a work-related death then you're getting involved with OSHA things like that you do a detailed examination traffic fatalities you're working with the law enforcement on what the injuries were how the accident happened you share information work very closely with law enforcement and things like that maybe not many people are aware of the fact that sheboydon County has a morgue and would you describe it and the upgrade and how often it gets used in a year a morgue is serves two purposes it serves a purpose for a place where we can bring a deceased if we do not have a family on scene to give us direction on a funeral home we use the morgue for autopsies and autopsies are done when you certain certain situations require them if we have a death at the one of the correctional institutes by state statutes we have to do an autopsy we have a young person that for no apparent reason dies there's no family history of any significant health problems no disease process going on will do an autopsy another thing that's happening is as you probably are well aware of this is the drug situation that's increasing throughout the United States and in sheboydon area it's prevalent also so if we have a death with drugs involved the police are looking for information to be provided on the type of drug the amount of drug and with that information it enables them to prosecute the person that's selling the drugs so drug deaths are probably one of the bigger number of deaths that we we investigate and have autopsies for and does more get used for any other purposes besides another purpose would be tissue harvesting tissue harvesting is on on the back of your driver's license where you can indicate that you want to be an organ donor an organ donor is different than tissue harvesting in an organ donor they maintain your life on life supports so you would be in a hospital and then you could that would be where an organ donor would come in a tissue donor is a postmortem someone that's passed away within a certain time frame and people become tissue donors they sign up for it or if we talk to the families and tissue that they take is can be skin and skin is used for cancer patients it's used for burn patients bone they'll take what's called the long bones your femur your humerus the upper arm and then the bone in the leg and they'll use that for bone grafts for cancer patients they also can take ligaments from the knee for athletic injuries transplant of a ligament or a tendon they can't take they don't take the heart that would be an organ donation but what they can take are heart valves the eye bank will come in and they they'll take the corneas for corner cornea transplants and there is no cost to the family when they do that they are giving giving a loving gift of their loved ones tissue for purpose for medical purpose to save and help some other people well Dave thank you for your 28 years as coroner and helping us with the transition to a medical examiner thank you thank you back to you Adam thank you Roger and I imagine our viewers just very quickly understood when I said why talking to you can be so interesting it's a it's a field that most of us don't spend a lot of time thinking about yet alone talking about or getting information so I really find the work you do so important and we're very fortunate as Roger said to have you aboard you mentioned earlier when Roger was asking you about you know the numbers of deaths and used to investigate up to 500 a year and that numbers drop because you made a decision based on what state statutes allow and how the medical field has changed that going to a hospice for example maybe wasn't the best use of time and and I want to compliment you for that because I know board members years ago used to get some concerns every now and then because I can't imagine how challenging it has to be to walk on to a scene where someone has recently died or been killed or in an accident that's got to be tough enough but then to go to a hospice where they're expecting their loved one to pass away emotions are probably high and then here comes the coroner or now medical examiner to ask them what happened and how this played out and of course you were just doing your job but I had I got to believe the people skills that you need to apply in the difficult situations you go into that's challenging work so from this point forward and this started what last year was it I forgot when you've changed the policy we made the change in November of 2013 so 14 was the first full year yeah I'm sure that's I'm sure the our constituents appreciate that because those of us who have been in a hospice situation I mean that's tough enough and I'm sure you don't mind necessarily relying more on the hospice nurse and doctors involved to help you with that as well so again my compliments on that back to the investigation so you have to go and investigate certain situations you talked about the use of the morgue but what else is involved with conducting a death investigation you look at the the whole picture you look at the individual you look at his health history what type of medical conditions he has you take a look at the medications he's on you know are the medications appropriate for his for his health condition you look at the amount of tablets are the are the number of pills in correlation to the when they were prescribed how often they're prescribed so you're looking to make sure that the person isn't being over wasn't being over medicated or undermedicated and when you gather this data Dave then do you have to complete documentation and send that on to the state no there's nothing sent on to the state in that in that part of it we maintain a record it's one set one it's a two-sided record it's one side is all the the documentation of the name the date of birth physician date of death time of death we get all the if the date of death is different than the the pronounced date and time so that's that's all documented for and then we do a brief narrative you know explaining you know John Jones age 66 died at home or wherever had a health history of such and such we just kind of a brief synopsis of the situation and indicate on there what the I'm listening as the cause of death in the manner of death and the importance of a medical background and certainly the importance of having some experience in this field if that's if that's possible if you've been a coroner or medical examiner before so you shared with our viewers the five manners of death or five manners of determining how someone died what about now that a person's passed away what are the four manners that someone is final disposition final disposition that's the word I was looking for thank you final disposition disposition you can either be buried entombed in a mausoleum cremated or donate your body to science which is called scientific thing another thing that the medical examiner's office does is certify the cremation permit we look into if it's not our specific case we look into what the physician indicates as the there's a cause of death we view the body to make sure that there is nothing unusual suspicious sometimes you get someone that had fallen has injuries but the care provider hospice nursing home whatever there may be you know maybe aren't looking at that as the cause of death somebody may be fractured arm or whatever they're not looking at that as a cause of death the don't call us maybe physician will put down something you make comparisons on what what they're putting down and what you see and then final question in a few minutes we have remaining you've you know better than 28 years of experience what have been some of the biggest changes you've seen during your career or some of the biggest challenges I think I would have to say the increase the substantial increase in drug deaths of young persons putting those poisons into their system with total disregard of what could happen or does happen with drugs heroin you know a person can maybe be a heroin user dabbling in it but you never know how much is going to be there to kill you they don't that's not a substance that's controlled and says you have this amount in that that tablet or that cracker rock but they call it you never know the potency and that was that's what gets them and those have got to be the tougher scenes to come upon to sure is you know family members a they maybe suspect that their their son or daughter dabbled with marijuana well then all of a sudden they find some pills or tinfoil wrapped in their pocket and then they become suspicious and you know one thing leads to another and all of a sudden that's it's too late right right well again pretty heavy subject and I certainly hope you got an appreciation for the important work that our medical examiner has done and continues to do and we certainly thank you for your public service Dave well thank you and I don't think think Roger and the whole county board for their confidence in me you know when I decided to retire I had no idea of going on so when when they came along it just forced my hand a little bit and I retired from my other my other full-time job and so you certainly have given us a seamless transition that's for sure and we appreciate it that was the intent and if you have questions if you have any questions or want to talk to Dave more about his roles and responsibilities or learn more about the topic today don't hesitate to give him a call is there a contact a general contact in for a number or go to the website or what's your go to the website the office number is listed there okay if I don't happen to be in the office at that particular time the transfers to the Sheriff's Department and you know they'll get a hold of me very good so look up our Shaboygan County website or certainly you can contact County Administrator or Chairman's Office or County Clerk Sheriff's Department and they'll get you to the right person but thank you for joining us today and I hope you learn something about again the important work of medical examiner next month we're going to be talking about the important work of the County Board and the County as a whole recently Chairman Distruty and I presented the state of the County to the County Board and we had the opportunity to give a little update on WHBL and Chairman Distruty thought it be a good idea and I agreed to provide a state of the County here for our WHBL viewers so next month I guess we'll be the guests Roger or you'll be the the host and I'll be the the guest but we'll tag team and talk a little bit about big picture 18 departments 127 million dollar budget 825 employees implementing about 207 programs across the County what are we doing what have our successes been what are our challenges ahead so until then thank you very much take care and we'll see you next month


