Good morning, Highline family, familia, buenos dias. Wow, what a week it's been already and the fun has just begun. My name is Joshua Magallanes and I'm faculty counselor here at Highline College. Over the past 18 years, I've seen many areas of growth be expanded and also areas in which we can still grow. Today we've got a pioneer here to talk about that and how heroes, she-ros and they-ros are around us daily. Yesterday on National Coming Out Day, I recorded my own story. Sharing story is important because if we don't share, someone else will. Now, before we get to our esteemed guest and speaker for today, Stephanie Oheraponse will offer the land and labor acknowledgement. Thank you for the introduction, Joshua. I am going to paste the text of this in the chat for accessibility and because I'll be delivering it in Spanish. Reconosemos que Highline College fue construido en territorio colonizado originalmente, protegido por la gente indígena, Pee Wallop, Muckleshoot, Coast Salish y Duwamish. Reconosemos estos tribos y toda la gente indígena impactada por colonización y opresión. Dentro de nosotros tenemos la capacidad de aprender la historia de los tribus, de aprender de nuestras raíces indígenas y de respetar y apoyar indigenidad con nuestras acciones. And I'll paste something in the chat so that you can find out whose land you're on and in the chat you can also find out whose land you're on and how you go beyond acknowledgement to action. Thank you, Stephanie. It helps if I unmute myself. Wow, what a beautiful sentiment and way to get us going today on this Tuesday, this special day. Where do I even begin? Dr. Sanlo, who is with us today, brings a breath of knowledge and has really steamrolled ahead of their time and has really put us on the mark. And as we were thinking about who to bring for this week and how to really set up the week in terms of speakers and how to really inform, we thought about the past and the present and the future. And I believe Ronnie does that today. Just a little bit of information before we get this going, Dr. Sanlo is an LGBTQIA historian and playwright. Dr. Sanlo is the director emeritus of the UCLA Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender Center and frequent keynote speaker and consultant on LGBTQI issues and higher education. Dr. Sanlo now retired, was a professor and director at the UCLA Masters of Education and Student Affairs. Prior to UCLA in 1997, Dr. Sanlo was the director of the LGBT Center at the University of Michigan. Dr. Sanlo was an HIV Epidemiologist in Florida from 1987 to 1994. Dr. Sanlo under bachelor's degree in music at the University of Florida and a master's in doctorate in education from the University of Florida in Jacksonville. She developed the initial standards and guidelines for the LGBTQIA work in higher ed and was founding chair for the consortium of the LGBT professionals in higher education. Dr. Sanlo is the originator of the award-winning Lavender graduation, a commencement event that celebrates the lives and achievements of graduating LGBTQIA college students. She continues research and writes a focus on LGBT history, which is the foundation for award-winning documentary letter to Anita and her play, Dear Anita Bryan. She has over a hundred academic publications, post-retirement books, historical novel about the last five months of the World War II entitled Soldier, The Aviator, The Holocaust. I could go on and on. Dr. Sanlo and their partner live in Palm Springs, California and squim. We're neighbors and it's wonderful to have you Dr. Sanlo with us today. And with that and without further ado, I welcome you to the stage and let's give a warm welcome to Dr. Ronnie Sanlo. Joshua, thank you so much and thank you to Highline College for inviting me to be here. What an exciting time this is national coming out week, national coming out month. And I'm going to go ahead and get started with my slide presentation. So hang on because this is what I do and there. This is what I do and there. And hopefully you can all see this and we're in this together now. So I'm absolutely thrilled to be here with you today and I wish you a happy coming out week. This is one of those special times when we gather together as a community to honor our past and to celebrate the diversity within us and around us. Before I begin, I want to honor the Jamestown Scallum people on whose tribal land I live here in Squim in the Pacific Northwest. And I dedicate this talk to the memory of Matthew Shepard, the University of Wyoming student who was killed because he was gay 24 years ago today. Now, I'm kind of an accidental educator. You don't believe I ever said to my parents, when I grow up, I want to be a professor. And I'm quite sure I never said, when I grow up, I want to be the head lesbian at a major university. But there I was, big dyke on campus. And now after having been the oldest living lesbian in institutional captivity, I'm retired focusing on LGBTQ history preservation in the books and plays that I write. Now as an educator and activist and apparently one of the top 20 most powerful lesbian academics in the country, according to Curve magazine, to which I replied who knew there were 20. Anyway, being an educator, I love this opportunity to share that which has been invisible for so long. The stories of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people and our communities have been missing. You probably didn't learn about Alan Turing, a gay man who's considered the grandparent of computer science and who broke the German code in 1945 to help the allies win the war or bisexual storytellers or Neil Hurston or transgender tennis professional Renee Richards or lesbian astronaut Sally Ride. People need to know that we LGBTQ folk didn't just pop out of a bar last Thursday night or pride last June. For LGBTQ people having a grounding in history that's inclusive of our experience and our stories increases our sense of self and security.  So I'm gonna share stories with you today about people and events about which you've probably never heard just sharing history as I've found it. I want you to know the names of those who came before us. Now, when I was 11 years old in 1958, a curious thing happened. At a slumber party of us fifth grade girls one girl began chatting about boyfriends. I didn't have a boyfriend so I made one up but I realized to my surprise that I really wanted a girlfriend. And when I mentioned how Annette Funicello the best mouse kateer ever could be my girlfriend they made fun of me. One girl said, that means you would be a ew homosexual. What's a homosexual ask another? The first girl responded, I think it's a boy who likes boys. That's what I heard my uncle say.  This time a collective ew arose and my newly discovered closet door slammed shut. I spent the next 20 years trying to be something I wasn't. Like so many LGBTQ people, I grew up in a society without an historical context. No heroes, no reflections of who I was as a young lesbian. I had no culture, no history and no understanding of anything more than I must be the only one. In the famous words of Marcus Garvey a person without any knowledge of past history, origin or culture is like a tree without roots. I had no queer roots. I searched my school's libraries for any reference to homosexuality. All I found were books about strong women such as Babe Diedrichsen and Eleanor Roosevelt and Margaret Mead. But there was never a mention of their love for another woman. But that word homosexual stayed with me. Homosexual, I looked everywhere in my school library in the encyclopedia which had everything in the world in it, nothing. But in 1962, there it was. The Britannica's yearbook had an entry. Homosexual, men who love other men, see lesbian. Hmm, lesbian? Lesbian, a woman from the Isle of Lesbos, see homosexual. Really? What did that mean? And what did the Isle of Lesbos have to do with anything anyway? I was even more confused. But I put it all away until many years later when I began to explore in more available resources which took me surprisingly to the Isle of Lesbos and Sappho. Sappho lived on the Isle of Lesbos and wrote beautiful poetry to the women she loved much of which was lost, destroyed by papal decree in 1073 AD. Was there anyone before Sappho? Of course. Meet Niankem and Nidhotep both of whom were chief manicurists to the Pharaoh in the fifth dynasty of the old kingdom. Their tomb offers the oldest evidence of queer lives. Incidentally, there's no evidence from ancient Egypt that homosexual acts were punishable offenses. Jumping to the Romans, King Titus is the first recorded married man to leave his wife for another man, a mime named Paris. After public outcry, Titus killed Paris and went back to his wife. But he continued his affairs with young men and so his wife had him assassinated.  A shift began when the church joined forces with political and military powers near the end of Christianity's first millennium. In 1120, the church ordered burning at the state for homosexual acts and contributed to the deaths of thousands for homosexuality over the next 700 years. Which burning occurred in the same period and claimed the lives of countless lesbians whose non-conformity was condemned as witchcraft.  Had he been straight, the Sistine Chapel would have been painted flat white with a roller. In 1604, England's King James I authorized a new translation of the Bible, cleverly known as the King James Bible. Interestingly though James was married, he also had male lovers as well, regardless of what his Bible says. His last male lover was George V.A. The king was not ashamed of his love for V.A. and he compared it to Jesus' love of John. Christianity is generally no longer used to justify state sponsored extracutions, executions for homosexuality, but religion is still a big factor in nations where executions continue. Today, 13 countries still execute for the crime of being gay in the name of religion. And we must never forget that the Nazis sent about 60,000 people to the concentration camps for homosexuality. I'm a voter, so I love the stories of lesbian pirates Ann Bonny and Mary Reed. Of course, like all tales of the high seas, their story comes in wildly different versions. The only thing consistent about them is that they were lovers. Another favorite is stagecoach driver, Charlotte Charlie Parkhurst. Parkhurst, who registered to vote in 1868, may have been the first female-born person to vote in California. It was a medical examiner who upon Charlie's death discovered that Charlie was female. Gentlemen, Jack and Lister traveled to Wales to meet the ladies of Langolan in 1822 and spent the day with ladies Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby, who were two upper-class Irish women whose relationships scandalized and fascinated their contemporaries during the 18th and early 19th centuries. Butler and Ponsonby lived together for 50 years and are buried together at St. Collins Church in Langolan. Woman chief was a warrior and a crow chief. Interested in traditionally male pursuits from an early age, she became one of the crow's most significant leaders, joining the Council of Chiefs as a third-ranking member. She was killed while on a peacemaking