All right, so I would like to introduce Whitney Archer. She holds a master's in arts in women, gender, and sexuality studies, as well as a master's of education in college student services administration with a specialization in identity, exploration, and development. That's a lot, isn't it? And she's not even done yet. She's working on her PhD now. So her graduate thesis research was on the experiences of transgender students attending women's colleges. Currently, she directs the Hattie Redmond Women and Gender Center at Oregon State University, where she is also pursuing a PhD in women, gender, and sexuality studies. So let's please give a warm welcome to Whitney Archer. Thank you, Steven. Good morning. How are folks doing? Yeah? Awesome. I'm exhausted. I drove up from Corvallis last night, and I have a one-year-old who didn't want to go back to bed when we arrived. But I'm so excited, despite being exhausted, to spend some time with you this morning. So I just want to thank the committee for having me. Thank you, Steven, for the introduction. And it's exciting to be a part of the great portfolio of programs that you all have put together for this week. So thank you. Welcome. Yeah, so a little bit of an overview to keep me honest of what we'll go over in our time together this morning. I want us to develop shared expectations while we may only share this space for an hour and a half this morning. I really want us to be in community with one another. And I hope that the people that are in this room with you, even as I leave, you continue to be in community with them. And as we develop some expectations that they can lay a foundation for continued work for solidarity and liberation that you're doing here on your campus and in the broader community. So we'll spend some time there as well as having some shared language for the frameworks that I hope to bring as we think around de-centering and de-whitening a queer experience and what it means to center cutie-pock experience when we're looking at work for liberation. And so we'll talk a little bit about critical whiteness and intersectionality.  So I have some sticky sheets and some markers. And I want us to break in groups where we'll actually get a chance to think together around how we can solve issues that are facing our communities and that impact us. So that's how we'll hang out together.  Long for the ride? OK. So I want to start by pausing to think about whose land that we're on. So here on your campus, LGBTQIA week falls on a week that started with Indigenous Peoples Day, a reclaiming of a day that was celebrating colonization. There is a group called the US Department of Arts and Culture. It's not a real US department, but they're a group of dreamers and imaginers who are a people-powered organization thinking about, like, if we did have a Department of Arts and Culture, what it would be. And they've done a campaign around Native land that has centered Indigenous art. So this is one of the pieces from that. So just as resources for you to have, I encourage you to check out the USDAC. And just want to pause for the Duwamish and Puget Sound Salish people's lands who we're on as settlers. Perhaps there's Indigenous folks who are here in this room. Thank you for letting us be here as guests and be aware that we are here on occupied land. So a bit about me. I'm Whitney, as it was said. I use both they and she pronouns. This blue house here sits on the Oregon State University campus. It's the Hattie-Redmond Women and Gender Center. So I don't get the opportunity to come and spend a morning with you. That's where I spend my time. It's a center that's been on our campus since 1972. We just had a renaming to the Hattie-Redmond Women and Gender Center this year thanks to student activists who did protests on our campus to change building names. Our actual building was named Benton Annex for Thomas Benton, a Missouri senator who professed manifest destiny and encouraged folks to head west. The county that Corvallis is in is also named for Thomas Benton. But Benton Annex, Benton Hall, other buildings on our campus just went through a renaming process. And I think it's just important to think around the activist roots that ground our work. And sometimes in the college setting, we think a lot, right? And how do we feel? How do we actually put things on the ground into action? And I'm just inspired by student leaders and activists that I get the chance to spend time with in the Hattie-Redmond Women and Gender Center. And Hattie-Redmond is a black woman who was a suffragette working in Oregon in 1912. At that point, in the Oregon State Constitution, folks of color were not allowed to live in our state. So it was doing work really centering the complexity of identity. And I think it's an honor to have her name on our building. And it impacts the work that we do as we strive to be as identity conscious as possible. And I think also the legacies of racism being written into the state constitution of Oregon means the demographics. If I was talking at Oregon State right now would be very different. We're a predominantly white campus in a predominantly white state and a predominantly white town. So when I think about how white supremacy operates, how whiteness continues