Zero. We're live. Good morning everybody. Thank you so much for being here. This is our virtual gathering for Generation Now because they're out on the streets and on the front line. I know. Activists and artists and some have joined us this morning from Oakland and from Minnesota and we have a few special guests that are going to be speaking or performing. We also invite you, if you would like to speak, let us know through the chat or if you would like to perform so that we can give you the Zoom link. And for us to start, I'm going to begin by a libation. I'm going to pour libations and honor about ancestors and if you can lift up the name of an ancestor that inspires you, that you're walking in their legacy or you need to remember and to bring with us into this space this morning, where you call out their names. I'm calling up and you don't have to wait for me to finish. Just Big Mama Alice calling in Jesse. And you can unmute your mics for that if you want to guess. Nana, my dear, my dear, Billy and Strader, Cassandra Ferrell, Dorothy Haru, Olyspalette, Rosie Lee Sanders, Wayne Brown, Joseph Anderson, Aaron Kass, and I'm lifting up all of the freedom fighters and the activists that we stand on their shoulders that have guided the way for us. May their spirits still light our flame and our fire. I'm going to light a candle and may the light that the activists that are here with us today enlighten us and may we all be bright lights in our community in this country and in the world. I want to invite those folks that have logged on through HowlRound.com. If you in the chat box and let us know who y'all be, where you from, and what native land are you residing on. I'm coming from Oakland, land of the Miwok, and finally I'm going to let you say where you're from. What land? Okay, I'm here. Hey, it's Roger Gendel Smith, Ecoparque Los Angeles. I want to give thanks to the Chumash who have provided this moment for us. Please. Do you want me to speak? I'm a artist. I act with black music for the people and I'll put the Instagram in the chat. I am in Minneapolis and it's on Dakota land. I also want to give thanks to the Dakota land that we stand on and all of the Indigenous activists who have been working alongside us here in Minnesota. Giving thanks to the Eloni. Thank you back. Thank you for that giving thanks to the Eloni people and the Chickasaw and Chippewa people. My name is Samuel. I'm a poet from Oakland, California, a rising college student and I'm also an Oakland on Eloni land. Anybody else? I want to I want to give thanks to the Eloni also. I'm also in Oakland right now. My name is Alonzo or people just call me Zo. I want to give thanks to y'all too. Giving thanks also in Oakland's Eloni territory, Eloni nation. I'm trying to fix it. And also other tribes and peoples that I might not know the names. Giving thanks. I want to continue to bring our ancestors into the space and I've asked Naima if she would share music or song to in both the ancestors. Naima. Thank you so much. I wouldn't know this song if it wasn't for Fania Davis. So I am giving thanks to you Fania for bringing all of us at our joy in Oakland to South Africa. So this song I'm going to sing was taught to us by our teacher, a Sangoma healer in South Africa. Her name is Gonando Sheila. She taught us this song that is evoking the spirit of the baby spirits. But for us, it was a spirit of coming home. And so she said to sing this song when you go back and just always keep that spirit right of coming home and being home. And so I just offer this song humbly to our space that we're creating together. Ovia Manono, ovia Lekaya. Ovia Manono, ovia Lekaya. Ovia Manono, ovia Manuno. Ovia Ovia Manuno. You can sing it if you're catching on, even though I'm muted. I'm going to turn over to Dominique, the next thing that we're going to do to get a sense of who's in this space based on our experience. And then after that, one at a time, everyone will introduce themselves. Okay. So Dominique is from Minnesota, Minneapolis. Thank you so much, Owele. Thank you, Roger. Thank you finally. Thank you to all of you who showed up for this space from our town in Minneapolis. It's now my home. You can see it being my homeland. Let's see if there is hospitable as they claim to be up here, right? So I just wanted to walk us through a brief activity to really talk about the ways that we are so heavily policed as Black and brown youth, primarily, and the ways that we are policed and ways that don't really ever involve the police a lot of the times, right? And so our society has these subtle ways of assuming the worst about us and then we target us, right, as potential threats. So it ends up in a circumstance where really police before and after law enforcement is present. And of course, we know as it's tragically true when law enforcement is finally called, it kind of reaffirms these worst assumptions and the worst things could happen. So I want to walk us through this activity. And what I'm going to do is I'm going to name a series of statements, of I statements.  Now, some folks already have their video off and I dig it.  So if you go down to the reactions button on the bottom of your screen with a smiley face is that you could click that reactions button and there's a thumbs up that you could hit.  And I think that this will just, like while we walk through this, I want you to listen to what I'm saying, surface your own experiences, speak to your truth in that, but also observe what other folks are saying, right? Because of the way that we look, the cultures or communities that we're a part of, we're all thoroughly policed and controlled. But there are different ways that it shows up. And hopefully this allows us to see how each one of us is grappling with this so much gratitude to all of y'all for being here right now. So I'm just going to go ahead and go through policing in the home. I have been questioned in my home about my identity. I have been questioned in my home about my clothing. In my home, I have been told not to associate with someone because they were perceived to be or affiliated with a gang. In my home, I've been doubted when I shared my truth. I want to move us into the schools. In school, I have had my language policed or reprimanded. The language that I speak or the way that I speak my language. In school, I have been removed from class from my actions or behaviors. In school, I've been questioned about who I associate with. In school, I have been questioned about my choice of clothing. In school, I have been punished for something that white students have gotten away with. And finally, in the streets and the community. In the streets, I have been approached by law enforcement without an adult present. In the streets, my presence has been questioned by adults who are not law enforcement. In the streets, I've been questioned about my culture. And finally, I always see police in my own neighborhood, even when there's no incident. And if we have a couple of minutes, I'd just like to invite a couple of reflections from that activity. Anything that it brought up for you, anything that you observed, or anything that it brought you to thinking. Yeah, I would love to share. I'm Nadika. She hers and they then pronounce. So the beginning part, especially about policing the home, it made me think about my attachments with my own mother and who was a young mother when she had me. And so we did a lot of growing up together. We, you know, as she was raising me, she was raising herself and that kind of policing that she passed down to me and projected onto me being from generational trauma that she had not been able to unpack herself yet. And so a lot of that policing in my home, I know is a direct correlation from the way that her and her body and her existence had been police in her own home and in other spaces as well. So. Hi, Sahara, she her pronouns. For me personally, when I was hearing all of this, I was just thinking about my own personal experience about how just in my home, just for my home life specifically, I never really was taught how to like, like act because since I lived in, I live in a white neighborhood right now, like predominantly white, like nobody, you won't see any colored people here. And, you know, I never had to worry about like, how I was dressing or how I was acting, one, because I went to Catholic school, so didn't have to dress a certain way. But the fact is, like the people who went to school with me were all of the same race. And I was probably the only one, but like, yeah, they did, I didn't have to police myself a certain way. So people would see me and it didn't really get that way until I started getting older and realizing it for myself. Because my parents, they didn't really know, they didn't know how a black child is like, questioned in the world since my mother is Mexican and she looks white, and my father somewhere. So yeah, I had to learn everything by myself. And just having to go through it by yourself is weird because you have to research and do all of this stuff and look for yourself about how to survive in a world that's completely against you. So yeah. Thank you. Hello. My name is Akhba. I'm from Minneapolis and I'm Somali. So I went to a high school, Salem Spark High School, and I was police from my language, speaking Somali or even speaking English that wasn't seen as proper. Also, like I would start, like me, my friends would always start like protests within schools and cultural programs and all that stuff and we'd always get policed. And all the teachers would hate it. The fact that we had our own safe spaces and other students or the white students would be like, but that's not fair. So getting police to school is a big thing. And like, we're not able to express our own