expedition with the U.S. government. She left behind four wives. Catherine Lee Bates was an American professor and author who wrote the song America the Beautiful, which I think should be our national anthem. And she helped launch American literature as an academic specialty. Throughout her long career at Wellesley, she shared a house with her lover, Catherine Coleman, who was also a Wellesley professor and a dean. Anna Sperling was better known as Anna Ruling. She was a German journalist who gave the first known speech addressing problems faced by lesbians. She was described as the first lesbian activist. You've probably heard of Gertrude Stein, who was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. She moved to Paris in 1903 and hosted a salon where the leading figures of modernism and literature and art would meet, including Picasso, Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Ezra Pound, and Matisse. Stein's partner, Alice B. Toklas, was the de facto hostess for the wives and girlfriends of the artists in attendance. Gertrude and Alice lived and loved in Paris as an open lesbian couple until Gertrude's death in 1946. They're buried together in the Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. And there were anthropologists, Margaret Mead, and her lover Ruth Benedict, and the popular, powerful Eleanor Roosevelt and her lover, journalist Lorena Hickok. These are my foremothers, the women on whose shoulders I stand. Now, where women had Boston marriages thought to be non-sexual lifelong relationships, men had romantic friendships. Another example is John Lawrence and Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton wrote, I wish my dear Lawrence that it might be in my power by action rather than words to convince you that I love you. Any documentation of the lives of same gender loving women from this era in American history is exceedingly rare.  In the late 19th century, white, freer enslaved, richer poor, no one divulged their intimate liaisons in mid-century America, mid-19th century America. But we do know about the charismatic Rebecca Primus, born in 1836, and feisty Addy Brown. Brown and Primus were best friends and romantic companions. They worked hard, battled racism, spoke their minds, and loved each other passionately. Mrs. Natch, a laundress with a seventh U.S. Calvary, died in 1878. She'd had several soldier husbands. Upon her death, it was revealed that she had been born male. Her last husband, a corporal, died by suicide after that revelation. And there was poet Angelina Welgrimke and her lover, playwright Mary Burrell, writer Sarah Orn-Jewitt, and her lover, writer Annie Adams Fields. And suffragist Susan B. Anthony and her lover, Emily Gross. The popular blue singer Ma Rainey was arrested in 1925 in her house in Harlem for hosting a lesbian party. Her protege, singer Bessie Smith, bailed her out of jail the following morning. Rainey and Smith were part of an extensive circle of lesbian and bisexual African-American women in Harlem during that time. Eve Kochever was a Polish-Jewish immigrant who opened Eve Adams Tea Room in Greenwich Village in New York in 1925. The lesbian gathering place had a sign at the door that read, men are admitted, but not welcome. In 1926, the Tea Room was raided, and Eva Kochever was charged with disorderly conduct and writing an obscene book entitled, Lesbian Love. She and her lover were deported back to Germany. They were eventually arrested and died in Auschwitz concentration camp.  They included Agnes Morehead, Mary Martin, my favorite Peter Pan, Marlena Dietrich, Greta Garber, Barbara Stanwick, Joan Crawford, Tallulah Bankhead, Audrey Hepburn, Dorothy Arsner, Mercedes Dacosta, Billie Holiday, and Hattie McDaniel to name a few. The male actors didn't have such an elaborate flowchart, but they were in the same closet to make sure they didn't lose their box office standing as leading men. In fact, many were lovers with one another. The men included Anthony Perkins, known for his role as Norman Bates in the psycho movies, who died from AIDS-related complications, actor Rock Hudson, who also died from AIDS, Tab Hunter, Rudolph Nureyev, Stephen Sondheim, James Dean, Montgomery Cliff, Tyrone Power, Cary Grant, and probably a hundred others. Now, civil rights issues, laws, disasters, and demonstrations permeate LGBTQ history, though you've likely not heard about much of it. For example, President James Buchanan served as the 15th President of the United States from 1857 to 1861. He married Anne Coleman in 1818, but she died a year later. Buchanan remained a bachelor for the rest of his life. He had a very close relationship with former Vice President William Rufus King. Buchanan and King lived together and attended social functions together. King was known as Miss Nancy and as Buchanan's better half and wife. In 1917, U.S. immigration law was modified to ban persons with abnormal sexual instincts. That would be us from entering the United States. This ban was lifted in 1993. In 1924, Henry Gerber founded the Society for Human Rights in Chicago. It was the United States first known gay rights organization. The society was quickly shut down, however, and Henry was arrested for creating an obscene organization. American feminist and political activist Mollie Dueson, a close friend of Eleanor Roosevelt, was appointed head of the women's division of the Democratic Party by President Roosevelt in 1932. Dueson and social worker Polly Porter were lifelong lovers. They were among the many women couples who held positions in the Roosevelt administration. The year I was born in 1947, the State Department began firing suspected homosexuals under President Truman's national security law program. When I was five years old, in 1952, Christine Jorgensen was the first American whose sex reassignment surgery became public. Her surgery caused an international sensation and for many, she was the first visible transgender person in the media. When I was eight years old, Dale Martin and Phyllis Lyon and six other women formed Daughters of Biletus, the first national lesbian rights group. The organization took its name from a collection of poems called Songs of Biletus. Biletus was a female character who was romantically associated with Safa, remember her? Now two of the most insidious people in the political world were Joseph McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover served as the first director of the FBI.  Hoover bequeathed his estate to Tolson who accepted the American flag that draped Hoover's casket. Tolson is buried a few yards away from Hoover in the Congressional Cemetery. Attorney Roy Kahn assisted Hoover during the 1950s investigations of communists and homosexuals. Kahn was a closeted gay man and McCarthy was suspended of such as well. Kahn died of AIDS-related complications in 1986. During the lavender scare, Kahn and McCarthy enhanced anti-gay fervor by suggesting that communists overseas for blackmailing gay men for governmental information, though there was absolutely no proof of that. Yet President Eisenhower signed an executive order in 1953 that barred homosexuals from obtaining jobs at the federal level. The McCarthy-inspired hearings initiated anti-gay witch hunts in 1954 during which more than 1200 men and women lost their jobs in the federal government, including Frank Kamini. Kamini was fired from his position as an astronomer in the Army's map service because of his homosexuality, leading him to spearhead the homosexual rights movement of the early 1960s. Higher education was not immune. The 1954 McCarthy-like Florida Legislative Investigation Committee harassed the NAACP thinking black people were communists. The NAACP ordered them to back off, so they went after Florida's homosexuals on college campuses. The lesbian and gay witch hunts began. The eight-year investigation didn't end until 1964. I arrived at the University of Florida as a first-year student the following year and heard the horror stories. Those stories kept me in the closet for the next 14 years. And in that year, in 1965, as I started college at the University of Florida, the first public picketing to protest government discrimination against lesbians and gay men took place at the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon, led by lesbian activist Barbara Giddings, Frank Kamini, and others. On June 28, 1969, as I was graduating from Florida, drag queens, transgender people, and gender non-conforming people resisted arrest and yet another routine bar raid on the Stonewall Inn in New York City's Greenwich Village. Though we rarely see their names and photos, the leaders included transgender women, Sylvia Rivera, and Marsha Keith Johnson. The leader also included the bisexual Barbara Howard, who was known as the mother of pride. Howard was an active member of both BiPAC and BiNet USA and was a founder of the nation's first alcoholics anonymous for bisexuals. The Stonewall riots have been the center of queer imagination in the United States and abroad for decades. While Stonewall has come to represent a revolution in which we fought back against the society that had become complacent to the violence against us, it didn't happen in a vacuum. On November 15, 1937, the La Paloma nightclub in Miami was raided. Unlike Stonewall, law enforcement wasn't behind this raid. Instead, nearly 200 women and men from the Ku Klux Klan wearing long white hooded robes that both concealed their identities and created fear, burned a fiery cross, then stormed La Paloma, roughed up staff and performers, and ordered the night spot closed. La Paloma soon reopened. In fact, one of the skits for its reopening was a satire that clans raided the club, including performers wearing white hooded robes. Although wildly different, the reason the events at Stonewall and La Paloma share some general overlapping threads is that queer bars have historically been key sites of resistance, change, and even revolution. There are dozens more examples of such raids and resistance, including the Turkish baths in New York in 1929, Cooper's Donuts in Los Angeles in 1959, Gene Compton's Cafeteria in San Francisco in 1966, and the Black Cat Cafe in Los Angeles in 1967. We shouldn't assume either that such raids are simply cautionary tales of a bygone era. More recent events, such as the raid of the Rainbow Lounge and the Eagle Bar, both in 2009 and Fort Worth in Atlanta, make clear that these so-called safe spaces, even as they've evolved and transformed over time, are still hotly contested, surveilled, and harassed in this current climate of paid field rhetoric. Such spaces are also prone to massive violence. While the Klan didn't kill anyone that night in 1937, the intimidation they hope to incite finds commonality in the 1973 Upstairs Lounge arson attack that killed 32 people in New Orleans, and the 2016 Pulse Nightclub attack that killed 49 people in Orlando, all acts of domestic terrorism. The KKK raid at the La Paloma in Miami has been erased from popular consciousness, but it fits into a long and rich tradition of queer resilience and resistance. Milestone moments matter, and so do these forgotten stories. After all, discrimination and violence have many guises, and to focus on only