So thanks for coming to this event. A continuation of our dialogue on diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think the folks that need to be here are here. So a very warm welcome to all of you. I'd like to say special welcome to Cedric King, Tim Wise, and Sandra Clark, who you will all hear from this evening as part of our ongoing conversation. Special welcome to our Lieutenant Governor, who's been traveling the state to talk about ban books. This evening's program is dedicated to the memory of the late Big Joe Borel, and is made possible in part by the Association of Africans Living in Vermont, Champlain Housing Trust, Yves Bradley and Karen Durfee, Howard Center, Ben & Jerry's, Office of the Vermont State Treasurer, Homilary and Estate, M&T Bank, Key Bank, Attorneys at Paul Frank and Collins, and Vermont Humanities. Special thanks to UVM Extension, and our media sponsor today is Ron Public. Introducing our speakers this evening are State Treasurer Mike Pichac, Susanna Davis, Executive Director of Racial Equity for the State of Vermont, and Stuart Ledbetter, Senior Reporter from News Five. It is now my pleasure to welcome Mike Pichac to the podium to introduce our first speaker. Very much for being here this evening. I have the pleasure of introducing Cedric King, Army Veteran, Author and Athlete, but first I wanna thank Patrick Brown and the Greater Burlington Multicultural Resource Center for organizing another evening of thought-provoking, engaging, enriching speakers that will surely bring their words and experiences to the community to enrich us all. Cedric, just by reading his biography, but also meeting him backstage, you can tell that he is the best of America. I believe he'll renew your faith in America. He graduated from the Army Ranger School and went on to serve three tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. While overseas, Cedric's platoon came under heavy fire and he stepped on an IED, awaking eight days later in the United States. Cedric had sustained disfigurement on his right hand and both of his legs were amputated. Even after all this, he said that he is very thankful that he got the chance to serve his country. His courage and dedication to our country has earned him the Bronze Star, the Purple Heart, among many other awards. Since his injuries, he has run marathons, climbed mountains, become an author and an inspirational speaker. I look forward to hearing Cedric and his unique experience and I look forward to him making us want to be better within our families, our communities and be better for our nation. And with that, I'd love to introduce Cedric Kain. If you've not explained, here's a parking meter out there. If you could wave your magic wand, but if not, it's okay too. Thank you guys so much for coming out here tonight. Wonderful. Get comfortable up here, but I want to make sure that I find out who we got in the room tonight, all right? Just by the show of hands, in the 1960s. Where ya at? 1960s, okay, okay, okay, yeah! What's your name young lady? Gwynn, all right, are you ready? All right, get ready, here we go. All right, all you gotta do, Gwynn, all I need you to do is just give me the final parts of this lady. I'm gonna stop at some point in the song and Gwynn, I need you to save the day and pick it up, I'm pretty quick. Got something I'm not gonna sing it. Wait, if you sing it, then I'm gonna be forced to sing it, all right? I've got sunshine on a cloudy day. Go! Okay, now Gwynn, a lot of people are counting on you, all right? You gonna be singing? I've got sunshine, yes ma'am, white blue shirt, one of my favorite colors, what is your name young lady? K.R.G. from the 70s gave it to myself, so listen, I take pride in this right here and I'm gonna give you a layer just because we found it, all right? You're gonna be found, all right? Here we go. You should notice, because, you're from the 70s, all right? I'm gonna sing the parts of the song that probably you should know, but here's the deal, if this song is gonna be so popular, you cannot help her out, okay? If you know it, don't start singing it yet. Let this young lady win. Okay, are you ready? This, that hold on, to let me die, be it or not. We got each other, don't help her, I can see you, ladies and gentlemen, now I see you can help her out, I need each other, and that's a lot for love. You're getting ready to give me some talk, but I need you to make sure we get into these talks successfully and with a whole lot of energy, all you break, this song is a layup and all the young ladies back there, they know that you either know it or you don't, are you ready? Go. Now, if you don't know the song, right, this is one of the great songs of the young people these days, all right? All right, you ready? What you doing? Where you at? Oh, you got plans? Don't say that, go. Don't. What you got? I told you what you got, Andrew, what you got? All right, well look, we need to go ahead and get you up, man. Look, I got out and I need some too. It's not a lot of excuse room right here, can anybody help him out? Please help, don't get on your plan, all right? You obviously got something going right. I wanted to just help you out today and just be able to share some of the things that helped me just climb out of that dark place. And hey, let's just be honest. Everybody's been in a dark place before, lost something or two things today. But it felt like I lost some part of me too. If you've ever been in a situation where, where maybe you didn't lose two legs, but you lost somebody, or maybe you lost something, and in that moment, I'm gonna describe how I feel and maybe I describe how you feel too. In those moments where you just lost something that was a part of you for your whole life, what ends up happening is, you have this initial feeling of, I just lost this, whatever it is you're living in life. And I've lived my whole life like this, opposed to make it to tomorrow. If today, I'm without this and it's this difficult, have you ever been there before? It felt like the finer chapter. What's the use of me just getting through right now? It's so difficult, so painful. Not to mention embarrassing. Not to mention embarrassing that now I'm walking differently than everybody else. And just all over my body, people are telling me that they love me, but the truth is I don't even love me. So how in the world can you love me feeling like this? Yes, you can be in a room with hundreds of people, but when you feel like you're the only one going through things, it can feel like you're the only person in a hundred miles. I'm sitting there trying to figure out how in the world am I gonna get you tomorrow in the truth of the matter is this. This isn't Sunday school and nor will I ever try to be Reverend Gene, but these three things, and I hope that you can take it with you. My faith, my family, and my focus. These three things, and I'll begin with my faith, and I'm not ashamed of it, but I wanna share it. It was a moment where I was so angry that this God that is supposed to be almighty and supposed to love me so much has now fallen asleep on the job. I just stood on top of an explosive and had both my legs blown off while I was trying to do the right thing. This is bad things happening to a person that tries to do good. Here it is right here. Let me bring it even closer. I didn't think that bad things were supposed to happen to good people. What's the point of being good if bad happens? I might as well be one of the bad guys. I'm gonna put this right down or make sure that you can post this. Here it is. Bad things happen to good people. Bad things happen to bad people. But here it is. Bad things make bad people turn into really bad people or make it super villains. Bad things help good people turn into superheroes. And the question I have for you tonight is what are the challenges in life turning you into? Are you turning into complainer man? Woman? Or are you turning into a gratitude man? Faith, field, man. Believe woman. Super problems, super problems also bring superpowers. Now I'm not sure if there are any millennials in here that have superheroes, but we grew up with superheroes. I don't think that this whole Marvel and DC comic started just 10 years ago. No, it started a long time ago. Now, Duncan, who is your favorite superhero? How did Tony get all these powers? His powers. How did Spider-Man get these web powers? You have to get by a spider. It's pretty easy. But the spider was a radioactive spider. Everybody's been bitten by something, but I bet you ain't got bitten by no super radioactive spider.  