cultural, you know, beauties. And it's mainly because, you know, in America, we're taught to not assimilate. So that's one big thing. Thank you. This is Fania. Can you hear me? Okay, good. Fania from Oakland, unceded territory of the Oloni people. It's so good to be here. And it's really special for me to be on a Zoom call with mostly young people. Thank you for all being here. Dominique, what came to me was actually an experience of police terror that I had when I was in my late teens, maybe early 20s, when I was working with the Black Panther Party in San Diego, California and involved in a lot of anti-war protests as well at that time. Police broke into our home in San Diego because of our activism and ended up shooting and almost killing my husband. That was in 1969. And we were charged with attempted murder of police officers with a movement and a very principled judge. Thank goodness we were ultimately released from those charges. The charges were dismissed. But I'm certain that everybody here today can tell a story of how they have been also victimized by police terror or someone close to them, someone in their family has been. So that's what came to me doing that exercise. Thank you. And maybe do we have time for one more? I'd like to share. I don't know if folks can see me because on my screen, it shows up black. Okay, so I'm a little, you know, I can't see myself, but you know, we're through it. But I just wanted to share a way that has seen me develop as a really young artist into what I am now and what I continue to be. But she also was the prime witness of a parent, like a family trying to get me expelled for performing spoken word at an event at school because it addressed race relations as well as I created this metaphor of the American flag and a white cop who is policing a young brown girl's body. That's pretty much the gist of the poem. And it was a larger metaphor for an experience that I felt as well as I'm sure like many other, you know, black and brown folks, indigenous folks, you know, beautiful LGBTQ plus family as felt. And so after performing that poem of family wanted, we're like demanding that, you know, I received some sort of consequence. And so that's just an example of my words, as well as my performance, my activism. And yeah, and another one just really quick after a while, my family moved into kind of like a nicer, like, predominantly white neighborhood. And for like ever since we've been here, the police only seem to really pay attention to the black and brown folks, like there's really not many police up here. But like, it's very frequent when police officers will follow my dad home. And that's something that I've experienced like at a young age too. And so like my dad will be driving home. And officers will follow him like tailgate him the entire way there.   Why are you parking that driveway? Why like, what are you doing in this neighborhood at this time? Are you trying to, you know, trying to imply that he's trying to do something in this neighborhood. And I was like, no, this is my BMW. This is my house that I paid for the house that I own. You know what I mean? He's like, so that's that's something that's frequent. I've had people have egged our house, you have TP their house, people have removed when we first moved out here, people removed the tires off of our cars, so we wouldn't be able to go to school. And I'm like, yo, we're in the 2000 son and this is the Oakland Hills. Get it together. Because people don't think that that it happens. That's something that I never really talked about in school because there's no space to because after leaving Fruitvale Elementary, it's a Montclair Elementary. And if you're not from Oakland, there's this very stark dichotomy of like the Hills have like the Fruitvale district and then you have like East Oakland, West Oakland. But it's this very stark contrast of like, you have food deserts and this high amount of liquor stores in this area. And then you have like multiple grocery stores, Whole Foods type energy up here. So something that I've been working towards as far as food deserts, but I just want to share my piece because it definitely reminded me of a lot of experiences. So thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And I'm ready to turn it back over to our wonderful co-facilitators. Thank you all for sharing your stories. So I want to hear from everybody. Who are you? Where are you from? What organizations are you working with? It's time to kind of announce yourself so anybody can jump in.  You can go ahead. It's okay. Hi, my name is Kaha. I use she her pronouns. I am an organized formally an organizer. I recently quit, but although I haven't really an organizer in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I for the last six years, I've been doing a lot of public housing work with an organization called Defend Glendale and Public Housing Coalition, which I helped develop. But I also when I was in high school, I did a lot of anti SRO school resource officer anti police in work. And that also helped out with a lot of anti CBE work, which is like a surveillance program that was used to police Somali youth in Minneapolis. And so can everybody hear me? Yeah. Okay. So that's just like an introduction to me. I'm from Minneapolis. We'll do Minneapolis my whole life. And yeah, I'm happy to be on this call and sharing space with you all. Thank you. Hi. My name is Xavier Brown. I'm 19 years old. I'm a I'm a rising acting student at UCLA right now. And along with Achille, who was also in this group chat, I was we we organized a protest at Oakland Tech.  And I show my activism through the clothing that I make. So my clothing brand, Bright Side, and I show it through a film, a company that I am a part of called a Magnum Opus of Media. And I hope that going forward, I hope to show the untold black stories through a film. So yeah. Next. I'll go. Me is Jewaria. I'm a soda youth climate strike, but also do in like different groups across the States. I'm also a poet. So I'll be sharing some spoken word. I can go next. I'm not a flowers. I do mainly organizing work in Minneapolis. But my most recent endeavors have been in the suburbs. And so I founded Egan Call Out and I lead alongside today in Minnesota and in the suburbs specifically related to that. I use spirituality and specifically astrology and tarot to provide healing to the black community. And I center black women and black non binary people in my work. And in my astrology work as well. And so I'm very happy to be here. And this is very healing. So yes. My name is Akil Riley. What's up, Akil? I'm a co-organizing with Xavier Young. I go to Howard University. I'm also with Black Youth for People's Liberation. I can put that in the chat. We also go as BYP4L. A bunch of a group of young black organizers, organizing for People's Liberation, climate, specifically police brutality. That's what we formed for. And I'm also a young artist and musician from Oakland, California. It's a lot to do. Hi. I mentioned this earlier, but I forgot to say my name is Zaday. Pronouns are she, her. As I said, I do grassroots work here in Minneapolis. I'm also the owner of my business, Holistic Ho, which does centering on black and brown mothers, caregivers, youth. With that business, I have a mutual aid fund that funds those black and brown mothers that need immediate assistance, resources and help. I also host weekly community healing events in Powderhorn Park, which is in South Minneapolis. If you're from Minneapolis, you know that Powderhorn Park is pretty centered around Latinx and indigenous people. However, everyone is welcome. That's black and brown. With those healing events, there's free astrology readings, thanks to Natica, free chiropractor care, acupuncture care, free resources, baby items, products, all centered for those mothers. It's a safe space for the kids. We have a lot of people come to get the resources that they need. And then along with that, I also help people with ancestral readings and any holistic health consultations that they may need for low to free rate for black and brown individuals. Go now. My name is Zora Harout. I am 19 years old, and I am the sister of Zade Harout. I am the co-founder of Holistic Ho, as well as the mutual aid fund created called the Rebellion Relief Fund. And like I said prior, my healing is centered in the knowledge of holistic health, and as well as sexual health in the black community. What's up, y'all? I'm Zo. I'm from Oakland. I'm currently working with an organization called King Makers of Oakland. We're just a group of vocal artists, singers, rapper, poets that are just writing about the cause, and we're creating new kind of albums, kind of creating a new narrative within the hip hop community and trying to empower our brothers and sisters.  