to be centered within what gets picked up in the media, I really strive to challenge the ways in which I swim in that water every day and as a white person being aware of the space that I'm taking up and what my role is to work with other white people around our work of dismantling white supremacy and seeing how we are hurt by that and building solidarity with colleagues of color. So that's a little bit of what I do at Oregon State. And then this is my family over here. It's my partner, Carrie, and my two kids, Holden and Dalton. So they were troopers, my young ones, who rode in the car last night. And they're getting some grandparent time right now. So they're pretty excited. I think they're getting lots of TV and sugary breakfast things. I just wanted to just be able to bring who I am to this space. And I hope as we have conversations that you feel like you can bring yourself to the conversations you have with your peers and what we build together today. So as I talk about safe space and brave space, what comes up for folks? This is where we get some audience participation. And I'll bring the mic so we can make sure people can be heard around the room. Things come up for folks with these two terms. To me, safe space, like nothing and no one could guarantee that it's going to be a safe space for me. Brave space, I see it as a space in we all are encouraged to step up and step back when we need to. Thank you. Anyone have something they'd like to add to that? A place where you're not judged. Can you say more about what that means to you?  Something about maybe the intent of a space, right? And wanting to feel acceptance. So I have some language I want us to think about. So safe space stuff came up a lot in the 90s. I think there's still a lot of conversations about it. But late 90s, early 2000s, we began to see more that brave space is a critique of the idea of safe space. So as our first speaker offered that, it's hard to guarantee safety. Our world is unsafe for a lot of us in a lot of times. And there's an assertion that bravery is needed because learning involves not merely risk, but the pain of giving up a former condition in favor of new way of seeing and seeking things. That there's risk involved. And I think when safety gets synonymous with comfort, brave spaces aren't always comfortable spaces. So I invite you into discomfort with me that we can learn together. While I might be up here, I want to hopefully hold a container that we are co-learners. You all are brilliant and are bringing so much to our conversation today. So I just invite that as we go. Some expectations for a brave space. I might say like, hey, it's a brave space, right? But what does that actually mean? And developing some shared language beyond, we're going to take risks together and make it uncomfortable. And this is adapted from Adrian Marie Brown's Emergent Strategies, another resource. If you want to check it out, awesome read. We'll get to watch a video clip from her later. She invites us to engage tension and not indulge drama. Anyone want to offer how they interpret that? Thank you. I think you might be talking about like, approaching the elephant in the room, that thing that makes everyone comfortable or like makes them feel unsafe and talk it out, try to approach it from different perspectives instead of just making it something big, like not circus, but more like a spectacle, spectacle, making it something that you feel comfortable talking and breaking down those barriers. That's why I understand. So as tension arises, naming that and engaging that, I think sometimes that tension is, the impact is that we're gonna learn something, we may be challenged, we may be expanding our mind to think in new ways. So make space, take space. Put the picture in. So I would say make space is like, you're creating, I'll speak for myself. Like when I make space, I kind of am open to other folks' ideas, knowledge, experience, and I listened to understand. So I'm like making space for folks to engage with me. And when the taking space is me, also using that space also to speak my own truths and using my own voice and bringing in my ideas and I'm taking space for myself so that I can be heard. Thank you, yeah. So that we make space for voices and perspectives and we also, there's a time to claim that space and speak up, right? Use our voices. So trying to think of a less ableist, like step up, step back, if people have heard that in other spaces. So next is yes and both and. And this one for me is thinking beyond binary thinking. Holding the multiple truths. The person who just spoke said like, I'm gonna speak my truth. Someone else in this room could have a very different truth and those are both valid, right? So that we sit in that both and. That my experience doesn't cancel out someone else's experience, but that together as we hear those experiences, we have a more complex and nuanced understanding of the world, of the space we're sharing with folks and the problems we're seeking to solve. So value the process as much, if not more than you value the outcomes. Anyone wanna speak to that one? So I'll share, I would love to dismantle white supremacy in the next hour and a half. That'd be awesome. It's not gonna happen, right? So if