No! The Incredible Hope. Something bad happened to him. I'm pretty sure he wasn't planning on becoming a superhero with all these powers. Something happened in the laboratory one night. Flags struck my bolt of light, made him super quick. Superman's whole planet blew up.  Now, Bruce was rich, so that helps a little bit. Helps a little bit.  Yes, Alfred was there. He was. He was infected to a nice man's murder. But that's beyond the point, people. What I'm saying is, bad things do happen to good people. And these super powers, they come with super problems. Maybe that's one way to look at it. But if you flip it around, everybody's had super problems. That would mean, that would mean this.  It deposited a super power. Using these super problems in life to help you find your super power. For me, this is my day right here. And I did not look at it as a gift in a game. I did. We look at it as maybe this is karma. Maybe when I took the BB gun and I shot the puppy, I am getting some sort of a payback for that. Anybody competed in here, it was a long time ago, all right? So listen, the statute of limitations, so you can't, it's out of seven, out of seven. But we go over our life, we go to history of our life, and we think that, man, I'm somehow deserving of this. They're not in the way that you think you are. They select you. No different than the lottery ticket you picked. Me hitting the lottery. No people on that patrol, that particular day, in Afghanistan, I am the one guy that stepped on it.  And I am the one that lost a pair of ladies. Now I have one or two ways to look at this. I can look at it as this happened to me, no different than you. This made me happen for you. Did you hear what it said? I have a choice to make. Did this happen to me, or maybe did this happen for you? And it doesn't matter which one you pick right now, but I will tell you this. The more you are able to align your mind with the lab, better your life will be. Now there will still be freezing cold days here in Vermont. Matter of fact, Patrick, thank you for bringing me up here in September. Thank you for that, sir. You lost mine. I can only imagine what it will feel like here in January of the 30th. So, but now look at whatever comes my way and I can look at it through the lens of it happening for me. Everybody in here, everyone in here knows exactly what to do when the lottery ticket has all the numbers on it. You know how to party on the beautiful days when it's 70 and sunny outside. You know how to react when she says yes to your proposal. You know how to act when your contract gets selected. Everybody knows how to react on the good days, but what I am asking you to learn how to do it with practice, look at the not so good days and say, man, maybe I can use this as well. Maybe this incredibly bitter medicine is actually going to help me get even further in life. Help me bless even more people. Help me be even more generous. Help me open my heart and love again. Is it possible? Working meter outside right now, if there is a person outside putting a boot on my rent a car right now, I ain't have practiced this philosophy so much that now I think that the guy that is putting a boot on my car probably needs a little bit of speech and let me help him out. Got to get the boot off my car but maybe he's going through something. Tonight is just a reframe. Of the way to seek things. Because tomorrow is Saturday. It'll be great. Maybe your team will win them all. Who knows? Maybe tonight your high school team is probably winning. Who knows? But I do know Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday is coming up. And those days are going to have some sort of hurdle for you to clean. And you know it. And the hurdle knows it. Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday against here. I want you to have the courage to see it differently than maybe it ever happened. No matter what the doctor says. A relationship that's probably on the rocks and you don't think it will make it. Maybe you can look at it through a new lens. I hope you can. It really works.  This is take a second and look at the way that you've been seeing things and maybe look at it through a new lens. Man, it was tough in the beginning. Not just for me looking at myself and learning to love what I saw but also it was tough because now I'm still a husband I'm still a barber. I still want to be looked at as attractive a little bit. I still want my daughters to look up at me like I'm their hero I've been used to. And without any promptings from the outside I automatically started feeling unworthy because of what I saw on the outside. How many of us take ourselves down a notch or two or three or four not because of what we did on the outside but how we feel and how we look at ourselves on the outside. What we said, what we failed to do. The people that really love you and people that really, really love you are who you are. They love you for who you are. Love is a gift and it is given and it doesn't have any strings attached. I'm sure, I'm sure tonight everyone in this room yes you ma'am, yes you sir. Yes ma'am you. Each one of us, we have someone in our life that loves us beyond what we do and what we say and what we provide. People love us beyond that. And I pray, I pray tonight that you will allow, you will allow yourself to be loved. And through that love, find your way back to loving yourself. Now, I want to open it up for Q and A for just a second if we have time. I wanna make sure that not only I don't need a boot on my car but I also want to make sure that everyone in here has an opportunity to ask the question that maybe everyone in here is afraid to pass. Have the courage to raise your hand and ask the question that everybody's like oh no, that's so embarrassing. I'm sure there is a question or two and if there is, I'm gonna have the courage enough to answer. You have the courage enough to ask it. Three, two, one, yes sir. What's your name? Jeff. Jeff, what's up? How are you doing? Doing great man, I ain't doing great right now. We'll see you in about 10 minutes now. Jeff, I wanna be straight up and honest with you and like I said I'm gonna have the courage enough to tell you the truth. I'm still working on the truth here. It's a constant daily battle of making sure that my orientation is pointed straight toward this is how to be important. Like anybody who's on a football, the first time you pick it up, you don't throw that spiral and it's like a bullet the first time. It looks like a duck sometimes but the more you do it, the prettier it is and the more I wake up in gratitude, the more I wake up in love and thankfulness, the better my life is. I'm kind of just over here. I wanna thank everybody in here tonight for coming out. Thank you so, so much and thank you so much. Good evening, I'm Josiah Davis, commercial equity director for the state and it is my distinct pleasure to introduce our next speaker tonight. Tim Wise is really a person who does not need an introduction. I think if by now you don't know who Tim Wise is then our problems run far deeper than we realized but I'll share a few details about him and allow him to regale us with his wisdom afterwards. Tim has spent the last 30 years as an anti-racism educator and author. He's been to over 1500 college campuses around the country, has set foot in every single state in this country, in academia, in corporate settings, in all kinds of organizations, providing people insight and wisdom and genuine calls to action on how to combat racism in the United States. He served as a distinguished professor and advisor to places like Smith College, Washburn University, Fiske University. You'll find him frequently on venues like NPR, CNN, MSNBC. His lectures and videos for those of you who keep score through streaming and viewership have garnered over 30 million views online. And I wanna highlight the fact that Tim has been doing this, like I've said, for over 30 years. That's long before it became fashionable for white people to talk about race and racism. That's long before the great white guilt of 2020 when suddenly everyone was talking about it. And in fact, we're honored to have him here tonight because this isn't his first time visiting us in Vermont. He was here in 2019. Some of you may remember when we came together on MLK weekend