Hi. My name is Iqbal. I'm from Minneapolis. I do a lot of community organizing work and grassroots and stuff, mainly focusing on anti-police work, anti-FBI entrapment, such as the CDE program, which entraps some Muslim youth in Minneapolis. I also helped out with housing and education and mentoring and a bunch of stuff like that. And I also do spoken word and poetry. Okay. My name is Sahara. She, her pronouns. Like I said before, I just do most of my activism work around my acting. So I put a lot of information into, you know, what's going on with the world. I also use my Instagram platform as a way to spread awareness about what's going on for everybody who follows me. And yeah, that's it. But y'all are all amazing. Like y'all do a lot of work. So did everyone get a chance to go? So let's hear from Fania and Naima and Benny. And Roger, right? Okay. And you. So I'm Fania. As I said earlier, my pronouns are she and her. Again, I want to say how honored I am to be on this call with you, young people, especially. I want to thank Roger and Dominic and especially Owele for all the hard work in organizing this beautiful event. And I am the founding director of restorative justice for Oakland youth. We do restorative justice for the last 11 or 12 years in schools and communities and in the justice system. I retired from Arjoy. That's our acronym. In 2018, I'm still doing work with Arjoy. I'm also, by profession, a civil rights trial attorney. So I spent about 30 years doing that until I, and not in courtrooms and not in law offices, but when I saw what was happening with our youth, how so many were, we were losing so many to police violence and to trauma. I know youth, and I'm sure you do too, who at the age of 17 had gone to more funerals than we at the age of 70. So when I saw all of the traumas that our youth were facing, I said, let me get out of this courtroom. I need to be, you know, on the streets with our youth. And that's when I form restorative justice for Oakland youth. Again, thank you. It's good to be here. Hi, everyone. I am so blown away by this group. I'm like, wow, there's a lot of power here. I am a musician and vocalist and composer. I live in Oakland. But I am so honored to be on staff at Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, Arjoy. I've been on staff for about a year and a half. And right now, a lot of our work, especially since the shelter in place, we've been doing a lot of community building online. And we have about six to seven different community building circles, black male circles, sister ciphers, one that I facilitate. We have circles for formerly incarcerated people. We have teen circles all around building community with each other so that we can continue doing the healing within ourselves, but in our communities, right? So we can continue to transform. So I'm just really honored to be here. And thank you, Owele, for asking me also to share some music. And just thank you to you, Owele, Roger, and Dominique as well. So Dominique or Vinnie? Yeah, so just to clarify, am I just doing my intro and then introducing a couple of the posts? Sure. What's the slogan? So my name is Dominique, Diago Cash. I've been living in Twin Cities in Minneapolis for about 10 years, originally from Indianapolis. I've been an organizer. Most of my youth, the Iraq wars, really were activated me into organizing. And I knew the feeling, the handcuffs on my hands from the age of eight years old. And so I didn't really need too much to propel me to understand that the police were a problem, but it's been thanks to the grace of my community and elders in that community and those relationships to really teach me about why that problem exists and why we need to change it. And I continue to be a student learner. I continue to be a student of the movement of the game of the struggle, thanks to enlarge parts spaces such as this. And I want to take this opportunity to shout out those of you, the young sisters on this call who really made a lot of moves to make this happen. And I know that there's an important youth retreat in the Twin Cities right now. And I know that y'all need it. And I hope that you get all the healing you need from that space. And I thank you for giving us some of your time and attention today. And if we would like, I'd pass it to you, Oelle, if you'd like, or if you'd like me to introduce two of the poets who I've invited. Yes, they can start us off. And then, Sahara, you'll read us after that. Roger still has to introduce himself. He will. He has a segment that comes after this. He's going to contextualize. So I've invited, I know all the y'all are wonderful artists, but I've invited two poets in particular who agreed to share some pieces. So I want to first turn it over to Iqbal. Hi, my name is Iqbal. My pronouns are she, her and hers. So this is a spoken word I wrote and I performed at on 38th and Floyd, where George Floyd passed away, was murdered actually. So here it goes. When I walk, I walk with a stride. I walk with a no one can touch me glare. I walk as if my life depends on it because my life depends on it. As a woman.  As a black Muslim woman, my very existence is a nightmare that white men can't seem to wake up from.  And so I will keep walking with attitude with hopes that he will not mistake my loving energy as an invitation to take what isn't his since that's all he knows how to do. As I grow, I really see the grain things, but there is no gray and white men mentioned black bodies as metals. It's simply black and white simply white and wrong nothing right all left six feet under. I didn't know a dead man could be charged with his own murder. Now I only see red. I see red lines drawn in my neighborhood. I see black guns with red targets drawn to my head. I see white hoods colored in baby blue with a 666 bag set of a cross drawn. And they asked, why can't we be peaceful? I asked, how can we speak peace if violence is the only language used against us? How can we speak peace if the only language they understand is profit? If war is business and our blood is trending as if they didn't come from us as if Adam and Eve weren't black as if our blood is impulsive with a force that is godly.  A young Malcolm X that wears a hijab with pride. An Angela Davis that teaches his brothers not to strive. A sea full of mentors that pour knowledge into our hungry minds. So when I got brothers and sisters whose last names I've been stolen from them and then replaced with Christian names, I would fight by any means necessary. And when we still got people who pitched that we could straighten a system from within that was built on a crooked foundation, I will fight by any means necessary. I will enter without permission. I will apply pressure until the nooses on our next glistening like diamonds. And if we're getting real, when are we going to start to teach our youngins not how to read but how to question what they read? When will we understand that freedom ain't free, that we got to take and not wait because baby, life ain't guaranteed. Understand when my black skin is the threat, it is impossible to be unarmed. When what they fear is my beating heart, there's a war on black. So black is my synonym to safe. Maybe not your calm, but we like it that way.  And maybe we'll shoot a couple bullets to the sky just to keep that gentrification shed away, keeping our blackness, our kind of safe. I'm in with this. Black baby boy, you are beyond this reality. Black baby girl, you are beyond this reality.  I am tired, but freedom ain't free. Thank you. Yes. Yes. Keep on it. Speak on it. Thank you so much, Iqbal. I just want to let that breathe for a couple of seconds. And thank you for the reminder to have our cameras off to really center the voice of the performer. I really want us to hold that energy, and I really want to open ourselves up to the next poet. I have the pleasure of introducing Jeweria whenever you're ready. Hi, everyone. So yeah, I just want to say, Iqbal, that was such a beautiful piece. I could feel it the entire time. So my piece is kind of different. I wrote this piece for an event that was put together for Black Joy, because I think a lot of times in our organizing, we just have to keep moving and moving and moving. But I think that this movement has really showed us that there's so much beauty in being Black, so much beauty in embracing our culture. So the piece that I wrote is called Black Joy. Black Joy. When I was 13, I was in eighth grade. Trying to find pieces of me lost way long ago. When I was in eighth grade, I wanted to be everything, even president of student council, maybe because my brother once was ultimately, I wanted my voice to be so loud the entire school could hear me.  And I seemed to know every little thing about everything. And I wanted the whole world to know it too. Maybe it was too much to expect that 13 from an eighth grade class, the same way it was too much to expect from a country built off racism and genocide. And I think I was too little or naive to think that our world could ever be built that way. But I mean, our world has been built this way from the beginning. And what more can we do is then to educate ourselves and everyone on what our parents tried to hide from us. I spent the last years of middle school trying to find the puzzle pieces of me I discarded long ago, looking for the parts of me that seemed tappy.  And I didn't understand why I could be singled out so much. Maybe I should have allowed myself to spend more time outside playing with children my own age, less time being angry, more time being joyful. I mean, I should have done more at 13, right? Yes, sometimes Black children don't have that luxury. So here I am now, trying to figure out what really makes me me and where I could put this anger into because I'm not inside out. I'm not a movie. I have emotions in different parts of me that deserves screen time too. And anger is just a fraction of it. Because who am I? I am Black joy. I am Black love, I am Black excellence. I mean, aren't we all?  I mean, isn't that what Black joy is all about? To go against a system that's taught us that we were only puppets used for their entertainment, to cater to their imagination of who we should be, isn't Black joy a revolution in itself? To be no longer painted as the angry Black kid, but angry Black kids with rightful anger using it to their advantage to be happy in a world that didn't want us to be happy, to begin with. Now, isn't that revolutionary? To teach ourselves what it means to be Black and proud, Black and loud, Black and joyful, and not these connotations of angry Black kids define who we are. Because we define who we are. And we say we will not allow the system to weaponize our anger and paint us as villains. We will use our anger to be liberated and then sing and dance and love and be overjoyed with the world we built for ourselves. You see, Black joy is a lot of things, but at most it's a revolution. So I will let my feet dance under the ground of our freedom, our liberation. Thank you. Thank you. Revolution, yes. My Black joy. Yes. Y'all spin fire. Thank you. Coming up next on our mic, introduce yourself. You talking to me?  