we can be in the process with one another, like working towards that outcome, but knowing that we're gonna learn from the process, things that we learn from processing today we can take into our next processes. Assume the best intent and attend to the impact. Would someone offer an interpretation of that for me? Voice we haven't heard from yet? I think this would mean that people are all here to learn so that we need to, if someone is, knowledge is not where we want it to be, just assume that they are here to increase that and then the impact would be, I guess meeting people where they are. So like you said, we're not gonna dismantle white supremacy today, but what we do get done today, we should still value that. Thank you. Yeah, I would just think someone once shared with me like a bowling ball example, right? Like we're at the bowling alley and I could be ready, gonna get my strike and drop the ball on your foot, right? I didn't intend to do it, but your toe might be broken. I might also be really upset that I didn't get that strike and come and throw it down and do it on purpose, right? The intent didn't matter in that moment, either way you've been left with a broken toe and so it's my job to attend to that impact, that my actions, my words had in a moment. So self care and community care, pay attention to your bladder and pay attention to your neighbors. Someone wanna offer thoughts there? Well first of all, I really like this one. Pay attention to your bladder. I think it's just really focusing on your own needs in terms of how your body reacts to certain things. So beyond bladder, just being triggered, being aware of your senses and then also being aware of how your community reacts to information as well. Thank you. And I totally agree the body is way more than bladders, but I do think as we think around access and navigating campuses, do folks know are there gendered bathrooms here, gender inclusive restrooms? People know where those are at, can someone who knows campus better than me point those out because I think it's important to name where there maybe are barriers or where campuses have worked to break down those barriers so folks can use facilities. Well I think for this building, like if there's community members or folks who are here with us, anyone? Okay, so building one has gender inclusive restrooms but there's gendered restrooms here is what I'm hearing, right? Yeah, so there's limitations to spaces as we think about that. And then the last one is a text request for phone and computer usage. If things go well, Sarah and Thomas really worked with me and I think Poll Everywhere is gonna work so I'm gonna invite you to pull out your technology but I ask that as we're engaging with technology that it's in connection to the space we're building here today, not the Snapchat from someone who's off campus, something else that's going on. We also have lives outside of this. My phone's there, if my kids need me, I'm gonna go, right? But stepping out, knowing what that impact is on your community, thinking about that community and self-care piece. Are there questions about these as expectations for how we engage today? These things we can agree to with one another? And again, I'm hopeful that these can be a foundation of how we, and I'll be leaving soon that you all can continue to be with one another, right? Maybe you're in this room with folks that you see every day on campus. Maybe there's someone who's in this room you've never seen before. But now as you walk through the community, you walk through town as like, hey, we shared this foundation, right? We're working together. Think that solidarity and coalition is built in relationships. We have much more empathy for people as we get to know them. We hear their stories and we hear their truths. So now is the time for Poll Everywhere and we're gonna see if it works and if it doesn't, then we're gonna pass the mic around and bring our voices into the room in that way. So, ah, you should be able to, and it's popping up funny. Steven, do you have the number to text? It's, so if you pull out your phone and the two address, I'm gonna walk it up here, so. Huh? And the next slide has it. St. Thomas for the win. Community experience here. Yeah, perfect. Okay, so we're gonna skip how you're feeling and we're gonna jump right into the question of who comes to mind when you think of LGBTQIA leaders, activists, and change agents? So the way you'll respond is you will text, the two field will be the 37607 and what you'll put in the body of the text to join this is Whitney Archer minus the R200. And then we'll see if the ringing in works. If not, we'll pass the mic and go old school style. Getting some folks in there. Try again and just double check the numbers and letters. We have a few questions throughout our time together. So once you're into the survey, you'll be able to just keep responding. We'll wait a moment, see if it rings in. If not, again, we'll pass the mic. You can write your response of who comes to mind for you. Okay, I have Ellen, Harvey Milk. It's working. Again, thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Sarah, for your patience with getting the multiple computers to communicate. So things are getting larger as multiple