in 2021, right after the release of his essay collection, Dispatches from the Race Four. By the way, what you don't know about that day is that he got snowed in and was stuck in Vermont. And yet somehow we managed to bring him back again for a third tour, so it's with deep appreciation that I introduce to you Mr. Tim Wise. Well, it is a pleasure and an honor to be back. I think there is a chance that the reason that Patrick contacted me to bring me back at this time was not so much because he likes hearing me speak or because he thinks I have something valuable to offer, though I assume both of those are true, but because he just wanted to prove to me that indeed you have a season other than January. It is good to be here. I thought the leaves would have turned more though, Vermont. Like this is a bit disappointing, but it's still nice. It's nice and cool. It's better than the Nashville where I live where it was 87 yesterday and really humid, so it's nice to be back. Patrick did tell me that for this evening, all three of us as presenters were sort of charged with telling something personal about ourselves if you have seen me speak before, you know that I can do an hour of analytical framing. I can do an hour of data-driven presentation to prove the reality of systemic racism and that that is something that I've done in some capacity for, as you heard, over 30 years. But given the timeframe that we have and the particular charge that Patrick gave us, I'm gonna sort of dispense with that. I'm going to assume that those assembled don't need me to prove the reality of systemic racism and it's sort of weird to have to prove it anyway. But I will tell you a few things that I think will illustrate the points that I wanna make about race in America and why it is so important for those of us called white in particular to confront that thing that has hung over our heads as a country from its inception and really before its inception. Many years ago when I started doing this work, I was a college activist in New Orleans, Louisiana and afterward was a community organizer and at one point I was meeting with some of the folks who were sort of my mentors, right? They were gonna mentor me through the process of community organizing and one asked me why I cared about this issue of racism. I didn't after all have to, at least not in a direct and immediate sense as a white person, my life didn't depend on challenging it. Now I would argue existentially it did but that's a deeper theological question we haven't the time to necessarily parse this evening but my mentor was saying you do have the luxury practically and indeed I did and I do of more or less ignoring this thing. So why Tim, do you care so much about undoing racism as a white man in your early 20s from the south born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee now going to school in New Orleans, Louisiana? Why this? And I did what any good white liberal would do which is to immediately quote Martin Luther King, Jr. because of course that's what we do. We've memorized something that Dr. King said. We don't necessarily understand it but we memorized it and we love it and we're gonna offer it as proof of our bona fides and so I said something along the lines of well you know when injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere and my mentor said yeah that's good, that's taken so I'm gonna tell you what, I'm gonna give you a week I want you to think about it and then I want you to and he said while you're taking that week I want you to take inventory of your life so you can really understand the question that I ask you and so you can offer me an answer that is actually personal and not academic and not intellectual and not activist-y, right? Not the kind of thing you think you're supposed to say but the thing that's real. So I went back to my apartment and I did what we did in the 90s which is we took out a pen and paper and we just wrote stuff down because we didn't have a computer to do it on and I couldn't Google anything, I couldn't look it up, right? I had to write it down and so I did about 10 pages of stuff going back, reverse chronologically and think about how I ended up in a place that I did and it came to me that it had very little to do with any book I had read, it had nothing to do with any documentary film that I had seen, it had nothing to do with any kind of political orientation or philosophical or ideological propaganda that I had come across, it had nothing to do with any didactic training it had to do with what I had seen with my own eyes. I'm a child of the South and that actually makes a difference for those of you not from there that we suggest to you that it is only white folks from the South or with some connection to the South who I trust at all on the issue of race because those of us who are from the South unlike white folks from anywhere else don't take this the wrong way, please, don't be offended we know that this is the background noise of everything that's ever happened where we live now the irony is it's also the background noise of everything that's happened where you live the difference is if you're not from the South you don't have to know that. I did, because my side thankfully lost that war and y'all side wrote the books but what you need to remember, right is that all of us come from a place where race was the background noise of everything that was happening another thing Dr. King said but what you won't hear quoted on MLK Day is that white America was, these are his words not mine, poisoned to its soul by racism his words, what he said was that racism was as native to this country as pine trees and sagebrush and buffalo grass so it wasn't just my region but being from that region I could not help but see some things and be reminded of some things I went to preschool at a historically black college early childhood ed program at Tennessee State University one of only three kids in the room who weren't black why that mattered is that when I started elementary school in 1974 in Nashville a newly integrated public school system by the way even though it was 20 years after Brown v. Board so for those who remember Supreme Court said in 1954 that school should be desegregated with all deliberate speed there was nothing deliberate nor speedy about a 20 year delay but there I was in 1974 starting first grade in integrated classrooms and because I've been at that spot at Tennessee State where I wasn't the norm where I didn't get to take myself for granted and where my closest peers were black kids and I know as a side note like all white people tell you they had black friends normally were lying like all I had y'all was black friends and so when those friends started catching hell from teachers in ways that we were not those of us who were white even though all of us were acting fools cause we're six and that's what six year olds do they act like fools but some get treated differently than others some folks foolishness gets policed more than others even starting in kindergarten in first grade and second grade and third but because those kids were my friends not abstractions not just people on the other side of the room who I didn't know but these were people I'd either gone to preschool with or folks who looked like the folks I'd gone to preschool with and so I bonded typically with them I noticed their difference I could see it I didn't know what it was I mean I was smart but it's not like I went home the first week of first grade it said to my mother mom you will not believe the institutional white supremacy at Burton School I mean I was advanced but I wasn't that advanced and yet I knew there was something happening and years later when I was 11 years old playing ball on teams that were almost all black kids I was on a baseball team with like three white guys and the rest of the kids were black and we went out to a semi-rural area outside of Nashville to play a scrimmage game against a team out there and when we got there the team wouldn't step on the field with us because they didn't want to play a black team quote-unquote I beg to remind you this is 1980 not 1950 and not only do they not want to play us which was really their loss because we were terror and they wouldn't beat us they didn't want to play us but they surrounded the vehicle with baseball backs threatened to beat us I suppose to death called the black kids the N-word the white kids and the white coach