Oh, for sure. Okay, so like I said earlier, my name is Nadia, spoken word artist. I do different forms of art, but I am based in Oakland right now, so my hometown born and raised. And I've invited several of dear friends of mine to join us today from Akeel to Xavier and Aya to Zo, Akeel, everybody, like a lot of these are like people that I've organized with people whose art I've been touched by. And so I'd really love to share a piece with you. But I think I'm gonna let other folks go first. So, Zo, I don't know how you're feeling right now if you're ready to spit something. Hello, can y'all hear me? Yes, we can hear you. All right. Should I start my piece? Whenever you're ready. All right, so I work with this organization called King Makers of Oakland. As I mentioned earlier, we just put together this album called The Revolution Remix. And this is a piece that I put together for that organization. You can't imagine what my people was feeling. Man, that pain it cuts so deep, it ain't healing. They tear us down, tell us reach for the center, use us for profit, let us keep a percentage. Got some nerve telling me just not to live in the past, because this is not that, that I got the same privilege they have. Go on my boots, pick myself up by the straps, like my only real free to make this pen in this path.   Where have we been? Where are we going? Where are we at now? Mentally, we on the same bus where Rosa sat down. They see my face and know my background, don't see my black crown, just my skin, not how does that sound? It's coming since that we ain't never been on common ground. Ancestors shoes, same path that I'm walking down.  I share the trauma of my own mama, and her mama and her great-great-great-grandfather. Dang, that's just something they never know. It's our time, they're gonna put us on a schedule. They put a number on my back like a jersey, born in the kitchen, I won't stop until they serve me. Power to the people, we can't power a trip. They're gonna try to turn you down, there ain't no doubt in this. Thank you. Great. Right, all right, all right, revolution. Yes. Beautiful. Yes. Yes. Great job, Zo. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so I put the name of the album I don't know if it's okay. I put the name of the album as well as just like how they go by, which is Keymakers of Oakland. I don't know if y'all can, I really can't see if y'all can see myself, if I can, I can't see myself, so I don't know if y'all can see this, but it's on Apple Music, it's on other platforms as well, so make sure to check it out, stream it. There's an African-American male achievement program in our USDA, which is the Oakland Unified School District here in Oakland, it's our public school district, and so they do a lot of work supporting our young African-American Black men, our youth, so definitely support. Let's see, and then I know I spoke to Xavier briefly about possibly sharing a little something. Xavier, let me know if you feel comfortable sharing, if not, it's all good, but yeah. Yeah, so I like, I have a piece, but it like in the background, so I think I'm going to give this space to the other people because I don't know how it's going to sound on Zoom, so yeah, but thank you for this opportunity. I wish I prepared a monologue. I really just have a spoken word, but yeah, that's about it. If you guys want, I can give you guys the link to my clothing brand. We just dropped a shirt that 100% of the proceeds will be going to the Black of Heminist Project and the Equal Justice Initiative, so I'm just trying to spread love and positivity through that way, so yeah. Word, thank you Xavier. Xavier does a lot of dope work, very, very creative. This is, I don't know if y'all can see again, but I will put it up. This is the shirt that I caught from Xavier, so I know there's an online platform coming soon. Oh, I can see myself. Hey, okay, cool. My confidence just went up, but yeah, this is the shirt, and so yeah, Oakland Youth are young adults, which is what we are now. We're all organizing, working together, uniting through art, so I'm really blessed to be here, to be here in community with folks. I can go ahead and share. I know some of my other folks are unable to share right now, so I'm going to share something that's actually on my Instagram, but I don't necessarily really feel comfortable just sharing written work. That's something that I'm working on just as an artist and trying to format it correctly, but this was the first time that I ever shared a poem just through text. It's always been through performance because I feel the way that I express myself artistically and creatively has always been through my voice and through theatrics, so I'm going to go ahead and perform this poem. The title is Conversations with Ancestors, to give some background on it. I'm just kind of going into starting, not starting, but going back into organizing again after coming home. I really had time to sit with myself and I was feeling, gosh, I feel like I needed to be more tapped in with myself, more grounded and ground myself before I started going back into a lot of this work. And so, yeah, I'm going to go ahead and share now.  She was my first trust fall. As a little girl with spiral curls, I'd wade for her blessing with my salty cheeks and hair all messy, I'd wade in her womb. As she tickled my little brown toes, I waited because I knew that she had felt pain too. The colonists call her the fountain of youth. Using her unspeakable beauty as an excuse to pillage and pollute, her story was all too familiar. I saw her scars sewn shut from the shore. I fell into her lap and told my ancestor, mine look kind of like yours. The depth of her thighs were deep, easy enough for me to sink, unable to fathom her being. I told her, I am no boat. And that's when she said, remember and love who you are, and you will always float. And so I wrote that after, well, that's kind of like a poem I can owe to Yamaya, which I'm not sure if y'all are familiar with Santería and like voodoo and stuff in the Caribbean, but Puerto Rican, Boricua, La Linia, just something that's very important to me, my native native as well. So that poem just really helped me tie together a lot of things that I was trying to figure out as far as like, or just to remember, not to figure out, to remember about like who I am and how important it is to have knowledge of self moving forward. And so I'm actually just purchased a Lemurian courts from the Crystal Children. I'll put their ad in the comments, the Crystal Children on Instagram, and they've been coming out to a lot of our reparation spaces, which are bi-weekly, monthly sort of, we're trying to organize it, but they've been these events where folks can show up and donate and purchase items from BIPOC folks and BIPOC specifically. And so the Crystal Children are really dope. And Lemurian courts is actually a crystal that is meant to kind of streamline ancestral knowledge. It's supposed to like remember self, remember lineage. It's supposed to promote community knowledge, community healing, community knowing. And so that's something that I hold dearly to my heart. It's so beautiful. So if you all are interested in copying from them, hit them up. But yeah, thank you for allowing me to share. I don't know if any of my other folks are interested in sharing. If so, just let me know or call out. But yeah, thank you. Oh God, I got kicked out. Let's see. If you can hear me, I'm going to invite Roger in. I almost got kicked out of Zoom. And Roger will introduce himself and he will contextualize the moment that we're in and he will also share from his work. I'm not quite sure how many of you had a chance to preview his Rodney King performance that Spike Lee directed for the filming that's now streaming on Netflix. But it was a historical moment that contextualizes the moment that we're in in a bigger context. So I want to bring him in as our special guest and we'll weave more performances as we go through the rest of our flow. Thank you. Can you see me? Can you hear me? Is everybody there? I hear you and I see you, Roger. Yep, here you and see you. Look, I can't breathe. I have my ID right here. My name is Elijah McClain. I dance by house and I was just going home. I'm an introvert. I'm just different. Oh God, I don't do that stuff. I don't do any fighting. Why are you attacking me?  I don't eat meat. And I don't judge people who don't eat meat. Please forgive me. All I was doing was trying to come back. I will do it. I will do anything. I will sacrifice my identity. I'll do it. Oh my God.  You're beautiful. And I love you. Try to forgive me. I'm a mood Gemini. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh, that really hurt. You all are very strong. Teamwork makes the dream work. Oh, I didn't mean to do that. I can't breathe properly. Yes. Lift their spirits, lift their words. They are here with us. Yes. Wow. Yes. Inspirational. Inspirational. I loved it. Oh my God. I'm about to cry. Oh my God. Phenomenal. Just phenomenal. The power of an oral history of a life. The stories are livestock. The power of the word. Thank you. The story of 401 years. I'm going to say thank you. And I'm going to give Roger a moment to compose himself. The power of artist protest. Thank you to everyone who has shared potent, powerful pieces. Thank you for the testimony. Thank you. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for showing up and showing up. I'm going to invite Roger to share about his work and feel free to interject and ask questions if you have questions. And when he finishes, I want to invite you to talk more about the work and being on the line and Fania to talk about the impact because you put your bodies on the line, because of all the lives that have been lost, because of the lie, the infantile stages of democracy that we find ourselves in. What's been the impact of this moment? Okay. You ready, Roger? Wonderful to be in communication with you all within this electronic box and within the world way, way, way, way beyond and beyond this world, in fact. To come together with the youth of the Twin Cities and the youth of Oakland is a tremendous blessing. I was saying earlier in the gathering that I've done a lot of work in the Twin Cities, particularly at Penumbra Theater in St. Paul, which is one of our great African-American institutions in this country. And of course, I was born in Berkeley. I was conceived in Monterey. My father, in fact, proposed to my mom while they were walking around Lake Merritt. So if there were no Lake Merritt, there would be no me. A lot of my work has been influenced by the Bay Area. I did a solo performance inspired by the late, great co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, Huey P. Newton, and I believe his picture is right over there over my shoulder. Always the guardian angel right there. You all are carrying on the tradition. Most of you have been born in this century. I certainly was not. But I know that this century is in good hands and in good heart because we are breathing and we are breathing correctly. We are using that life source in the best way that it can be used in liberation, not only of ourselves, but of a collective community. To my Somali sisters and brothers in the Twin Cities, we know that you have come from an East Africa which has been decimated by imperialism and that you have come to our American Midwest seeking peace, seeking truth, and how devastatingly surreal it must be for you and your extended families to come to a Minneapolis which is torn asunder by the same sort of state sanctioned violence that led you here in the first place. And I have a special salute to you for the tremendous work that you are doing there, not only on the behalf of your Somali American community, but on behalf of us all because this truly is what makes America great. That poetry, that movement, that idea that we can survive, we can do it, we can move forward, we're doing it, and we're doing it well. So thank you all for coming together on this morning and this early afternoon. This is exactly the way to kick off the weekend and we will continue through the week and through the month and through the years to come. That's it. So Fania, if you can talk about the impact of the movement and the work that the young people, the young adults have been engaged in as freedom fighters and putting their bodies on the line and the people on the streets, the changes that we are beginning to see here in the U.S., but how is it domino effect ricocheting across the waters? Let me start my video here. Phew. I'm still vibrating from the experience of reliving Elijah McLean's words. I'm still filled with the beauty and the power of the presentations by the young people as well. And as I sit here with you, especially young adults, young people, I am reminded, I am honored, first of all. And I am honored because I know that when massive changes need to be made in our world, history calls upon young people, upon the youth, to create, to lead that change. Whether we're talking about the school children and the children's march in Birmingham, whether we're talking about the college students and the sit-in movement that started in North Carolina and then spread through the South like wildfire, whether we're talking about the Black U.E. Luton and Bobby Seale, all of whom got started with their activism in their teens. I think Bobby Seale was 19. Or whether we're talking about the Stonewall protesters that led to the, that sort of ignited the LGBTQI movement. Those were young people and those were trans Black women primarily. Whether we're talking about the Arab Spring, whether we're talking about tenements, we're all over the world, whether we're talking about the young lords, it is the youth who create the changes that need to be made. And it was me and my generation back in the 60s.  And I just want to say to all of you, I am proud of you. I love you. I support you. And I am here for you. If you ever need me, I'm a call away. I'm going to put my number in the chat box. So again, it has truly been an honor. And I thank you all from the bottom of my heart for who you are and what you do. And one thing that has been particularly moving for me is that almost every one of you, if not every one of you, talked about the need to be both healers or said things that reflected to me that you understand that today we need to be both warriors for justice and healers. You said things that reflected to me your understanding that there is so much pain and trauma that is unhealed in this world. And of course, when we as a nation, when we as individuals and we as people are traumatized, then we and that trauma is not faced and that trauma is not processed and that trauma is not healed. We act in hurting ourselves or we act out hurting others. So therefore, in a nation that was born in the trauma of slavery, the slave trade, genocide, land theft, white supremacy, racial capitalism, this trauma after trauma after trauma, multiple traumas, endless traumas. And because we have never faced those birth traumas, we are reenacting them today. Elijah McClain, George Floyd, Walter Scott, Trayvon Martin, and countless others. So it is so gratifying to hear you talk about calling events where you do healing work as well as justice work. Of course, there's just as much injustice in our world as there is harm. So I want to again, just give you a deep bow of gratitude and thanksgiving for who you are, for what you do, for being both warriors and healers. Thank you for answering the call of history, my children. Thank you. And when I say my children, it doesn't mean, let me just add, I say my children because I have that motherly feeling to you. But at the same time, it does not mean that I cannot learn from you. So I want you to know that I am here to offer guidance when you ask if you needed. And I am also here to learn from you because you are the ones who are leading us into new futures. Thank you. Fania, I'm going to ask if you can also share a little bit more about impact in regards to looking at police brutality, looking at reform, looking at defunding the police, looking at reallocating resources in schools, racial healing being discussed on a national level, and even amongst Congress members for reconciliation, the need for abolition. And we have a conversation. Can you and I have a conversation about that a little bit? Sure, you want to come to my camera? Oh, okay, sure. Thank you so much. And I just wanted to note there was somebody else joining us a little bit late and to offer them space to offer us a greeting whenever that fits with your agenda. Okay, welcome. Welcome. Okay, Fania, are you ready? I'm going to turn. Okay, sure. So first of all, if you can share just some of the impact that you're seeing locally and nationally at municipality level. Well, I think this is a time of immense pain and a time of immense opportunity. I think that we're looking as Americans, especially white Americans, into the mirror and facing our history like never before. We are, for the first time, beginning to understand the role of police in our history, police starting as slave patrols who tortured and and and grievously harmed Africans who were trying to escape or resisting anyway. Police who then arrested black people enforcing the black codes for spitting, for talking too loud in the presence of a white person, for not having a job. Police who for standing on the street corner, two people for standing on the street. Police who whose job was to deliver black bodies to white lynching mobs in the post reconstruction era in the segregation era up into the civil rights era and really continuing today. Police who didn't protect our civil rights who disappeared so that white supremacist could harm, main kill. Yes. And a police who today, of course, continued that ugly, that hideous tradition of white supremacy and racial terror in the form of mass incarceration and police killings. So we're beginning to understand that that has been the role of police. We denied that history for centuries, for centuries. And so I am encouraged to see that we're finally awakening to our origins in slavery and the slave trade and genocide and land theft. Because, of course, we perpetuated the myth for so long that we are a nation born and liberty proposition of all people are created equally. We are beginning to see and I'm so excited about this moment because we're beginning to see we were born not in liberty, but in terror. And I don't want to take too much more time, but I'm also encouraged by the fact that it's white people who are waking up to these to these truths of our history. People of Gullah know it all along. It's in our DNA. It's in our DNA. And we've had daily lived experiences of those truths, but the difference now is that white people are awakening to it. And we're finding that 63% of participants in these protests all over the country are white. After Ferguson and before today, it was mostly black people in these police protests. Back just a few days ago, it seems, white people would not allow us to say Black Lives Matter without them coming back with white lives matter, right? But today, 76% of the entire population of this country supports Black Lives Matter. And 71% of the white people believe that this nation has not done nearly enough to end discrimination. And the statues devoted to slavery and the Confederacy are coming down. And statues and memorials to victims of lynching and slavery are coming up. Universities all over are starting to tell the truth about their complicity with slavery and the slave trade and are apologizing not just saying sorry, but doing sorry. Yes, they are engaging in reparations. And like at Harvard, for example, there is a memorial, beautiful memorial to slaves who labored there. And the same with other colleges as well. Buildings that were named after presidents who were slave owners at Harvard were renamed for the slaves who toiled in those buildings. So we're seeing a reawakening, not a reawakening, but an awakening like never before. And for me, defund the police. That's that. I mean, I'm talking about excited. I'm really excited about that. Because defund the police is like, you know, abolishing police, but not just saying no, also saying yes. It is time for us to end these systems and these institutions and these structures that systematically harm black people that subjugate black people. And defund the police is also a yes. And it is time now for us to reimagine policing. Reimagine how we do public safety, how we ensure public safety in this country. And so to me, that that's just really, really exciting. And to see in Minneapolis, I've talked to some of the Minneapolis people, especially Dominic on the line, about how the city council in Minneapolis has said they are adopting the defund the police strategy. And they're looking to the community to figure out what that's going to look like. So I'm really excited. I feel that, you know, if we are to ever make the changes that we need to make it were to ever ensure that the killing stops, we've got to number one, face our history, take responsibility for it and act to repair