people put it in, right? So likely more than one person has put Ellen and Harvey Milk as those get larger. Maybe give it another minute to see other contributions and then we'll reflect on what we see. So go ahead and talk with your neighbor or folks around you for a minute. What do you notice in the names that are reflected up there? Are there names that you don't know? Are you surprised by things? Are there similarities of identities? Identities that are missing? I'll let you chat with your neighbors for a minute and then we'll hear out to the large group from a few folks. Okay, let's hear from three folks on some reflections of the wordle that was created by y'all's contributions. Some of it's piecing together because first and last names, right? So gotta put our thinking caps on. Like to hear from three folks. You can say if there's someone that you wanna name that you put up there but also reflections on what you're noticing of the names that are up there and what was contributed by folks in the room. The first thing I noticed was that women greatly outnumber the men. I also thought that it was interesting how many people from popular culture are up there. The first name I thought of or I think of an activist was Emma Gonzalez from one of the Parkland survivors and who I think represents the future of where we need to go and activism in the LGBTQIA movement. Thank you. A couple more folks. Someone from this, how we got? Perfect. I was just thinking that majority of the people that's mentioned here is from North America and they don't really think of it in a global sense. So it's not that we don't know much more about them but I feel like it's much more US-based people than people that's outside of the US. Yeah, the US-centric lens that we're seeing emerge, right? And I think in starting with whose land we're on and the way in which colonization of these lands created ideas of queerness and identity in new ways, right? That erased, there was erasures to identities that existed, right? Is colonizers came and really put binary notions of gender and sexuality? You've all untold someone. What's going to, it was hard for me to think of like people that were like leaders or activists and change agents. Like I know more people on a personal level that identify as LGBT or QIA. Yeah, I'm more people in my circle than like. So those individual relationships, but I think how we reflect on like seeing those folks as leaders in our community as well, like what qualifies a leader, what qualifies a change agent and where change happens. So now that you all are in, we'll have another question. So what issues come to mind when you think of the LGBTQIA community? What come to mind? So as we get more contributions to our world, again I invite you to chat with folks next to you. One of the first contributions we had to our group when we thought of who leaders and icons was like, we saw a lot of pop culture things, right? There were names, maybe we affiliate with TV shows, activism on a national scale, right? Keeping in mind the US-centric lens that was offered as we thought around that list. So I want you to chat with folks around you, around like these issues, it's a pretty like large collection and are these the issues you're seeing when you turn on the news? Where are you getting information that is feeding this like more like brilliant complex, like nuanced understanding, right? In a moment we're gonna look at marriage equality movements, right, and I don't see that up there, right? But I think there's a lot that gets celebrated of crossing that off the list, we're done, right? So chat with your neighbors, and then I'm gonna invite your brilliance into the space. Chat it up. Give you about another 30 seconds to chat before we report out. Okay, let's hear from a couple folks. There's a part of the room we've not heard from yet. Love to get more voices. Between this group, okay, so understanding AIDS and the very first day, attribution theory is say if somebody's speeding down the highway at absurd speeds and you're doing the speed limit, you look at them and you have a label you wanna place on that person, but the label is actually due for your own biases. You know, there might actually be an emergency and I heard the Mrs. here talk about being judged, not openly speaking about what they feel because they're scared of exclusions, and it's kind of the same as attribution theory where you place this label on somebody that may or may not exist, but it's in your own definitional biasness that there has to be something wrong with them. But then when on the flip side of that coin, when you do it, in your own definitional mind, it's okay. Thank you for that. Does someone else have anything? So we heard not explicitly naming racism, right? That was an absence of what, so we reflect on this. So we can come back and look at this as we do our imagining, as we wrap up our time together, but I wanna move and talk a bit about whiteness. And I first wanna think, as a group, what comes to mind when you think of whiteness? So privilege and power getting larger. Okay, so go ahead and take a look at what we have up here. Again, seeing oppression, domination, supremacy, overthrown, mainstream, upper hand, conservative, control, alt-right, voice, default. I