N-word lovers and it was on that day that I understood something about race in this country I understood that it wasn't just a system that was pointed like a dagger at the heart of black people though it was certainly and most importantly and most directly that but it was also a system of thought and organization that was pointed like a dagger at the heart of my people as well because what these children were saying and their coaches did not step in to correct them and their crappy parents had clearly raised them as such they were saying that you white child you white child you white coach have somehow transgressed against the team you have committed treason against us you have a place and you have forgotten what it is see racism isn't just a system that tries to keep black and brown folks in their place it tries to keep white folks in ours that is to say counterposition to black and brown people just like patriarchy and misogyny does the same thing to men we are not the targets of it but I promise you it damages men it kills men it limits our humanity just as racism and white supremacy does to white folks so when I sat and I took inventory right I realized that that was the reason I cared because I had seen what I had seen now here's the twist to this plot because if I just stopped there it would be like oh what a heartwarming story Tim saw this at 11 this is host Mark well here's the problem sometimes you see certain things but you miss other things and sometimes when you're a nice white liberal raised by nice white liberal parents and you assume that you're a good person because you see these things and you care about them and you worry about their black friends being treated differently being disciplined more harshly being tracked into lower track classes being threatened with death by baseball bat wielding bigots in jolton, Tennessee because you assume that you're on the right side the side of the angels you are therefore good and you are insulated from the charge that you might collaborate with oppression yourself but here's the problem the same year that that happened the same year that I had that bonding experience around overt racism aimed at my friends and teammates I was in a school where all of the kids that I played ball with were in remedial or standard level classes and all of the honors or advanced level classes were with only one or two exceptions entirely white children and it wasn't because we were smarter it wasn't because we had tested better not that such a test would have been valid in any event it was because the presumption of our teachers was that those black children were less capable and the white children were more capable and here's the point even as I would do anything to protect those friends of mine from those baseball bat wielding bigots in Jolton I didn't even notice the systemic and structural injustice to which those same friends and other black kids at that school were being subjected every day Cedric told you a second ago in his presentation that sometimes bad things happen to good people absolutely true I will go one step further and tell you that sometimes good people get stuck in bad things good people get stuck in bad systems racism is not about good people over here and bad people over here it's about good folks caught up in a system that for hundreds of years has been predicated on the perpetuation of inequality and I know we're not supposed to say that and there are states where I can't now this is not one of them not yet a few months ago I did sneak into Florida and I brought critical race theory with me in my briefcase and I felt as though I had brought fentanyl I was looking around wondering when they were gonna kick me out but the law hadn't quite changed yet now it has, they don't want me back but we're not supposed to say these things not because they're not true but because apparently you don't make white children feel bad if you tell them the truth about the history of America I would suggest to you that if learning the history of America makes you feel bad as a white person it's because you're learning about the wrong white people let me say it again if learning the history of this country makes you feel bad as a white person it is because you were learning about the wrong white people they are teaching you about the white folks who did the enslaving who did the land stealing who did the conquest who did the imperialism rather than those who have been here all along stretching back to the colonies not enough of them but more than you were taught who stood up against all of that because there were always white folks who said hell no to that there were always white folks who stood in solidarity with black folks and with brown folks with indigenous peoples always and the fact that you can't name them in most cases is not your fault it's the fault of an educational system that didn't teach you about them there's plenty of things that we can be proud of as residents of this country be it citizens or not but among those things surely must be the examples of cross-racial solidarity and if we're gonna really perpetuate that kind of solidarity we gotta do more than just know this to obvious like I did in Jolton the obvious bigot like the fifth grade teacher that I had the year before that happened my mom got fired from her job for criticizing my friendship with those kids she actually made the mistake of telling my mother that any white parent who would let their white child go to public school in this day and age obviously needed to have their head checked well my mom didn't take that well she got that teacher removed from her source of employment good for her but neither she nor I acknowledged the institutional racism that was happening in that school so we got rid of Miss Crownover and then we came back to school the next week in those same academically segregated classes supposedly on the basis of merit but not really on the basis of assumptions about merit good people well intended getting caught up in bad systems and when you're a good person in a bad and flawed system it's an open question as to whether you'll change the system or it'll change you so keep that in mind we can never allow ourselves to get too haughty about how progressive we are how liberal we are how supposedly anti-racist we are how concerned about oppression we are because we're all just part of the same stew right one last story because it is usually around this time that someone thinks to themselves God you know you're right about that I mean I sort of get that like I can see that but it's really not my fault I mean I didn't create the system this way I'm not to blame for it somebody always wants to tell you they didn't own any enslaved person I'm fully aware of the age of the people in my audiences I know that none of you owned another human being thank you for clearing that up for me I know that very few of you probably are old enough to have owned a business during segregation or to have lynched someone in the 1930s I'm clear on that but we as white folks love to say that we like to say well I wasn't there I didn't do what I feel bad I mean we really should do something about that but it isn't my responsibility but here's the final story to make clear to you that it is and it's not a story about race at all it's a story I've told but I haven't told it in a couple of years so if you've heard it before it might be a little rusty but here it is so this is a story about what happened when I graduated from college and moved into a big house with nine other people as a side note if you don't learn anything else tonight from my presentation that would be a shame but if you do not learn anything else this evening from my presentation for the love of God take this away never should you deliberately move into a house with nine other people this is going to be a horrible, horrible mistake even if you shine it up with the idea that it's a progressive press collective or some shit which is what we did we're running an underground paper no we're not we're just living in filth and squalor nine of us, ten of us that's all we're doing we're splitting rent that's why we did it I mean rent was $525 a month I don't mean per person I mean total it was 1990 so 52.50 a month per person man when you are broke and just out of college you will jump at that but you don't know what's coming even when you add the cable bill and the light bill and we split the