one example like Stonewall is to risk missing the real story of how progress happened, how much more work there is to be done. Gay liberation required that we put a face on the issue. Coming out back then was the hardest, most costly choice we had ever made. Not everyone could do it because coming out led us into a no return life outside of social acceptance. Many of us were kicked out of our families, lost their children as I had, fired from our jobs. We were deviants according to the lies told by Anita Bryant and Jerry Falwell and Fred Phelps and most other evangelicals, but their public crusades against our civil rights and bolden rather than scared most of us. I got married in 1971, two years after Stonewall. My grandfather said, you're almost 25 and not married. What are you, funny or something? I was stunned. I was still in the closet, never told anyone I was a lesbian and certainly never acted on it. I thought my grandfather had discovered my secret, that it had oozed out somehow. I weighed my options, marriage or suicide. Coming out was not an option because I thought I was the only woman who felt this way. I thought I must be queerer than queer, sicker than everyone else. So I called a guy who'd been my default date at the University of Florida who I actually thought was gay and asked if he wanted to get married, never mind that we hadn't seen each other in over two years. He said yes. We were married within three months of my grandfather's remark and I was pregnant several months after that. My daughter was born in 1973 and my son in 1976. No one would ever again accuse me of being funny or something. I was a stay-at-home wife mother of two. While I was hiding deeply in my clueless closet in Orlando in 1973, a seismic cultural change caught everyone by surprise. The American Psychiatric Association changed defining homosexuality from a disease to a dysphoria disorder, which was then quietly removed in succeeding years. But I was in the closet and I didn't know. In 1975, U.A. Noble became the first openly lesbian or gay legislator as she took her seat in the Massachusetts House of Representatives. But I was in the closet and I didn't know. And then came Anita Bryant. In 1977, popular singer and Florida Orange Juice Queen, Anita Bryant headed a fundamentalist church-sponsored campaign in Miami called Save Our Children, which resulted in the repeal of Miami's new gay rights ordinance. The following year, in 1978, similar ordinances around the country were repealed as well. But the BRIGS initiative in California, which would have prevented lesbian and gay teachers from the classroom, was defeated, as was a similar initiative in Washington state. Anita Bryant's work backfired and she nearly single-handedly coalesced the LGBT community to fight even harder for our civil rights. But I was in the closet and I didn't know. Two other pertinent things happened in 1978. Gilbert Baker created the rainbow flag for the San Francisco Pride Parade.  But I was in the closet and I didn't know. The next year, in 1979, at the ripe old age of 32, I came out. I came out and lost custody of my two children ages three and six, because I was a lesbian and an angry one at that. So I didn't know the law and I didn't know our history. I did know that losing my children wasn't fair and it wasn't right. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do. My anger fueled my activism. And within 18 months of coming out, I was the executive director and lobbyist of the Florida lesbian and gay civil rights task force.  My claim to fame with the Florida task force was that we fought the Bush Trask amendment, from Florida's colleges and universities. If the schools allowed gay student groups to meet or gay courses to be taught, we fought it and we won. The Florida Supreme Court miraculously, unanimously found it to be unconstitutional. Other states imitated that bill as well, but in each case, it was defeated. My next job was as an HIV epidemiologist with the Florida AIDS program. In 1981, doctors identified the first cases of what they termed gay-related immune disease or grid, gay cancer, which later became AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome. By 1982, we gay people were feared by the general public, not only for the assumption of preying on children, but as carriers of imminent death.  I didn't see them again for many years. Back then, we cared for and buried thousands of our friends because their families and our own wouldn't have anything to do with them, and neither would many funeral homes, churches and cemeteries.  We said silence equals death. The first national LGBT market on Washington was on October 14th, 1979. The second national march with over a million strong was on October 11th, 1987, and gave birth to the first national coming out day a year later. In 1994, October was declared National LGBT History Month thanks to the creative mind of Missouri High School history teacher, Rodney Wilson. Once again, rather than be defeated by the culture of sickness and death that threatened our future, we became strengthened in our resolve to overcome fear and to fight back. We did so by organizing and lobbying our religious, political and corporate leaders, by forming our own health care, community and youth centers, and by marching in annual gay pride parades and by creating the larger community of our community. And by marching in annual gay pride parades and by creating the largest, most magnificent folk art artifact in American history, the AIDS quilt. We started newspapers and radio programs, flew our flags, wrote books and songs and TV and movie scripts and ran for office. And during this time, Wisconsin passed the first lesbian and gay civil rights bill in the United States prohibiting discrimination in the United States. The bill was passed in the United States because of the lack of public housing, employment and public accommodations. Don't Ask, Don't Tell became law in 1993 that said that people who engage in a homosexual acts are unacceptable for military service. It was repealed in 2010. The Defense of Marriage Act, denying federal benefits to same sex spouses, became law in 1996. The first same sex marriage in the United States wasn't in 2013. It was actually in 1877 when Sarah Pollard, as Samuel Pollard, married Marancy Hughes in the Nevada territory. Donna Perquette and Manonia Evans applied for a marriage license in Wisconsin in 1971. The application was refused by the clerk. The two women filed a lawsuit but the suit was dismissed. I had a wedding anyway without a license. But Jack Baker, who was a law student and student government president at the University of Minnesota and Mike McConnell applied for and received a marriage license in Blue Earth County, Minnesota in 1901. Vermont became the first state in 2000, the first state in the country to legally recognize civil unions or domestic partnerships between gay and lesbian couples. In 2003, the pre-mortem ruled that Lawrence v. Texas that they ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that stotomy laws in the United States are unconstitutional. This paved the way for the legalization of same sex marriages. The following year, in 2004, Marcia Cadish and Tanya McCloskey became the first legally married same sex couple in the United States when Massachusetts was the first state to legalize same sex marriage. Now, though I've touched on it, I want to talk about coming out for a moment. Coming out as I did in 1979 meant giving up so much, including family and children and jobs. In my lifetime, out gay people were legally denied service in restaurants and could not serve openly in the military. Gay sex was illegal in the United States until 2003 and one could not visit one's partner in the hospital nor claim one's partner's body at the time of death until 2015. Regardless of however different the coming out experience may be for each person, even today, it's still usually a major and carefully considered moment in one's life. Will that ever change? Will there ever be a time when we queer people won't be expected to explain who we are and who we love? Strangers always ask Kelly and me if we're sisters. I always say no, we're wives. By the way, the name of our boat is straight not. When asked about the origin of our name, we say we live on the straight and we're not. But the politics of coming out has helped us help make us more visible and better protected by law. And knowing our history helps. It helps us explore the future. Remember earlier when I said I wanted to research my school's libraries for a reflection of itself. Well, once I began work at UCLA, I had the opportunity to build a new LGBTQ center. I included a 400 square foot library and filled it with hundreds of books. So students would always have a place to go find reflections of who they are, where they could find people from the past on whose shoulders they stand.  And then something happened. With a newly minted doctoral degree, I was hired by the University of Michigan to grow a center for LGBTQ students and for higher education. I want to share some higher ed queer highlights with you.  In 1967, the student homophile League at Columbia University was the first lesbian and gay campus group to gain official university recognition. The first office for lesbian and gay students was created at the University of Michigan in 1971 as a quarter-time space. Several other such offices were developed in the late 1980s, and I was hired by the University of Michigan in 1994 before some of you were born. And I was recruited by UCLA in 1997. I was called to do this LGBTQ work in higher ed. I have no doubt. Though I didn't have my own children, I had other people's beautiful LGBTQ children for short periods of time, and I created the award-winning lavender graduation to celebrate their lives and achievements and scholarship, their gifts to the academy.  