it and imagine new futures. And this is the moment when we're doing all of those things. And with that note of reimagining ourselves and how we are in relationship to each other, how we are in relationship to institutions and institutions to the community, as well as to the land that we live on is huge. And that's why we're here. As an African American granddaughter of Mississippi, an artist, an activist, and lay historian, I constantly find ways of what gives me purpose. Why am I here? How do I serve in real ways? And so that is the intention of our gathering today to connect, to lift up you, to celebrate and to honor all of those of the shoes that we're walking in the shoulders that we're standing on. And I'm looking at the time, it's 1228. I would like to do something that gives us closure, but also I would hope that we can come back together again. Oh, Wille? Yes, yes. Wille, this is Smiley. I'm sorry if I'm not. So we have one minute before we are kicked off unless we got a little additional time added, I don't know. Well, let me check in with you. She's been trying to speak for a moment. Okay. To open your videos too, okay, everyone? Hi, everyone. I just wanted to say again that I'm super honored to be here. And I wanted to say really quick that like when I was 15 in 2015, I saw Roger's play at Cranumber Theater, and I was really inspired by it. And now I'm producing my own solo play at Mixed Split Theater in Minneapolis. It all goes full circle. And I'm very grateful to share space and feel very honored to be here with every one of you. But I also have two youth who have done a lot of anti-police work in Minneapolis that I want to introduce themselves. Great. And then a quick question. Do you guys, can we get together in the next two weeks where we can just talk about your work as artists and where we can talk and ask Roger questions and learn about various platforms, right? And invite more people in. Okay. Hi. We, I just wanted to let folks know that we have been granted more time. So, you know, whoever needs to speak can speak. Thank you. Whatever needs to be done needs to be done. So thank you HowlRound for doing that. Thank you HowlRound. Thank you, Smiley. Could we close our cameras so that we can talk about more? Thank you. Hi. My name is Manny. I'm 20 years old from Minneapolis. I was, we're back on one. We're okay. I am a organizer turned facilitator of a group called YPAC, Young People's Action Coalition, which is a small group of high schoolers throughout Minneapolis and St. Paul that organized once a week to try and dismantle SROs in schools. And so far we've been winning that battle. But before I speak on that, I was wondering if I had like, like 45 seconds of you guys' time to just spit a real quick piece that I wrote over the 45 minutes. Take your time. I wrote this piece for Black History Month, but then it became more prevalent as, you know, the time showed themselves. I said, victims of the system. My papa told me, keep on reaching right to the kingdom. If you feeling mad, then use all of that rhythm to demonstrate that both of your blood is still crimson. Came into our homes. They forced us into submission. Yet my brother's cousins and sisters treated like villains in school. All the history was rewritten, poured all our pain and suffering they sipping. I said, I'm a prophet with no message. I'm gonna pull the weight of my people with no carriage. I'm gonna be the one that helps settle the wreckage. I think it's time to kidnap Trump for some leverage victory like it's a beverage. We can go travel the world. Let's go to Paris. But first we got to win this battle with no weapons. Supposed to be the student, but I got all the lessons. And so I wrote that piece for Black History Month a little while back. And yeah. And, you know, it's art and different forms of expression have been such a powerful weapon in rehabilitating and fighting this battle that we've been fighting for years now. I've been pushing with other teams in my community to get SROs. I was about 16. Esauk was there with me. What's up y'all? My name is Esauk Dua. I'm a 22 year old activist from the south side of Minneapolis. I've been doing a bunch of crowdfunding to buy different safety equipment and medical equipment for the different community organizing or community patrols in the south side after, you know, we pushed the police out. So yeah, I mean, I've been distributing mostly gas masks, bulletproof vests, walkie-talkies, laser pointers, whatever to the different community patrols all through the south side, whether it be Cedar Riverside, the Native Coalition and Little Earth, the Mexicans in the 20s, and then the Visual Security, which is where I currently like doing my volunteer work. So yeah, nice to meet you guys.   Now our next battle is what do we do in place of MPD?  And if you guys need like my contact information, like, that'd be amazing. Like, we'll drop it all in the chat. Absolutely, absolutely. Yeah. Minneapolis here. We are here. We are here. We lie. We lie. Can you put everybody's videos on? Everyone, if you can turn your videos back on, and do you want to go to gallery view? So you can see each other. Oh, yeah. Beautiful. Naima, I just wanted to check. There was a young adult from restorative justice, Folkland youth, Nia. Did Nia make it? Because we didn't get a chance to hear Nia. My video won't turn on. But Nia, Nia for some, yeah, I haven't heard from her this morning, but she really, really, really wanted to be here. So maybe next. Yeah. I know she would love that. And perhaps even some of the other youth apprentices. Okay, so there were two things that I had. I wanted to make sure that we had a chance to talk about what's next, and also self care, because you guys have been working so hard, giving up so much. And on the front line, bodies on the line, just how are you taking care of yourself so that we can learn from each other? So if anybody wants to start us off, and I've got my first question about self care, it's like, what do you plug into? What music helps to settle your spirit or your soul? How do you stay centered? Okay. Anybody can go. If I will, as a young songwriter in the city, some of my biggest inspirations have been Lauren Hill and Frank Ocean and Brent Fias, mostly because not only are they lyrical geniuses, just absurd, but they always have a message that is meant to stay with you. If you listen to Zion by Lauren Hill, to my knowledge, it's about a child. It's about her carrying a baby, and like the pain and struggle she went with it, but also about how it was such a beautiful experience for her. And it's like songs like that, and songs like Bad Religion by Frank Ocean, or Pink and White by Frank Ocean. But anyways, the main point is, I am such a stand. The main point is, is that there are so many messages that these artists put out that have a grip on your soul that stay with you. And it pushes me, because there's no better feeling than walking into a board meeting while listening to some Lauren Hill to back you up. It's almost like she got her hand on your shoulder, man.  And there's no better feeling. I don't know about y'all, but that's what it is for me. You know what I'm saying? I would say, I listen to, to get pumped up, like to get out in the field, I probably listen to a whole lot of G Herbo, Chief Sosa, you know what I'm saying? Midwest up in here! Hey man! You did! You did! Every time you step out the crib, you roll in the dice, so. Oh my god!  But yeah, Frank Ocean on the way home when I'm crying, you know? If I could go off of that, I would say that I've just been so appreciative to have the support of Black women and Black fems and Minneapolis especially, like I couldn't, I wouldn't be getting through any of this, like I just wouldn't. I wouldn't be able to do, I wouldn't be able to wake up in the morning if I, like if I didn't know, I would be getting a text from the day in the morning, like what is there to wake up for if I, if I didn't have all of the, the incredible dedication from Black women that I don't even know, I haven't even, because of COVID, but just the, the love and the pure care and attention to my healing that all of the Black women and fems in my life and Minneapolis have shown me right now has really gotten me through all of this, and the Black women and fems who have come to me and reached out to me for how to heal and for bringing me on to be a part of their spiritual journeys and astrology or entero, it's like amazing.  And especially in our adolescence and as teenagers, it was incredibly hard. We were normally the only people at our school or one of few at our schools or in our communities. And so, this time of getting to build community with groups of people that I have been estranged from, it's like, it feels like coming home and it feels like making Minneapolis and Minnesota a home for once, because I've lived all over Minnesota and settling here in Minneapolis this is the first time I've felt like I'm genuinely home. And so, that's been the most healing thing ever. And if anybody needs kind of help or someone to walk them through getting into astrology or tarot or Wicca, please reach out to me because that is what I do. I've been a astrologer for four years. And so, I've loved being able to provide those healing services to Black women and Black people in general as well. I can share for me, I've been mental health is something that's super important to me. And I've been doing a lot of yoga, going outside, trying to spend as much time as I can in nature as something that's really grounding for me. I've been reading a lot and just going to a lot of different events, a lot of art healing events, because that's always a space where I can recharge. And I think it's always really important to just find things that bring you joy might not be the same things that bring me joy or bring the next person joy, but anything you know that you can do that maybe you forgot about that you like. So, again, my name is Zaday. Things that bring me healing. I'll just mention my mother is the founder of the first nationwide Black owned co-op, farmers co-op for hemp and for produce. So, I live out here on a farm with my mom to support her with that movement. And what I found was really healing for me was a concept called grounding, which is when you go outside, right?  