food, the grocery you're still looking at it like a hundred a month man can't beat it right don't do it don't do it I did it and about I don't know maybe two months in to this little experiment to communal living I learned why it was a bad idea so I've been at work during the day and I worked in the offices of the campaign that was formed for the purpose of defeating David Dube former clan leader lifelong white supremacist neo-nazi when he ran for the US Senate this was that year and I came home from a long day of work fighting Nazis or at least this one Nazi right and I'm exhausted I'm tired I walk in and one of the roommates of the nine whose turn it was to cook dinner because we didn't just split the cost we also took turns cooking it was his turn he had made a big pot of gumbo for the night because it's New Orleans and that's what she did and it smelled good it even had shrimp in there not many like I said we were broke but there were like three three shrimp for ten people and they weren't even my big shrimp they weren't like jumbo shrimp they were like popcorn shrimp maybe even smaller than that but it was enough to make the stink that we had seafood gumbo so we felt like some kind of way about that like really excited and rich for the minute you know so it smelled great and when my roommate asked me if I wanted some I was like man it is tempting but I didn't know you were making this tonight so as a result I ate already before I came back up town but I tell you what take some put it in the fridge in a container I'll take some of the work tomorrow he said cool I'll do that I said fine I went upstairs went to my room watched TV whatever listening whatever we did for fun in 1990 there wasn't much there wasn't a lot to do right I mean so I mean really like social networking was you just like walked down the hall and you were like hey what you doing and then your roommate was like nothing fool it's 1990 go back to sleep get back with this in like 20 years we'll have some shit to do but not yet so I just went to bed sort of early woke up the next morning like 6.30 came downstairs to get my coffee to go back to fight Nazis for another day and I noticed that the pot of gumbo was still sitting on the left front burner of the stove where it had been the night before no portion of it had been saved for me by the way and more importantly no portion of the pot had been cleaned by the person who made the mess this was an incredible problem it looked disgusting I was a little bit frustrated with the fact that there was none for me to take the work but also with the fact that the mess had been left for one of us perhaps me to clean so I thought to myself oh what the hell I've got like 15 minutes I'll just clean it before I head down to the streetcar so I grabbed the pot I brought it over to the sink I grabbed some sponges or whatever I grabbed some soap and I started to run water in the pot of gumbo and then I stopped myself like halfway and I'm like wait a minute I didn't make this gumbo the hell I didn't even need incredibly self-righteous because I was talking to myself out of doing the hard work which is a skill you learn in college so so I so I put the pot of gumbo right back where the hell I found it on the left front burner the stove walked off the work came back that night 6.30 walked in and another one of my roommates is making dinner for the evening on the right front burner of the stove but on the left front burner where it has now been for an entire 24 hours is that same stale crusted disgusting pot of gumbo it has not to this minute been cleaned I look at my roommate like he has lost his mind and said how in the hell can you make dinner for us tonight on the right front burner when I'm fairly confident you can smell the dinner from last night on the left front burner because it is right there under your nose he said hey man I didn't make the gumbo I wasn't even here for dinner last night I'm like me either and I said so you don't need to clean it do you he said hell no do you need to clean it I said hell no he said do you want some lentils and rice I said hell yes give me some lentils and rice and so I self-righteously ate the meal for that evening went upstairs did whatever we did for fun in 1990 once again went to bed early 6 in the morning came and I forgot to set the alarm but here's a tip if you are living in a house with nine other people where a pot of gumbo has been sitting on the stove for what is now 36 and a half for approximately hours trust me when I tell you you are not going to be an alarm clock to wake your ass up because the smell is going to crawl out of the pot of gumbo on the legs that it grew literally overnight and it is going to crawl across the kitchen across the living room floor up the back steps down the back hall go under your door frame or through the keyhole and find with the precision of a laser that thing on the front of your face that you call a nose and you will be awake and now I was and I was pissed because I knew what the smell meant I knew what was waiting for me on the left front burner of the stove having not been cleaned by anybody least of all the guy that made the mess so I stomp out of my room loud trying to wake folks up can't find anybody I live with nine other people none of them around to bother the guy that made the gumbo is like where's Waldo nobody knows where the hell he disappeared to just disappeared into the ether just made the gumbo made the mess skip town and left it for us and I get down to the living room I look into the kitchen I see the pot of gumbo on the left front burner of the stove and I'm confident to this day that the gumbo saw me because it had evolved do you understand evolution works quick with gumbo and it was at that moment that I came to understand maybe the most important lesson I had ever learned about anything not household cleanliness but anything what was the lesson the lesson was it didn't matter any longer whether I had made the mess it didn't matter any longer whether I was as the saying goes the author of all this unpleasantness the only thing that mattered was that I was tired of living in that funk I was tired of living with the residue of somebody else's actions for which I was not to blame but for which I now had to take responsibility because if I didn't I wasn't confident that it was ever going to get cleaned up the same is true with human society when we get tired of living in the funk and the residue of other people's decisions we will clean up the mess not because we created it but because we are the only ones left thank you all so much for being here I appreciate you very much I'm Stuart Leibbetter and thrilled to be here to introduce our final speaker of the night she's a journalist of Summer Now a veteran newsroom leader in industry I know a little bit about and she's a long time advocate for diversity and inclusion to try to bridge the trust gap between journalists and communities of color I don't know what you do on Friday mornings but every Friday morning if possible about 20 or 25 or so on Vermont Public I listen for StoryCorps and it is the best five minutes of radio of your week or just about drawing human connections between mothers and daughters and students and teachers and people at different stations in life Samper Clark is the CEO of StoryCorps in New York it's a national treasure she's been there for going on two years or so but was formerly a managing editor which means she's the big decision maker at the Philadelphia Inquirer and later in Philadelphia at W-H-Y-Y which is the NPR and PBS station in Philadelphia it's my great pleasure please give a big Burlington welcome to Samper Clark can you all hear me okay you know I have my podium shoes on so the mic is should be about my my height here well it's such a pleasure to be here you know my first time in Vermont and greetings from my chief of staff at StoryCorps who actually met his husband here in Burlington, Vermont at a gay pride parade in 1987 so he has particularly fun memories of Vermont thank you so much as Stuart and Patrick you know I had a little bit of time to spend Patrick Brown yesterday and gosh you all are so lucky to have him here what an icon just a special special person and so I wanted to make sure I acknowledged that I feel like I'm on the right stage with the right people Cedric my dad my dad was a career army soldier and so there was so much that resonated with me about you know the