It does as it turns out. But my intention was to celebrate the memory of those lesbians and gay men who died in the Holocaust during World War II, along with my Jewish relatives. I created that first lavender graduation in 1995 to honor our graduating LGBTQ students. The lives had been miserable on campus. I wanted that last taste of their college experience to be positive. I wanted LGBTQ students to know that their lives and their scholarship mattered to the academy. Today, many universities celebrate lavender graduation, a legacy I'm proud to leave as I retire from this work. There were only a few lesbians and gay service offices when I, on college campuses in 1994, when I accepted the position as the director of the Lesbian Gay Programs Office at Michigan, they weren't using the terms bisexual or transgender yet. I added the words bisexual and transgender to the office name because bi and trans students came to me for assistance. They too needed to be understood, respected, seen, and served. I created standards and guidelines for LGBT centers and higher ed as part of the council for the advancement of standards in higher education. I was the founding chair of the consortium of higher education LGBT resource professionals. And I published books about working with LGBT college and with lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender college students. Today, I'm retired, but I continue to research and write about LGBTQ lives and experiences. My books this day in LGBTQ history, volumes one through four, were published just this year. As I write, as I wrote about each person, I said their names and thanked them for paving the way for us. They are sheroes and heroes and they rose, and we need to know who they are. As I've shared with you, when I came out in 1979, I lost custody of my kids and I had no contact with them for many years. I'm happy to tell you, my children did return to me when each was in their 20s. We say we're actually lucky because I didn't have them for puberty and they didn't have me for menopause. And I'm the grandma of four creative and rather unusual grandchildren. One is pan, one is bi, one is trans, and one has some amazing role models. My life today, even for the painful challenges along the way, is so blessed for which I'm deeply grateful. Know your history, share your stories, as Joshua said in his introduction, to quote Holocaust survivor, if you sell, whoever survives a test, whatever it may be, must tell the story. As we tell our stories, we become more visible and we provide a path for those coming up behind us. My friend, Brian McNaught said, naming and acclaiming ourselves releases our magnificent light. As you go forward, learn your history, then share your story and release your magnificent light. Happy coming out week and happy LGBTQ history month. Thank you. I mean, I hope you can hear the applause. Dr. Sanlo, it's been wonderful having you. I've rolled up my sleeves as I do daily. And it was a pleasure to meet you, I think back in 2008. And so it's a pleasure to have you back at Highline College. We're going to take a brief moment. We're going to take a 10 minute break at 11 now until noon. And then Dr. Sanlo will be available for a 30 minute Q&A in which you all can stick around and ask questions. We ask that you use the Q&A feature. I think we've put information in the chat box for those of you who are here. And so I know some of you probably have class to get to if you're on campus, or if you're just zoom in from one place to the next. So we're just going to take a short minute break. And then we'll be right back at 12 o'clock. Thank you again, Dr. Sanlo. Thank you. All right. Welcome back. Welcome back everyone. It's good to be in space and community with you all. At this time, we're going to open it up for our Q&A. Hopefully folks have some awesome questions. I think we've got some questions prepared for our esteemed guest and historian. Wow. It's always nice to remember all of the. Good. Not so good. Reminders of my history as a queer person, as I gave mail. And Dr. Sanlo, thank you for, for bringing that up for us. Thank you so much. And to all of you, you can use the Q&A. Stephanie and I will be monitoring that and helping you out. Or you can use chat as well. So please do chime in y'all. And I'll keep an eye on the chat for us, Joshua. I'll kick off with a question that I had a part about something you said in your lecture today, and I thought it was really beautiful and it really resonated me when you said that, quote, my anger fueled my activism. And then later on you talked about some sense of hopelessness, about the losses, significant losses that you experienced. What for you were some of the ways that you were able to turn that anger and hopelessness into like a productive way of processing it? Because sometimes it's hard to get out of that, that space and into the action space. Right. It's, it's very hard to get out of it. And when it, I'll tell you the primary things for which I'm grateful is that I don't drink and I've never done drugs. And so in that situation, a lot of people would have done both. And it never occurred to me to do it. When one of the things that happened when I got married was my mother gave me a set of silverware service for 12. And when I got divorced, I left with not much, but I did leave with that service for 12 and when, and it was about five years later that I was homeless. And during my time of being homeless, I had a set of silverware and I would sell it piece by piece in order to get cheap food. I had food stamps that I get when I have, you know, if my daughter would come see me, but after a period of time, they quit coming to see me. So I did a lot of, of speaking on radio. I did a lot of public speaking and I was, I was like homeless. But I was out there talking about lesbians and gay men, which is, which is how I ended up getting that job with the Florida task force. Nobody else wanted to be like the head of the queer community in Florida. And it was perfect for me because I had no job. I had no car. I had no income and he gave me all of those and I had this great anger that gave me a focus. So, so the job was perfect for, for a period of time. I did that for about three years. But then, then I, well, I was found on the street actually by some friends who took me to someone else's home and she gave me a free place to live for a little while. And that's when I got the job with the AIDS program because nobody wanted to work with people with AIDS back then. It was too frightening. People were afraid they were going to catch it just by touching people with AIDS. And of course, I knew I wouldn't. I was invited to apply for the job only because I wasn't afraid. And that was, that was my qualification. And I had a bachelor's degree in music. I couldn't pronounce epidemiology. And they hired me. I was the only person to apply. And the federal government said, if you don't put someone in this position, we're pulling all of our AIDS money out of Florida. So, so I got hired. And then they sent me to the CDC in Atlanta to learn how to say epidemiology. And I was, I loved that work. I was really good at it. It gave me such purpose. And, and it was that job that part of the benefits of working for the state of Florida AIDS program was that I got free education. And so I was able to get my master's and my doctorate on their dime, which is ironic. The state that took my kids away from me, you know, gave me my master's and my doctoral degree. And that's what put me on track to be eligible to get the job at University of Michigan. So, but, but it was, it was a very challenging time.  But, but not a, I don't go into lots of detail at that point, but, but I also knew that. And this is looking back over all these years. I, I'm a survivor. I've survived a great deal. And for whatever reason, for as low as I thought I'd gone, I hadn't hit bottom. And, and I knew I was okay. I just didn't know when or how I would be okay. But, but I was and, and really it was allowing other people to take care of me. And that's hard for a lot of us to do. Because we're not very trusting anyway. So I hope that, I hope that answers your question. I know I went a lot of different directions. Yeah, it does. Thank you so much for sharing so candidly. Yeah. It looks like we've got a question in the Q&A. I think the next question comes from Ajah Perkins. Dr. Sanlo. What are your favorite places to find resources on historically queer information? You know, there, there are a number of sources out there, which is interesting because they're, they're not connected to each other. I mean, if there, maybe, maybe this would be a next project for me, but maybe bringing all of those sources into one spot. So, among my favorites are the Stonewall LGBTQ archives in Fort Lauderdale, the one institute in Los Angeles, the Mazer Institute, which is a lesbian archives, also in Los Angeles. There are a number of online places back to Stonewall is one quest is another or quist. There are a number of other books that were published. I can't find a lot of new IST. Those, those are some of the primary ones and they, and they'll lead me to others. So, you know, there, there are lots of others. There are books that were published. The most recent one I could find was 1999. I can't find a lot of more recent history books because I, I'm more involved in politics than we have in history. And so people have really quit doing a lot of the LGBTQ historical writing. And so, so I, you know, I find the older books, there aren't that many. I mean, it's just really just a handful. It looks like there's another question in the Q&A.  They were already in their 20s. They were, they were mid 20s actually. My daughter and her husband, I hadn't been invited to the wedding. But she and her husband moved from Florida to Ann Arbor, to Dayton, Ohio, which was only three hours away from Ann Arbor. And she sent me out of the blue, really. She sent me an email and said she would like to meet with me that she's nearby. And so she and her husband came to my house in Ann Arbor and, you know, she stood there on my doorstep and, and she's tiny. My, my kids are small. And, and so she had her hands on her hips and she's standing there at my door when I opened the door and she goes, I'm pregnant. And I want to know if you had the same feelings about me as I have about my baby when you were pregnant with me. And I thought, that's a pretty gutsy question. And she already knows the answer. She wouldn't have asked it.  And, and we reunited. I mean, she's the one who initiated it. I didn't even know she was in, in Dayton. And so she gave birth five months later and we started spending weekends together. And when she gave birth five months later, she invited me to be in the birthing room with her, not her husband. And, and so I was there for the birth of my granddaughter, who I got to hold, you know, that first hour of life is called angel time. I was told, and if you hold a baby during angel time, you'll never lose them. And so I held my granddaughter, my first grandchild during her angel time. And today she's, she's 27 years old. And we've been very, very close our whole lives. So, and then I was there three years later when my other granddaughter was born. So, so we, we stayed connected over all these years. She lives in Florida still. My son, who lives in Seattle. He, he sent a letter to me. And he said, it said, dear Dr. Sandlow or mom, I don't know what to call you, but in searching for myself, I know I need to find you. And, and so based on his letter, his outreach to me, he and I reunited. He, and he came out as a gay man. When he was 28. He was disowned by his Florida family. And so he came out to LA and moved, moved in with me in LA. And then when I moved up to Seattle, came up here, started coming up for half the year. He moved to Seattle. We have relatives up here. And he's been up here for probably eight years. And he, he now identifies as pan and he's married to a female born person who also identifies as pan. I have a great family.  