And what that does is it brings a gravitational pull to your feet and to the ground, which can bring you calming energy and can help you kind of balance out those roadblocks that are inside of your body. So, grounding is a way that I help to heal myself.  So, being around children is really healing for me. As someone who is a retired empath, right, I don't want to pick up on people's energy anymore. I always encourage people to do things that nourish themselves first, and then nourish others. So, eating good foods, clean foods, I always recommend warm water, warm teas in the morning. It helps set your digestion for the day. Cold foods can sometimes bring a lot of shock to your body first thing. So, I always tell people, you know, teas, sometimes mushroom coffee. So, things such as that, and crying babies. Anyone else want to share? What are we sharing again? I'm sorry, my Zoom maybe kicked me out again. What do you do for stuff? Oh, I like to sing a lot. So, when I when I'm really stressed out, my favorite artist is Sam Smith. Just if you listen to one of his songs, his voice is just like, his voice is out of this world. Whenever he just opens his mouth, I get chills and just thinking about it. So, I like to sing to him when I'm really stressed out because his voice is so calming and just reassuring. And he's been like, all of his songs are about going through something. So, if you just look through his albums and you'll find something to sing with, it's just amazing. So, yeah. I can go next. You can go ahead. Okay. My form of self-care is once a week, I do, I take spiritual baths. And it's not just like baths where like I would put like a bath bomb in there. I would set my intention for the week or something that I need to like cleanse myself of from that week, all of the energy that I picked up on. And I kind of align everything that I use in that bath to that intention. So, like say if it's centered in love, or it's, yeah, say if I want to center my spiritual bath in love, I use Palo Santo, which is an herb that you can use to cleanse energies. And so, people like to relate it to sage, but it's quite different. And I also like to put roses and use rose water in my baths and lemongrass candles for good energy and stuff like that. And while I take the baths, I use no electronics other than my speaker, which I use to play healing frequencies, whichever, whichever lines that we, you know, it could be anxiety relief, or pain relief, relief from like the overwhelming feeling from trauma and stuff like that. And I just sit in the bath and I soak and I basically just envision the water just picking up on everything that I've picked up on through that week. And as I drain the bath, I just see it all going down the tub. And that's one of my favorite forms of self-care. So, what I tend to do, you know, not really good at like listening to my emotions or, they're valid, but I really like paying attention to them. But I'm trying to learn, but what I do when I'm having like a really rough day or something is I love nature. So, I tend to go hiking, biking somewhere where trees and the rivers are. And while I'm hiking or whatever, biking, I'm like talking to God, like just screaming, yelling at God, crying to God, anything, just like, like the higher power and like understanding that in the day. Like this life is a journey and we're spiritual beings and we're meant to have a human experience and just trying my best to like understand the bigger picture. But that's what I tend to do. I just talk to God. That's me. I just wanted to say something really briefly just to really share gratitude to all of you who turned out for this space and all of you who convened it. I never would have imagined I'd be in the presence of such generational greatness on both sides. As a Yelder, 31 years old, I feel a little bit stuck sometimes because I'm accountable to the way that my generation failed to create a better movement for young folks. And I'm also inspired by the means of, by the ability of making good, right, of becoming the elders that I needed and that I had in the space. So really, I get healing from spaces like this and from seeing that it's so, so much bigger than me and and her. Can we see her again? Can we, that was very quick. Dominique. Oh. Tilt you. There you go. Hi. How are you? Good. Won't you show them the shirt? You brought up the word elder and I want to just thank you. I want to always have mentors in my life and one of my mentors you've heard speak, Fania. My other mentor is Vinny who was on our call earlier.  So think about who are the young people in your lives that you can mentor and who are the mentors or the leaders are the activists that inspire you and how do you stay connected with them and to learn from them because they have so much wisdom and experience that we need. And for me, it's medicine, a medicine that I need. So I want to say thank you to Fania for being here. I want to say thank you to Roger for being here. Thank you to Dominique as elders in this space and Vinny if you're still here, thank you. I look forward to us getting back together. I'm so happy that we said in two weeks we're going to be together again and we're going to bring more youth together. I hope we can do something to create work, either creating work like you're doing right now or collaborating where we can create across boundaries. So keep that in mind, okay? Art as a healing, art and art as protests, theater for social change. So here are you ready to share your poem? We're going to have your poem and we're going to close. Wait, me? Me? Yeah, everybody's performed. Okay. We got kicked off when some of the performances were happening.  Can you please, all right. Sorry, have a little brother here. Okay, I'll give you a second, everyone. I'm trying to get everything settled. The piece that she's performing is by a pretty famous vocalist by the name of Raymond Knapp Turner, and I emphasize his middle and last name, Knapp Turner, who's performed as a jazz poet with upsurge and as town prior, and he's given his love. Okay, yeah, so just FYI, I have him here, so he's going to... Don't even worry. King, hey, King. Can Sarah perform? Hey, King. Yeah, let's say, have a perform, boo boo. Okay. Okay, are you shooting, looting, scouting, lynching, torturing their way across the continent. 400 years ago, colonial settler thugs launched this endless crimson tide rolling down on today. King, can you... I'm sorry. Let me get him out of here and then I'm going to restart. Okay. Beautiful start though. I'm very excited. And they always say obstacles make for the best performance. After her piece, we'll each share something that we're taking away and an affirmation for somebody in this space, okay? Right. Shooting, looting, scouting, lynching, launched this endless crimson tide rolling down on today. Colonial settler thugs, endless crimson tide, invisible yellow crime scene take, criss-crossing Tallahassee to Seattle, San Diego to Bangor, shooting Seneca, Seminole, Creek, Choctaw, Mohawk, Cayuga, Blackfee, shooting Sue, Shawnee, Chickasaw, Chippewa before looting Lakota land, before looting Aloni land, before looting Ashanti land, Fulani, Hwasa, Woluf, Yoruba, Ibo, Congo, Mongo, Hutu, Zulu, Labor. Colonial settler thugs launched this endless crimson tide, hot lead storms, shooting, looting Mexico for half of New Mexico, a quarter of Colorado, some of Wyoming, and most of Arizona, looting Mexico for Utah, Nevada, and California. So next time Orange Mobutu, Boston is dirty with Duterte, howling for shooting. Next time demented minions raise rifles to shoot, remind them that real looters wear Brook Brothers suits or gold-brade and junk metals across their chests, real looters with capitalist hill accomplices, so trillions, not fox bosses, fox boxes, silly sneakers or cheap clothes. Thank you. That's gonna be our final word out. I want to say thank you to everyone in the space. I want to say thank you to my community partner, Hal Round, and also to Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth, our joy. And until next time, in two weeks from now, we'll be back together. Thank you, everyone. Thank you for joining us at Hal Round. Thank you, everyone. Thank you. Be safe. Blessings, everyone. Yes. No. Much love, y'all. Thank you, everyone. Take care.


All right, so you've poured your art resin. It looks awesome, but there's bubbles on the surface that keep forming. Now most of them will go away by themselves, but there's a couple methods I'm going to talk about here for getting rid of your bubbles. So the first and easiest method is simply to just blow on them with your mouth. You don't have to blow hard and just see them disappear. You can even get a little straw blowing specific spots. That also really helps. A second method is a hair dryer. Doesn't work. It's not enough heat. Scrap that idea. Even if you read about it, it doesn't work. Another thing is a heat gun. It does work. Not my favorite method. It's not the one that I do. They usually have cables and I find that when you're using a heat gun, the cable often will get in your resin. You have to manage that thing. If you can get a battery operated one, that's okay. But the best method is to use a flame. So we just have this. It's a kitchen flambé torch. You can use a larger propane torch. This one is fine. Just use a butane, just like a lighter. All you're going to do, I'm probably maybe four, five inches. You don't have to be exact. Back and forth. Just cover every bit of the painting with the heat and you will just see the bubbles just being forced out. You just have to go over the whole surface once until you've covered every bit. Then your best to just, you know, do one last wipe of any drips. Cover it and then get out of there. Awesome. So that's how you get rid of all of the bubbles on your art resin piece. I hope that was helpful. If you have any more questions, we do have a massive FAQ on art resin.com. You can always leave comments below with any of your questions. We're happy to help you out and maybe even make a video showing you what to do. As always, our hashtag art resin contest is on and we're still picking one winner a month to get a free gallon of art resin. Cool. Looking forward to seeing what you make.