inspiration that Cedric shared with us and Tim well my kid started to be you're burning actually letting spoil a whole pot of gumbo my dad's from Louisiana and so that did not go over well in our house gumbo from those of you who don't know if you make it right it's like a $200 pot of stew so anyway a pleasure to be here let me get this started uh I got so much instruction before I wanted to start the picture of my my family my parents and that is me by the way all those years ago that's my daughter who is now 27 that's the first time my parents met my daughter I came back from the Peace Corps and working in Africa with a husband and a kid and you know when I think about the reason I want to share my parents is because they are no matter where I am no matter what I do or my guiding light for everything that I do my mother is from was from Japan we were my dad was stationed in the middle of Kansas Fort Riley my mom created Little Japan in the middle of Kansas she ordered in her sushi she ordered her you know all her all the ingredients for every dish you can imagine she watched Japanese television by satellite in the middle of Kansas and she was never called Kinko her name is Kinko and Americans always called her Kate because Kinko was too hard to pronounce I guess until Kinko you know the print shops opened up right but it does show you about you know the Americanization of someone's culture and how that works my dad was a career soldier you know grew up in poverty in Louisiana Morgan City, Louisiana the military was his ticket out and not just you know opening up the world for himself but for all of us from for me and my sisters my dad you know raised the flag in front of our house every single day he you know endured incredible racism in his life even we're in his uniform but the thing about him that was so interesting was that he was just this humane giant he was this person who you know I don't think as military kids we appreciated what it meant to be in the military it's amazing how you don't even know what that means so when you're living with it these days you barely see it right because the representation of military life is all about those Facebook reunions that you see and that you can just watch over and over again of people surprising their families but there's nothing about military life at all and my dad after he retired he became a mall walker in the middle of Salina, Kansas and it wasn't the most diverse place in the world and what we found out after he died was that he saved so many marriages and most of the marriages he saved were actually white families right because he's walking through the mall in middle of Salina, Kansas he was a great listener people would come out and confide in him and he would drive my mother crazy he'd be gone for hours and she's like where the hell is he well he was at the mall and he was counseling one person after another who used to wait for him to walk across the mall so they can talk about their issues and their families and many people came up to us afterward and told us that he actually saved their families saved their marriages saved their children and so that was an incredible legacy for somebody who himself endured so much and as a military kid we also had no sense of why he would wear his purple heart hat all the time he used to drive us crazy every year we would say like dad don't you want a Nike hat you know how about Adidas right we had no clue what a purple heart meant until after he really after he died and then me and my sisters divided up his purple hearts so he had earned not just one but three so you know this is who I honor when I when I'm here this is who I honor now that I'm at StoryCorps you know my journey to StoryCorps is very much you know kind of like Peter Palmer wrote in his book let your life speak to you he writes before you tell your life what you intend to do with it listen to what it tends to do with you and so listening is what took me to StoryCorps how many people know StoryCorps here how many people don't know StoryCorps here and it's fine if you raise your hand because you're the reason that I'm at StoryCorps because everybody needs to know StoryCorps so StoryCorps and this is you know StoryCorps those of you who know StoryCorps and you hear these stories and they do you know they make us swell with emotion they make us pull over the side of the road you know StoryCorps is always talking about connecting people helping us create empathy and understanding but you know as with fresh eyes on StoryCorps because I think StoryCorps does so much more these stories from everyday people do so much more for us and so we're now leaning in hard on a new North Star which is StoryCorps actually helps us believe in each other by illuminating the humanity and possibility in all of us one story at a time you know I'm here 20 years ago Dave I say started StoryCorps and he knew something that maybe all of us didn't quite know he knew that you know people needed to find ways to connect to each other to hear experiences from each other and so he set up this booth in Grand Central Terminal in New York City and you know I mean anybody who's been there knows that that's where people just like tens of thousands of people a day right he set up this booth two microphones the lights are low in this sound booth and you have two seats and people sit across from each other and you come into the StoryCorps booth and you bring someone to the story you really want to honor you know there's something that he knew that happens when you're when you're just talking to each other sitting across from each other you share things with each other that you wouldn't in any other way right and we know that we are now in an age of documentation where we're taking pictures all the time and getting videos of each other all the time but how often do we actually sit in quietude and you ask each other questions like what are you most proud of what would you do differently right all those kind of questions that we even as family members don't even ask each other but we've got a million pictures in our phones so today I'm going to take you on a little bit of a journey by the way here here are some of the StoryCorps stories now again StoryCorps everyday people they're not trying to get rich they're not trying to be on reality tv right they come into the StoryCorps booth and tell us what's most important to them and what legacy they want to leave behind and most of them most of them send their stories to the Library of Congress which is where all these stories are archived if people choose to have them archived there so a hundred years from now your friends or someone in your family can find that story and you can see there's just an incredible mix of story we started at the Sound booth then we had an air stream trailer that crosses the country capturing stories we work in partnership with our public media partners and shout out to Vermont Public which hosted me today it was so wonderful to be at the station but this is what StoryCorps does in partnership there's our air stream trailer here's where we've been just this year we've been in every single state across the country in rural communities and big cities as you can see and so I'm going to share a couple of stories because you know we talk a lot about diversity we talk about how we connect to each other we talk about what's in the underbelly you know that's creating so many problems for us all but I wanted to also share some examples of what happens when we actually lean into each other and when we have some hope in humanity I wasn't planning on having you as my roommate I actually thought that if Bowdoin College knew I had to they wouldn't let me come to college so I had mentioned it to anyone and I got a job working in staples cleaning at night and I had to take you in with me at work sometimes and I do in the closet I think I lost something like 27 pounds just from stress and not eating because I didn't have enough for both of us my basketball teammates were my first babysitters I just remember coming from class and there were four giant guys and there was this 18 month old who was tearing up the room were you ever embarrassed bringing me to class and just having me in jungle I felt a little awkward but never embarrassed there were times when the only way I could get through was to come in and look at you see you sleeping and then go back to my studies and my graduation day from