I just can't imagine that the little eight year old is, is actually going to be a cisgender heterosexual male. That would just be so unique in my family. Thank you so much. So I've been trying to practice pleasure activism, activism of doing things that make us feel good and that bring us joy and make us happy. What are some of the spots of joy and pleasure. That you've experienced in your career that you loved to highlight and reflect on? Well, I loved my, my higher ed career. I loved it. I loved working with college students, keeping students at the center of my focus was a thing that I learned my very first day in higher ed by the vice president at Michigan Royster Harper. She said, no matter what you do, however you do this work, keep students at the center of your focus. And I always have. And when I got to UCLA, I was single. And I became a faculty in residence. So I actually, in addition to running the LGBT center, being a professor, full professor in the higher education graduate program and running the masters of education and student affairs, which I founded at UCLA. I became a faculty in residence and I lived in the residence halls in a hall with a thousand of my best 19 year old friends. And, and I had a, in my apartment on campus, I had a kitchen. And, and even though we all got food in the residence halls, the students love to come to my kitchen and cook because they missed cooking at home. And so my rule was they could cook in my kitchen as long as there were leftovers and it was vegetarian because I am.  So I would show LGBT related film in my apartment. So straight kids got a ton of queer. For all the years that I, you know, about almost 15 years that I lived in the residence halls. So I found so much joy there. So, you know, all the time constantly. And since I've retired, my life is very different. I have very little interaction with students, which I miss, although I do some mentoring of students.   And so each day we find joy just in our lives.  And so we, I find immeasurable joy hourly with this little guy. And we're boaters and I find great joy being in my boat out in Puget Sound, you know, just cruising all up and down from Olympia up to the islands. So, you know, it's, it's hard to find joy when there's stress in your life. But I'm here to tell you that when the stress is dealt with and it's gone, the joy is just a bounding. And as a therapist, I appreciate that. Dr. Sandlow, joy is a wondrous thing. We've got a question from Amy Ryder, King, and they ask, thank you for sharing your profound story of survival, resilience and shining your light. I was moved by the image of the resource center you filled with books for students to see reflections of who they are. What ideas do you have for advocating for resource centers on college and university campuses? You know, that's a really important question. I'm doing another presentation for another institution who asked me to look at what, what I thought the future of LGBT work is in higher ed. One of the reasons I retired, and this is just being completely honest with you. One of the reasons I retired, primary reason is that when I started this work, I had a vision for what the work should be and could be. My vision of the work was met. And, you know, and I'm grateful for that because whoever really gets to say that in their work. But my vision was met.   So, you know, that, that was a challenge for me. That was why I retired. My vision was met. And I didn't have a vision beyond that. I needed to get out of the way of the people who have the vision to go beyond that. It wasn't mine. And so when I was asked to do this presentation coming up about how I envisioned the future, I asked my young colleagues how they envisioned the future. A lot of it is not about LGBTQ centers. Where my vision was, theirs is not because they feel like that's too focused. That it needs to be much broader than that. That there needs to be more of, you know, where institutions are now beginning to hire vice presidents or that level anyway of diversity and inclusion personnel. And it needs to be something that's much, that's as broad as that and probably more of looking at the whole concept of diversity and inclusion as a much larger community. And not siloed.  And here's the Latino group, the Latinx group. And, you know, in the Native American group that, that they all need to come together. So. I believe that the vision is that much broader understanding. Of where everyone fits into the future of higher ed work. And where everyone fits the reality is it's together. So. So that's, that's the best I can answer that question for you. I don't, I mean, I would hate to see LGBT centers go.  But it's possible, you know, to be part of that. Given higher ed given.  Hybrid off-campus learning is a very cool thing. And, and that may be what happens, but I don't know, it's up to you all, you all make that change. And then let me know what you did. Okay. We've got about five more minutes, folks. For more questions. Also, if you're in the audience, if you're out there, if you want to raise your hand on the screen, we can bring you up to the stage. So you can ask. Your question. Thanks, Joe, for that insight and information. That was going to be my question as well. I know that's something we've been working on here at Highline College for many, many years. And so it's great to hear your insights around that. It looks like we've got a question here from William. Hi, William. Hi, Joshua. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Thank you. You're on the air. Yep. I'm on the air, my friend. Excuse me. Hey, Joshua. What's your, what year did you, what year did you work at Highline? This question is for me. Yeah, because I didn't mean to share stage with you, Dr. Any time, my dear. William, I currently reside at Highline College. Whoa. Yeah. So I'm still here going strong. So thanks for your question. You're welcome. I love so much hearing the stories in, in history that you were telling the, the romances. And if I could say it, the, the scandals and the drama. I love the salacious stories and like historical fiction dramatizations both in literature and media on the stage. I wonder if that's a part of research that you, that could be fun sometimes. And for people like me who, who like to learn our history through entertaining stories. Do you have resources that you would share for like, I'm thinking of like the Sorjuana Ines de la Cruz series that played through Netflix about her poetry and her lovers and things like that. What did you come across that you would recommend for fun reads?  I'm going, whoa, look at this. Look, look who did what with whom. You know, there, there are some great films that, that come out. There's a one out right now that I haven't seen yet called cured. But we did a film on, basically it was on my story dealing with Anita Bryant. And, you know, there are a lot of things that we don't know. Well, it was a documentary. So that one, all that stuff was true. But there are some stories we don't know that we just sort of embellished. I really didn't do that in, in these history books that I wrote everything that I found like Susan B Anthony, you know, I mean, we never learned that she was a lesbian, but she had a number of women lovers. I just named one in this thing, but you can, if you research her as lesbian, all this stuff comes up. And, and as long as there are resources to cite accuracy, in her case, there was a letter from her niece who validated that, that she had these lovers. As long as there's that validation, then I'll put that stuff in my books, but just to do a rumor mill in my books, really technically, I just, I don't do that. That doesn't interest me. I am working on a play. Remember, I talked about the 1954 witch hunts at the University of Florida that during that time, during those witch hunts, over 800 students were kicked out of school for being perceived to be gay. They didn't even know if they were lesbian or gay or not. They were just kicked out because someone said they were. Over 100 professors lost their jobs for the same reason. And a number of them died by suicide because of the embarrassment of the whole thing. I'm writing a play about that period of time. It's a rather dark play. It's rather depressing. But I was able to find, you know, if you dig far enough, you can find just about anything. I was able to get into the Florida higher education archives. And I found all of the information about that, those witch hunts and the legislative investigation committee and the transcripts to the interrogations that they did on students who were, students and faculty who were interrogated in a dark room with a single light bulb. I found those transcripts. And so this play is being written based on the transcripts. So there might not be some things that are exactly accurate because most of those people, you know, if they're still alive, they're, I mean, I know one guy I've been able to interview him and he's almost 90. So, and he was an older non-traditional age student at the time. So a lot of these people are gone. But, you know, you can find all kinds of information in hidden treasures. You just always have to look for them. You know, I found a lot of information about lesbians and gay men when I went to Germany. Because I was doing research for the book on the last five months of World War II called The Soldier, the Avatar in the Holocaust. And, and I wrote a play about that also.  He was a 19-year-old Jewish soldier who was one of the liberators of Dachau. And I wanted more information about that. But there was other information that I needed.  And she interviews several teenage girls from a German town, German bombed out town. Now we don't know, I made up these girls. They don't exist. But what I was able to find was a little bit, not much of the history of what happened to the teenage girls in German towns. We know the boys were sent to war, but the girls were, they were treated terribly by every army that went through their towns and there were many. And so I captured that story.  And while the leaders of the play loved it, it was the kids in the play just, they just had trouble with it. It was really dark. But, you know, but I had, I knocked on to Germany and, and my wife speaks German and we were able to find a bunch of this information.  And if it, if it looks too salacious, you know, you might like doing salacious stuff. I don't particularly. I like doing the truth. And if the truth happens to be salacious, so be it. So I don't know if that answered your question. I get worried. I'm sorry. No, that was great. Thank you so much. I'm, I'm in Joshua. Yeah. Hi, everyone. Thank you. We've got, I think one last question.  Be true to yourself. We got that from Shakespeare to thine own self be true. And live your own truth, live your truth. Don't live somebody else's truth. If you're living somebody else's truth, you better check out what your truth is and, and go there. Beautiful. I love it. It's been wonderful hearing you speak today. I really dropped the mic on some historical content that I, I feel folks don't hear. I'm constantly bringing this up with individuals that I talk about.  And it was very eye opening for myself. Thank you so much again, folks in the chat. Thank you so much for joining us today. And that would be to QI history. And in the chat, there's information more about Dr. Ronnie Sandlow, where you can find the books, et cetera from. Thank you, Dr. Sandlow again tomorrow. And tomorrow we've got more coming at you a history of the HIV and AIDS and Seattle and the memorial pathways. But again, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. Thank you so much. And Dr. Sandlow. Thank you. Thank you.