Bowdoin is a day I'll never forget you know all of my classmates they still often gave me their only standing ovation I remember walking up with you and having my head in your shoulder yeah the dean called both of our names as they presented us with the diploma so technically I already graduated from college nice try their degree only has my name on it so you still gotta go I really admire your strength and I love you I draw my strength from you I always hire my name still do StoryCorps stories and these are everyday people right sometimes when we're watching these animation we forget there are real people who came in and they wanted to document their stories knowing that he was dying Will wanted to do this conversation with his daughter and what StoryCorps does is it reminds us how we live and also that what we want to leave behind and so you know we're so grateful that Will was able to share that story with us you know so much of our issues in this country come from the you know fact that we don't get to see real representations of each other right I mean we hear some of these stories about block fatherhood never have seen that one these are stories that defy stereotype and getting back to my parents you know I never saw a single representation of my family in media as I was growing up never saw any representation of my family on TV and magazines and textbooks and so you know invisibility and false narratives walk hand in hand and that is very much one of the things that I think hails us another story and this one is one I love you know really again an example of how we assume and how we can see light I came to school with my oldest brother and on the way to school I'm putting glitter all over my face and my brother said what in the hell are you doing I said I'm putting on my constant he said well I wouldn't be caught dead wearing that so he dropped me off at the school and he called my dad up and he said dad I think you better get up there this is not going to look good so my dad drove up to high school and he had his farmer jeans on and they had cow crap on him and he had his cloth hopper boots on and when I saw him coming I ducked around the hall and hid from him and it wasn't because of what I was wearing it was because of what he was wearing so the assembly goes well and I'm climbing the car and I'm riding home with my father and my father says to me I was walking down the hall this morning and I saw a kid that looked a lot like you ducking around the hall to avoid his dad but I know it wasn't you because you would never do that to your dad and I squirmed in my seat and I finally busted out and I said well dad did you have to wear your cow crap jeans to my assembly and he said look everybody knows I'm a dairy farmer this is who I am and he looked me square in the eye and then he said now how about you when you're a full grown man who are you going to go out with at night and I said I don't know and he said I think you do know and it's not going to be that like a offline girl it's been making google eyes at you but you won't even pick up the damn telephone and I'm going to tell you something today and you might not know what to think of it now but you're going to remember when you're an adult don't sneak because if you sneak like you did today it means you think you're doing the wrong thing and if you run around and spend your whole life thinking that you're doing the wrong thing then you'll ruin your immortal soul all the things a father in 1959 could have told his gay son my father tells me to be proud of myself and not sneak my reaction at the time was to get out in the hayfield and pretend like I was as much as a man as I could be and I remember flipping 50 pound bales three feet up into the air going I'm not a queer what's he talking about but he knew where I was headed he knew that making me feel bad about it and anyway was the wrong thing to do I had the patron saying of dads for the system so no I didn't know it at the time but I know it now Cary died this year I believe and this is just a you know gem of a story right and it's it's it's just turning so many of the narratives that we see on its head I mean his dad understood something that he himself could not even accept in himself for quite a long time and living in our truth sometimes is really really difficult the next story I want to share is going to be a little bit of a tough one because not everything is happy and glowing when people come into the story core booth you know they are sharing stories with us about the history of our country too they're sharing stories about moments in time and what I always say about story stories is that the generosity of folks who come in and tell their stories they're also willing us to be better and they're they're sharing us examples of things that we ought to be thinking about you know we know that one of the things that really ails us in this country is gun violence mass shootings in almost anywhere you go and there's something really basic about this next piece this mother and son came in to talk about something that I think most people are familiar with now which are active shooter drills emergency drills did you have as you were going up in school fire drills and tornado drills and that was it so can you tell me exactly what happens in active shooter drills the teacher is supposed to lock the door turn the lights off and push this big desk behind the door and the first time I did an active shooter drill I saw her having a hard time with this so I decided to come help her because if she doesn't give the desk on the door in time the intruder can open it so what do you do next after you push the table the class is supposed to stand on the back wall but I decided to stand in front of the class because I want to take the bully and save my friends so does your teacher ask you to stand in front of the class no my life matters but it's kind of like there's one person that can come home to the family or there can be 22 people that come home to the family do you know why it's hard for me to accept that because I'm such a young age I shouldn't really be giving my life up like you shouldn't have to worry about that right if there's any time that I want you to be selfish it's thin I need you to come home so would you still stand in front of your friends even with me telling you not to yes I get that you would want me to come home but it's really not a choice that you can make it's a choice to have to make I see now that there's nothing I can say that would change your mind I just hope that it never comes to that talking about this makes me feel sad but you raised a good person and this is why I can't have the conversation with you you keep saying things like that my speech was you are 10 and you're that 10 year old who doesn't come in the room and there's no handbook for this this is why the conversation always ends between you and I and dead silence because I'm a mother and I don't know what to say you know one of the reasons I wanted to share that and I don't care if I'm a CEO I don't care what title I have I mean first and foremost I'm a mom and you know when I think about having been a journalist you never beat journalism so I still am but you know I think about you know how templated our coverage has become after each and every one of these tragedies if we really think about it right it's the same thing you know something happens media goes in you find your heroes and your villains you you know do vignettes of the victims you try to find as many pictures as you can you you figure out what the truth is or not and then in a case like the ball day that truth didn't emerge on day one or day two or day three and then and then the media leaves and the families are left to pick up these pieces and when I think about how you know we as a country I mean you know we can't just come together for kids right there's no there's no party labels on any of this kind of stuff and the reason I played that today is because one of the things that StoryCorps is doing is a project called One Small Step you know we can either decide we're going to be bystanders and we're going to just you know walk past all these issues that are keeping us divided or we can decide that we're going to lean into each other and help us believe in each other and so one of our projects now that we've had for a couple of years is called One Small Step and it's not bringing people together to talk about politics into battle because that's usually the thing that often happens right as soon as the you know media gets there and a couple politicians will say a few words and then it all just goes away as though nothing happened right we don't talk about something as basic as this where we all signed up for our kids having to have this our administrators our teachers every single day and somebody told me recently that his four-year-old their school had a drill and they rebranded it and they called it the kitchen because active shooter drill was too scary so three and four year olds now hear about the kitchen I wanted to play just a little bit of a 60 minutes piece on One Small Step because this is our storyboard is working with our public media partners with libraries with cities to see if we can really attack this issue of toxic polarization that is just breaking us all apart and giving people a pathway to see each other's human beings and not to start off talking as politics and battling so here's just a little snippet from 60 minutes I think what makes One Small Step special is that all of us believe in every cell of our body that there is a flame of good in you whether you're liberal or whether you're conservative and our job is to fan that flame until it becomes a roaring fire so I take my hand off the date I think I think once more he's proving that like he's within the walk to walk when you heard about the One Small Step initiative what did you think it is very very difficult for us to hate one another when I'm looking you on the face and we're talking about what we like to cook our children for dinner and we're talking about how difficult it is to get our babies in the college it isn't an easy fix it isn't some kind of hocus pocus where you know kumbaya it's all fine isn't any of that he knows that um but somebody got to do so so that was uh Jason Reynolds who was talking he was now you know he was started off as a historical facilitator and is now a New York Times best-selling adult young adult author and he stays connected to us because he knows that the stories that he heard as a facilitator are the things that inform us and help us um help us evolve here's an example I want to show examples of of what it looks like when you see each other as human beings and what's that one piece of commonality that you have no matter what your political uh uh you know whatever side you're on right there's a piece of commonality are you a veteran are you a grandparent uh did you are you a widower um and here's your two people came together in a really unlikely way this was uh during a protest at the University of Texas in 2016 I noticed you with the hat and I noticed that you were surrounded by some people and I noticed that they were being kind of threatening and then somebody snatched your head off your head and that's the point where I something kind of snapped inside me because I wear um um some hijab and I've been in situations where people have tried to snap it off my head and I rushed towards you and I just started screaming they've been alone give me that back I don't think we could be any further apart as people and yet it was just kind of like this common that's not okay moment you are genuinely the only Muslim person I know I just it's not that I've actively avoided it's just I've just never been in the position where I can interact for an instant period of time so it gets my views on the Muslim community have been influenced by a lot of the news articles and things of that nature I feel like a lot of times on the media you don't see the normal Muslim the one that listens to classic rock like I do you don't you don't meet that Muslim can you tell me about where you grew up what was that part of your life like so I was born in Baghdad in Iraq I moved to the U.S. when I was 10 years old okay being a Muslim girl I stood out in almost every single way that you can in middle school the worst time to stand out what about you how was it like when you grew up I was home school so it was it was a vastly different experience socially it was I didn't have I guess as many friends as most people would I only went to public school one year in my life and I got three fights and I lost all of them I actually lost a lot of friends because of the selection because my political stance so I thought that I can be the reason that someone decides to talk to someone as opposed to just cutting them out of their life or blocking them on Twitter or people I'd like for this to encourage other people to engage in more conversations with people that you don't agree with so you know we're about to be overtaken right by all the national politics all the craziness that's coming with it's already started but I think you know we can choose to engage in it or we can choose you can we can choose to be bystanders or we can choose to lean into each other and sometimes I gotta say sometimes the hardest ones are people in our own tribe right who don't want you talking to someone else who don't want you to you know don't want you to be seen you know we just launched one small step in Columbus Georgia and two of the people who ended up doing a story core conversation with each other was the head of the NAACP and some and the former head of the Republican local Republican Party there they had circled each other for years and years never had a conversation with each other and you know we need some leadership some real commitment to model this for everybody because you know otherwise we're all just going to be just you know in the vortex right you can find out more about one small step on storycore.org if you would like to participate and finally I'm going to leave us with okay you know some some hope right I think you've seen perseverance and hope there's so many of these stories and again sometimes you forget these are stories from everyday people and this is their truth um this is a story another father and son uh conversation um but if you listen to it what you're gonna find is that it is it is really built on a father trying to raise a black son in a country where he knows there's an unjust criminal justice system um and yet he wants his son to walk out without blocking his own possibilities so I'm going to close with um a piece on Aiden and Albert Sykes. What was going through your head when you first saw me? I remember when the doctor pulled you out the first thing I thought was that he was being too rough with you and he actually held you like a little sprite bottle and he was like here's your baby that was the most proud moment of my life don't tell your brothers because it's three of y'all but it was like looking at a black canvas and just imagining what you want that painting to look like at the end but also knowing you can't control the paint strokes you know the fear was just I gotta bring up a black boy in Mississippi which is a tough place to bring up kids period but there are statistics that say black boys born after the year 2002 have a one in three chance of going to prison and all three of my sons were born after the year 2002 so dad why do you take me to approach it so much I think I thank you for a bunch of reasons one is that I want you to see what it looks like when people come together but also that you understand that it's not just about people that are familiar to you but it's about everybody did you know the work that Martin Luther King was doing was for everybody that wasn't just for black people yes I understand that yeah so that's how you got to think you decided that you want to be a cab driver then you got to be the most impactful cab driver that you can possibly be are you proud of me of course you're my man I just love everything about you period the thing I love about you you never give up on me that's one of the things I will always remember by my dad he says it's like I'm on the way out of here or like I'm out of here so that what are your dreams for me my dream is for you to live about your dreams so I will proverb they talked about when children are born children come out with their face clothes because that's what I keep out of gifts and as you grow your hands learn to unfold because you're learning to release your gifts to the world and so for the rest of your life I want to see you live with your hands unfolded that's my wish for you too let me just sponsor tonight crowd home storyboard what an amazing evening let's give thanks to our speakers cedric king tim was