Going on everyone Sam here with late sports cards We are ripping 23 moments sterling baseball hobby 12 box full case break number four random business style Look again at your random results as always can find those on the website under the results tab as well as the link in the chat What's his name Alex Ramirez right I want to say Good luck everybody. I think it's Alex Ramirez. Yeah, I mean, it's it's not like it's just weird looking It's not it's not horrible because at least he like tried on it Like wrote out his full name, but like doesn't no cursive. No But it's better than like, you know just like an initial better than freaking Nelson a lot on Christian vicaro.  Yes, it is Jason say custom spring training Gray UV gray under visor. Good luck guys. Let's do it again We will do a recap for this as well. Did you really that's pretty cool. Taylor Hawkins nice That Jake knows who that is for a baby rookie Libertor refractor Josh young ALS to 199 good start base auto zack neto ALS there you go Scotty Ronda Jordan Walker rookie as well I'm gonna show triple a double a nice. That's still solid. I know it's still impressive man Buddy's dad got all the way to triple a Losses me base auto Jackson holiday going to the ALS. Good start. Congrats Ezekiel Nice one there, buddy. Yeah, that's Colson Montgomery Taylor Hawkins Jake Jason in chat said his buddy is Taylor Hawkins used to play for the Rays Yvonne Herrera gold Jase young nice one there. Oh boy. Oh boy Nls to three Drew Jones Jordan Lawler on the dual Nl West Sean R. Congrats, dude Yes, guy. We are yes guy. Thank you sky. Dude.  That'll get mad here at Mitchell Hunter Brown Yeah, that's pretty cool, man. I like that one Speckle Vinny Patskentino to 150 al central and Abel Bastidas al central on the auto Drew Jones DL Hall Jones Anthony Gutierrez al west there you go Scotty clean up with the al west very nice buddy Yes, sir. Mercedes and Drew Jones That's nasty Dude Played for the stone grabs. That's pretty cool. We're Jake used to live Stocks Jake's address Prep 80 Matthew Libertura to one to 99 is Vinny Patskentino Nice one here Marcello Meyer to 99 al east on the Ascension's auto good case so far everybody Good case Walker and Jackson Merrill Adley rookie Riley green rookie to 75 Gavin Cross for the al central willy-fannis and at least nice one there Congrats and at least that's Greg Matt Wollner Jonathan Aranda Gabriel Moreno Brooks Lee al central base auto nice one there. That's kind of cool Raza Gorman and Kate Cavali. That's pretty awesome. 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I was like, let me check all the cars like that I Looked like that was like I Had ten seconds to get out of the cage That's what I look like Chase young tomorrow Johnson NL central base auto nice one there NL central Zala's Beck Jackson holiday Gunnar Henderson rookie orange Elijah green NL East to 75 there you go Greg with the NL East good stuff Greg Jordan Walker Merrill and Jack Williams You know how big of a bot he is out there for us Yeah, he can't like he can't do those things on the internet that are like proving out a robot click on the buses He never clicks on the buses Chase young to a hundred Nice one there NL central jet Williams jet the met and I don't know if you're joking There you go Greg no, he's that's just how you click the bicycle Click the buses click the stock supplies. Yeah guys. That's what I see. I'm telling you that's why Cannot compute what I saying this out steward to one ninety-nine a hundred brown ALS critical failure John de Mejia NL central destruct Garrett Mitchell and Hunter Brown. It's a one ninety nine Garrett Mitchell Grats on that NL central have it's in the code to a hundred al central JC on on the Stirling Silverado. Nice one there Traded to the 49. Yeah Yeah, yes, he was Feel the Ravens and dolphins are the exact opposite Dolphins can't be seen as Ravens can't be bad. I know it's bad Not good. It makes zero sense. It's not good. The Patriots have bigger wins than the Dolphins Yeah Frauds dude dolphins are absolute frauds So I'll do it to 50 Jackson shurio on the gold tech. Here you go Greg with the NL central solid one there Eric Brown jr. NL central as well base No It's complete. It's already Already madness Adley rally green base auto jacks and Merrill NL West Scotty that'd be sick when that would be nasty cost us out man. Walner Figure it out There's like seven mixers in his box alone Burgoyah that is a gold Yankees Fernandez to 50 nice one there Everything's nothing staffs and it's all slippery so they'll slide Gavin cross to 150 mark vientos NL East Al West is Anthony Gutierrez on the wave to 125 I know dude, that was what I saw the most I saw coming out of there was hockey stuff Corbyn Carroll drew water Spencer Jones Al East nice one there Arias and mr. De La Cruz What is really gender what really what's the what are we talking? I'm going to focus. Yeah To a cherry sub you put mayo on yours and nasty Mark Vientos Ellie De La Cruz to 99 and an elliotto. There we go. Congrats Greg with the NL central.  There's no like true case hitting this Scotty usually you get like I've been seeing averaging of like one double dual or triple auto and then some of those tax as well the tax come Maybe three four case Pascantino Cam Collier tonight to 99 Elijah Green and at least we're on our third already in this one. Yeah. Yeah. No, I have been I made sure to call fanatics Me like hey, hey, send me those send me those Cheek Shelly of those alleys This is under the table Lazaral Montez base auto a L West Yeah, I don't know it's different. Yeah 10 I think is it not smoke show signatures Josh Allen Like your marrow Nice one there for the AL East Yvonne Herrera we'll go 15 to 100 Logan Oh, Hopi Nice one there for the angels. I'm gonna go 10 ALS Ricardo Cabrera and L central You get it and I'll get 15 There There we go Adley Rushman to 75 Brady house. Let's go Greg. I got you base auto cam Collier and L central going to Greg again Kim Kahlia O'Naylor Cole Young Yeah, Greg's doing well Riley Green Brett Beatty Sterling Silver Anthony Gutierrez ALS Nice one there Henry Bolt ALS again Congrats on that one Matt Walner and Jonathan Ronda To 199 Mikey Romero That's on that AL East ALS to 150 Zack Neto there you go Scotty again Scotty with another hit With a regular emerald of anybody should be 15 Yeah, you should be confused Hopi Anthony Gutierrez to 25 William Burgoyle to an L East is out of 15 apparently But then we just check the checklist and it says that Josh Allen is numbered to 15 Brainy house and a lease nice one there. And this one's a royal Yeah, that makes no sense Imagine they could just write the numbering on the card. 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Alex Ramirez is we got a blue 2199 drew Jones blue to 25 Edgar Quero going to the ALS nice one there Red Squawky Edgar Quero and base Look at him bro, he's so out of it That's a 150 Mazataka Yoshida and Brooks leads you 99 On the auto for the AL Central Got another blue that is 2150 at Logan Ohapi and Sedan, Rafaela to 25 nice one there AL East on the blue second blue Very nice Meyer Jordi Diaz It's jaker saying goodbye to homeboy over there Hadley-Rutchman Willie Fannis and Elise nice one there Grats on that Greg with the analyst process and outman Lady Libetor to 99 Gavin Cross Nice one there and Ali or AL East to 100 Spencer Jones Nice one there congrats AL East Spencer Jones around Jordan Walker Jake you're not playing for him over right now Volpe rookie to 99 Jason Sharia AL Central NLS Jordan Beck Nice one there congrats on that one Muncie and Parada Michael Garcia to 150 nice one there AL Central NLE's Jacob Barry Grats on that NLE scragg again, Paraza and Nolan Gorman rookie He was so bad I'll be back in tonight.  I did. I think it's the last card. That's why I don't want to get another one because the last card sucked too.    It's you Gavin Cross Manuel Veltray AL East I'll give it a couple weeks for you.  That sounds about right. That was a bot. Yeah, that checks out. That checks out. Garcia Masataki Oshida Gabriel Martinez NLE or AL East AL East Francisco Alvarez Podaysanga South Stewart Cartaya Ellie De La Cruz another one to 99. There we go Greg. Congrats buddy. The NL Central, very nice. On the opulence. Oh yeah, get that one into a mag for you Greg. Very nice. I didn't even say fortnight. I said fall guys. What a bot. What a blow it man. Jason Cheerio AL Central, they saw it. That's on that AL Central Freeman and Vargas Let's see a super in these last couple of packs. Super or red. That's what I want to see. Beisotto Gavin Cross AL Central again. Masafana Yanquil and Beis. Two to go everyone. Yeah we weren't even on the list dude. Beisotto Lazaro Montez AL West Alvarez Christian Baccaro Come on Scotty. Let's see it Scotty. Josh Young to 100. Not bad on the sterling silver rookie. That'll work for sure. Hell yeah. There you go Scotty AL West. Gavin Cross AL Central. Yes sir, Mikey Romero. Most will number Joe for sure. Oh yeah, definitely. There's a refractor very early on. Yoshida rookie. Ohapi Alex Ramirez there's two. And at least. Very nice. Hunter Brown and Josh Young rookie. Washington Zanzo. 299 Nolan Gorman. That's on that AL Central. Beisotto Glader Figuero for the AL West. Nice one there. Ellie and Nelson Rota. You're really getting through out there. Can you look over here? Yeah. Here he comes. After the Missouri. AL West Deon Jorge. Tighten up. Everybody tighten up. Good one. Nice one there. Stinks in here. You know how we know you're a bot. You can't do the proof you're not a robot thing. That thing's got problems. That thing's got problems. That's user error right there. That's user error. Nick said he's on the trash list. Nick was talking about the trash list. It was a very wide array of people this week. I like it. I like it. No employees this week. Yeah. First time right there. Wolfie Rookie. 299 Brooks Lee. Face Rookie Otto. Benny Pascantino. I can't confirm about that. You should be on it. To be fair though. We only work once a week together now. It'll work one time. We were working Tuesday and Wednesday together. You were on it. I was on there every week. I was number one every single week. Especially because that was the last of a five day stretch for you two. Or four day stretch. Base Otto Joshua Baez. NL Central. Real Hall Zetovar. He had a 150. Xavier Isaac. NL West. Daniel Montecino. Ellie Nelson Rada. Base Otto Edison Paulino. A.L. East. Congrats A.L. East. Tavali Stowers. Kaminaro. Last box. Good luck everybody. Do a quick recap after as well. Kuma Rocker. Zetovar to 199 Rookie. Base Otto Reggie Crawford for the NL West. Nice one there. Cheerio and Yankee. Quick recap here everybody. We had Tech to 99. L.E.D. La Cruz to 50. Jackson Cheerio. We had Xavier Isaac. Onto our base autos. We had Reggie Crawford. Jackson Merrill. Jet Williams. Tamar Johnson. Jonathan Mejia. Eric Brown. Spencer Jones. Henry Bolt. Cam Collier. Chase DeLauder. Zack Neto. Willie Fannes. Gabriel Martinez. Gabriel Gonzalez. Mason Auer. Alex Ramirez. Mikey Romero. Deanna Jorge. L.E.D. La Cruz. L.E.D. Green. Lazaro Montez. Brooks Lee. Brady House. Gavin Cross. Jason Cheerio. Edison Paulino. Daniel Montecino. Joshua Baez. Vinny Pasquantino. Deanna Jorge. Clatter Figuero. Alex Ramirez. Gavin Cross. More Base. Lazaro Montez. Manuel Beltre. Jacob Berry. Jordan Beck. Ricardo Cabrera. Willie Fannes. Brooks Lee. Henry Bolt. Anthony Gutierrez. Abel Bastidas. Jackson Holiday. Zack Neto to 150. Sam Zavala to 125. Anthony Gutierrez to 100. We've got Jayce Young and Spencer Jones to 99. Brooks Lee. Mar Johnson. Marcelo Meyer to 50. Yanquil Fernandez to 75. Elijah Green. Gabriel Moreno blue to 25. Edgar Cuero and Sedan Rafaela. Our autos we had our Magd cards. L.E.D. La Cruz to 99 for the Anno Central. And this really awesome Drew Jones Jordan Lawler two of three. Duel. I'll do it for the break everybody. Thanks again for the filp. Up next is nothing.


Welcome back to Think Tech. I'm Jay Fidel. Today, on Global Connections, we're going to take a look at the train disaster in India. And we're going to talk to Rupmati Khandikar, who has been following it, and she can tell us the latest. Rupmati, welcome to the show. Thanks for coming on to discuss this very tragic accident in eastern India. It probably has disturbed and disrupted the whole country. Am I right? Aloha, Jay. And it's always been lovely to be with you. And today, we're discussing one of the worst railway disasters in India. So this happened a couple of days back and it shook the entire country as it should. And it was a gruesome accident as we see it. And we'll just preview what we can talk about the entire system and how it's one of the biggest, biggest railway disasters because of the passengers involved, because of the death toll involved. It's around 238 officials and 900 injured. So we go to discuss one of the biggest railway disasters of the century. Yeah. Well, tell us what happened. You've taken a look at it. And so you know, the way these three trains came together at high speed. How did that happen? So now we see in this that the Haura Express was there were two trains which were interlocking and coming close to each other. And the Balasore Express got a signal. They got a signal to go the interlocking system that there is. They got a system to divert. And when they diverted, Jay, we can see in the clip that it went to the iron ore train, the iron ore train which was standing still stationary train, but iron ore train. So the center of gravity, the stability that this train has is enormous change. So when a passenger train at full speed, when it collided with the iron ore train, the engine climbed up and the three passenger boogies behind it started disrupted. And the other train which was passing by the Haura Express, the tail end of that collided with this disaster. And then there was a collision. Otherwise, that train was passing. Now this interlocking signal that the train was given to divert. Who gave this? Why it was given? It was a human error and it was identified to be a person who did it. And now a central bureau of investigations CBI in India has ordered a probe into this. So it's pretty serious business, Jay. It was not an accident. It was a disaster linked to human error, intentional or not, that is going to be investigated. Oh boy. Yeah, I saw photographs of the passenger trains and they folded up like an accordion. I mean, it was one car squashed against the other car in a crush of metal. And people who were caught in those cars had no way to get out. Yeah. If we see the clip and we now understand that how the trains came, Jay, let's have a look at that. Yeah, let's see the clips now. What is this, Rumani? Jay, the Haura Express was traveling towards one direction and the Abalasur Express was traveling to another direction and see the interlocking error that it gets. It gets a chance to divert where the iron or train is standing stagnant in another place. And that's when it just climbs onto it. And now there is a total disaster because the tail end of the Haura Express, which is passing by, collides into this accident prone site. So we have passenger boogies which have collided with each other. So one train out of these three was stationary. But the train unfortunately was of iron or if it had moved or it had taken cushion the impact, the impact would have been a little less as compared to just standing like a dead wall and this train banging onto it. So that was what caused the impact. And the impact of this train collision was such that you couldn't avoid it. Two trains at high speed. Now Jay, there is an automatic train protection ATP that is being developed in India, indigenously. And it is by the research standards organization, RFDSO in India and the trials are being held in South India. This is not this accident happened in West India, West Bengal Plains. And the trials that are happening for the Kovach system. Now this is an indigenously developed system and it's a train breaking system, anti-collision system, Kovach. But it's come a little bit too late, isn't it? It is developed one fourth the cost that it's in the worldwide market, one fourth the cost. But the government says that anyway, this Kovach system would have not come on to this route because it's not a high traffic route. So it would have been the fourth tier implementation of that system into this route. So this was a disaster impending to happen. Well, I saw that the trains, the two passenger trains were traveling at 80 miles an hour. That's very fast. Very fast. It's not the, you know, the French TGV, the French TGV. The train to Grand Vitesse in France or the bullet train in Japan. And I think the Chinese have a very fast train also. But it's still at 80 miles an hour. That's pretty, that's pretty fast. We do have one route coming up in Andhra. You've seen the trains in the colonial countries which used to have those metal bars and everything. We were running on that. There was no new track added. There were no routes added. He is trying to overhaul the entire system with the train system dependent on green energy. Like we saw in the COP26 that he was the only one who promised that by 2017 we will go all green. And as coal is used by railways, railways is one of the biggest corporation of India. And it uses around 40% of thermal energy. So reforming the railways was a good route to go with the green way. And getting new trains known as Vande Bharat, they are the fast trains. And fortunately, unfortunately, none of those trains were involved in these. These were the old ones which were running. So these are not the high tech or high speed ones which have come in. Still, they were at a good pace, but none of the new trains that were coming. Now, I read that Modi has spent $30 billion in the past year to upgrade the rail infrastructure. What's the background of that? I mean, I'm taking a guess here, but just my observation is that trains are very important as a method of transportation in India. People don't necessarily have cars. They take trains. They've taken trains since the early days of the British Empire. And they still do take trains. And what happened here is it has to have a huge effect on the whole system. $30 billion. That's a lot to spend in one fiscal year. Yes. India is huge and so is the train system because it links almost every village, almost every route in India to each other. And this system upgradation that he did, around $30 billion. Why the amount? Because this amount was never spent on railways like this one upgradation like that. The trains which were already there, they were either repaired just a little bit of renovation, but nothing like this. This is pure upgradation where you have new trains being added, new routes being added. And in India, airfare and railway travel, they're approximately the same cost. But people still prefer railway because it takes them right to their doorstep. We don't have airports in every village, but we do have railway stations in every village. So that's why the railway system has got a higher linking road than flights. So that's the main reason why he's upgraded this railway system. Well, it sounds like one of his big priorities is infrastructure. If you want to bring India into the top tier of economic powers in the world, you've got to do that. And I recall, I think we talked about a bridge, a remarkable bridge that he built. I guess that was also in Punjab that cost a lot of money, but it covered a river way down below, and it was very expensive, very high-tech bridge. So it sounds to me like he's doing this for all modes of transportation because he realizes that you have a better economy and more government control if you can improve the transportation system in general. And rail is a very important part of that for India and for him. And so this has got to be important for his political image, isn't it? I mean, since the government owns the railways, then the first inclination is to blame the government for something. How has that worked out? What's the political pushback on this? Jay, like we see after the World War, infrastructure will develop to give employment to people. So infrastructure for countries is always the best avenue to provide employment, create demand, put money in the hands of the people and then demand supply that cycle goes on. So Modi, by doing the infrastructure bit is doing the right thing. And these bridges that connected remote areas of India to us and supplies towards those places also was important of logistics, of military, of guarding the security borders of everything. So Jay, this backlash for this accident did not reach Modi in such a way that nobody has blamed Mr. Modi. After this accident, Jay, if it was in the previous tenure of the Congress, the minister, the railway minister would resign. It's my responsibility and I resign. If you have access to this, I will show it to you. There's Ashwin Vaishnav, who's the railway minister of Mr. Modi. Jay, he has been on a track for four days straight waiting for the trains to run back on track. He has just concentrated wholeheartedly and to get the tracks running back because you see how many coaches had collided with each other. Around seven coaches had collided with each other and there were dead bodies and the electrical lines had got cut. So it would have taken another government weeks to get back to the track. But this Ashwin Vaishnav, he sat on the spot. He's not left it. And within two days, Jay, he has got the track running back on. He's not disrupted anything else. So taking responsibility is just not by resigning. Taking responsibility is getting things back into action, getting the route back. So people are not blind. People have access to social media. People have access to every bit of news. And when they saw this kind of responsibility undertaking and restoration of normality and the prime minister was the first one to reach the site. You have to give them credit for that because this was in a, what, a rural area, the name of the town, what, Odisha? Odisha. Yes, Odisha is a state and Balashtur is the place where it happened. Yeah. So that means that the people who were necessarily not necessarily on the train were not necessarily from that area. They may have just been passing through. And so people had to come from distant places to identify the dead and the government people who came to put the trains, fix the track and all that. They had to come from distant places too. So this has been an upheaval. And I imagine the Indian press has covered, the press around the world has covered this accident, this casualty. And it has been everywhere in every media for the past few days. It is a world reaction. How is the reaction in the media in India? I would imagine that it's even more so in India. Yes. This disaster was in the news headlines on every bit of news channel or resource, a source that we can find. But nobody has reported a negative thing or, you know, you couldn't point fingers and say that your railway upgradation was wrong. Because firstly, the route is not high priority. Secondly, it was a human error which caused the interlocking system signal. This signal was given and then withdrawn. So Jay, something is fishy over there. And thirdly, the people responsible at the top took responsibility in such a way that they were on the ground. So people have appreciated that and people have seen that they did not just let go and leave it to the lower ranks to take care of business. The highest, the top priority, everybody has come in and they have hence on been able to get the track running. Because see, if you suspend one track, there are different trains, different routes. Two days of holding back of this would disconnect two states. So somebody coming up with this and Jay, if you see, they have to do a lot of things because the tracks which are there, they are not, they cannot just be restored. They need a lot of interlinking. What is that? Efforts. You have to have the department of trains which everything has to come together. And that was done at the highest level and the Prime Minister himself came on to the site. That was a site to see because you never seen a Prime Minister just taking the entire blueprint of the place telling what has to be done, instructions passed, going and meeting them in the hospital. These were not just photo opportunities because even if there was no photograph involved, he would have done it. He is that kind of a person, even as a Minister. He's done the right thing politically then. This is going to make him even more popular. Yes. No, it won't dent his image, popular or it won't increase his popularity, but this never dented his image. He made sure that he did the right, that was at the right time. Jay, if he had a Railway Minister who would have just deserted the scene, we would have had a very wrong impression because in the past, if you pick up and you see, we have had a lot of disasters in India and we have had Railway Ministers just confining their responsibility to their resignation. Just that. Nobody has made sure that it's back to nomads. Yeah, well, I mean, 200, 300 people died and their families must be coming from all over India to deal with all the arrangements that have to be made, including, as you mentioned, the hospital. If there are 900 or more people who are injured, a lot of them are going to be in the hospital. I imagine that those hospitals would be in Odisha also, so people have got to be coming from far and wide to take care of their relatives. Community came in again this time, Jay, like we discussed in the COVID time. There were many organizations, especially the RSS, Sivasan and many organizations who came on site and there were donations of blood within 12 hours of the system, so much that the blood bank had to turn back people saying that we have had enough. There were so many people, so community in spite and over above the government also came in and helped all these people immediately. And Jay, in these trains, we know the people who buy the tickets. We identified those, but those people who are just traveling without a ticket or just traveling to the route, they are also involved. So compensations were announced for the people dead, the people injured and the people differentiation between gravely injured and just injured, and they were given promptly. So, there's a lot of players involved, as you mentioned, there's the government, various departments in the government. There's the people and their families, people who died and were injured. There's the healthcare system in that area to take care of them. And of course, there's everybody in India is aware of this and there's the media, you know, and so everybody is aware. And my question to you is, what has India learned? What have the people learned, the train system learned? What has the government learned, if anything? What have the family, what is the man on the street or the woman on the street learned? And I guess I want to ask you also about the reaction from outside of India, because this was, you know, this was a matter of news all over the world. And I imagine just as there was an outpouring of support in India from Indian L.M.O.s and every organizations, there was probably an outpouring of support from India's neighbors and friends and other countries. So, what has that been like and what have, if you can say, what have these various, you know, elements of the catastrophe, what have they learned or what do you think they should have learned? Jay, the railway upgradation system, the covered system, because this was a low priority route, they would have to get into faster upgradation of this covered system, which is an anti-collision device that is being developed by India. That should have been, now, there'll be a fast track to that, isn't it? Plus, like Jay, the routes on Indian tracks, you cannot monitor, you cannot have security for them. There's a clip going viral of a small child placing rocks on the track, which is very dangerous, is placing big rocks. So, how do you prevent such disasters? There has to be a self-responsibility model responsibility. And Jay, if we see this about Mr. Modi being criticised outside of the country, there are some things which are above, way above your personal interest and that is nationalist interest, your collective responsibility towards your nation. When a nation is in a disaster, if they don't identify themselves as Indians and they get down to criticising just for political means, there's something drastically wrong with them. There's a collective responsibility for a collective action that has to be taken and that is each politician's responsibility because when they go outside of the country, they are representing India and poking on a disaster or poking on a thing which has to malign somebody's image for your own personal reasons, is never right. In times of disaster, in times of calamity, everybody has to come together and rise above their political intentions. There has always been the norm, the responsibility, political responsibility that each person has and if they get down to be little more belittling BJP for this, that is their personal vested interest that they want to come to power the next time. But nobody is blind, everybody sees it, that they are showing that they are petty in their mindset and upgradation of railways will never stop. India is going towards, this upgradation was long needed, seven decades and nothing has been done for upgrading the passenger system. It's one of the largest networks under one manager, so when the government manages it, upgradation will never stop. They will point fingers, they will try to hurt, but their collective responsibility, their moral responsibility is towards national interests, any politician. No, there was one suggestion I noticed there where they were talking about priorities that the, I'm only assuming here that the $30 billion went for new rail equipment. This equipment involved in this catastrophe was old rail equipment, or not new anyway. And so the point was that perhaps the priority was on new rather than old, and old is more dangerous than new. And I don't know, I don't have that interplay with the software and the anti-collision system you mentioned. But one thing seems to me is that going forward, the government can and probably will spend more than $30 billion going forward. That it will take more money, it will allocate more money to rebuild the older infrastructure, not only the trains and the rail and the security, as you said, where the child puts a rock on the track, that is really dangerous. But to make sure there's a fence around the rail so that that can happen. So I think what's going to happen, what should happen anyway, is you have to put the priority on all elements of the system, the new ones and the not so new ones, and put the safety technology, the safety devices on both the new ones and the old ones. I think there'll probably be a public call for that. And I think it's obvious that that should happen. And from this discussion, it seems to me that rail is part of India's DNA. We really can't afford to lose people on trains because that's the way they get around. That's what binds India together. That's why this is such a catastrophe because it's at the heart. It's at the heart of India and its economy and its social connection. So I imagine we're not going to hear the end of the story for a while. That there will be a lot of discussion about what needs to be done in terms of the money and the priorities going forward. Do you agree? Of course, of course, Jay, point on railways at the heart of Indian economy and Indian lifestyle. And Jay, you remember during the COVID, we had created green channels which was transporting oxygen. So it's a lifeline, an unpublished, you know, you can't really compare the goods transportation, the people transportation, the role that Indian railways plays in creating jobs. That is also a big thing. The employment portion of Indian railways is unparalleled. So we have something which we'll keep on progressing. And this is one I hope of never disasters. Well, I think if we look again in five years or 10, we will see high speed trains, better rail systems, better control systems, and actually comfort just like in Teche Bay in France and the high speed rail in Japan, and for that matter, China. And so, you know, one myth I wanted to spell before we conclude our discussion is that, you know, people have seen photographs of the popular culture around trains in India where there's a million people hanging off the train. You know, they're stuffed in the cars, they're hanging, they're holding on to the train as it goes forward. And I don't think it's like that at all. I think that India has given that up a long time ago and that in either the new ones or the old ones, if you take a train ride in India, it's comfortable, it's spacious, and it's organized. Am I right about that? A bit on that. Because there are different classes of Indian railways.  But there are still many locals which are intercity travelers and which somewhere just people climb onto it and they'll say, we'll get down at the next stop. So a lot of, what do you call them, hordes? Hordes are still on and the country still functions on those people hanging out and falling out. So that continues. That doesn't stop. Well, you think it might change. I mean, going forward, I think people may insist on changing. In fact, are there people in India, people that you know who are saying, hey, this is dangerous business. I don't want to take that risk anymore. I want to have these trains really comfortable and especially safe. Are people saying that? People use that. I mean, normalizing a crowd in India is very easy, Jay. Two days into India, you will feel it's normal to push into a crowd to get into a crowd. In Japan, you remember they have those people who have professional pushers who push you into the train. In India, the crowd itself acts as the pusher. So you have a crowd behind which is the pusher of the crowd behind. So the crowd actually, if you just stand, they will take you in the train. So we don't have professional crowd pushers, but the crowd itself gives you momentum. And you can't escape a crowd in India. Even if you get down the train, you will be in the same crowd. So that's it. Well, 1.4 billion people. That's quite a crowd. But one thing that strikes me, and this is my own experience, and my own experience with you talking with you is that I think people now, 2023, are more conscious about India than they have been. About India's economy, its success in technology and telecommunications, the success of Indians who come to other countries like the United States and how successful they are in so many ways in business. And India is like a very important player that we have to pay attention to. We have to relate to. We have to have our global relations with them. And although this is a terrible, tragic accident, it does make people more aware of what India is and what it's like and what its challenges and its politics are. And although I hate to see people killed and hurt, the fact is this is going to be one of those events that make people around the world think more of India. Do you agree? Yes. It's a learning point. It's a point where we've got communities together, but people together got national interest together and global attention to this event. But we see that India has to get this back on track because nothing can afford to stop the line of progress that they're making. This has to be a part and parcel of the route that India is taking. And Jay, the disaster because it was like I repeat, because it was human error, we could not blame the system. And the aftermath of the restoration was such that you could not blame the administration and the community feeling that people came together to help that showed that India has a resilient spirit. So when Turkey had an earthquake, India was the first to help. So when a country which is trying to, it's an indigenous effort is very important, Jay, because it's a colonized country. We have to not forget that. It's not been at this level from the beginning. It has reached this level through hard work. So irrespective of who's at the top, this country has come from a colonized nation to being one of a developing nation towards a developed nation at 2070 it wants to be. So and still going with consideration and consolidation of efforts towards the efforts are not harmful to others. It is within. It's the Hindu way of life that you have to look towards yourself in a cell and progress within yourself. So that kind of philosophy is practiced on this national scale. So that it deserves a bit of respect. Well, there is a statement that people do come together and that they are gathering together about this. They are expressing, you know, community, national community about this. And that's pretty obvious in the world. So it's a positive side of this whole story. Well, thank you, Rupati. Thank you for helping us understand what happened and what the implications are. And I'm and I'm so sorry for, you know, the people who who were killed and injured. But I think the world needs to understand what happened and what it means for India. Thank you, Rupati. Most welcome, Jay. It was always my pleasure.


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