think the default one is powerful to me, right? Like when we don't name whiteness, it assumes a neutrality that does not exist, right? It needs to be inscribed and we think about systems of power. So try and take a mental picture of this, because I wanna see how it changes, if at all, when I ask you to reflect on what comes to mind when you think of white supremacy. So I invite you to talk to your neighbors. And this time, if you wanna turn in your seat, talk to someone different that you didn't talk to last time just to get a chance to engage. So I'm gonna flip back to the whiteness so folks can see that visually. Here's where things landed when you thought about whiteness. And here's where it went when we switched to thoughts around white supremacy. Reflect on that with your neighbors for a moment. There's been a request to switch, so I'll switch again. Whiteness, white supremacy. Okay, like to hear from a couple groups. Okay. The slide that you showed prior to this showed ultimate power. And this slide shows ultimate corruptness. And I think we're taught that ultimate power ultimately corrupts. And then we talk about a muteness that society keeps because of that. So themes of power versus corruption as one group. Is there anyone we've not heard from who asked something they wanna reflect with the larger group? Can we all hear learning together? Thank you. I just interpreted it as whiteness is power and white supremacy is abuse of that power. How that power is wielded and used and abused perhaps. Any other folks have a perspective that they'd like to bring in? Thank you. So I was thinking about the slide before this one. What is whiteness? I was thinking of access and how silence, that could have been on there on whiteness, on silence. Cause I feel like whiteness is benefiting off of that. That abuse and that power, like that white supremacy, like the default, the neutrality. Yeah, those thoughts were coming into mind. It was like the silence when it comes to, or the allyship when it comes to the non-allyship when it comes to this hate, this murder, Trump. Thank you. Anyone else? Thank you. Under white supremacy, with the responses that are there, you really see fear as the key component of its power. So like with murder and oppression, you just really see the fear coming out. So fear coming out more on this slide. So a couple slides to give some frameworks for us to think around critiques of, not critiquing the existence of these things, right, but how do we have a critical lens to how whiteness and white supremacy operationalize? Anyone read Andrea Smith's The Three Pillars of White Supremacy?  But on a large scale, what Andrea Smith offers is the pillars that are upholding a heteropatriarchal white supremacist society, right? So systems of logics. So in thinking around colonialism and genocide, right, that the upholding of white supremacy is built upon a rationalization to steal and occupy land and the genocide of peoples whose land we're on, talking around native people in the past and erasure. It's upheld by slavery and capitalism, right, as we think around a capitalistic system that is tethered intimately to slavery and how those work in tandem and how we see the continuation of slavery and capitalism coexisting when we look at the prison industrial complex, right? That again, these are things happening in the here and now that continue to uphold this. And war and orientalism pulls from Said's work, right, of looking at the Western world versus the Eastern world and the way Western imperialism to come out and conquer is like a more progressed way of life in the justification of war. So as we think about this with query issues, right, and like, where does that intersect with don't ask, don't tell and needing bodies for these wars, right? And the connections and back to genocide and colonizing places. And while these are like three big pillars, the work of Jones and O'Coon on white supremacy culture, I think give us some more digestible, palatable ways in which this shows up in the daily. So their work is around like, how does white supremacy culture show up every day? Like particularly in workplaces, right? So they give these 12 manifestations of that and I'm not gonna go into depth of each of these, but I think they show, I wanna talk about them because they show up in how queer movements have operationalized. What gets traction in the media, right? That this binary either or thinking, right? You're either with us or against us. Get on board. It's 2018 and you're still homophobic, right? These like really binary thinking. Individualism, I think we see that in the manifestations, both on the whiteness and white supremacy, right? That in whiteness, where I hold my whiteness, I get to be an individual. We're right, we're in my targeted identities and my queerness and others. I'm a member of a community, right? So these become individual battles versus collective battles. A sense of urgency, like we need to do this now without thinking about the consequences, right? We get to marriage equality, it's done, right? We didn't think about the next steps. There was like an urgency in that moment. Perfectionism, an idea of objectivity. It's all about process, faster movement, not thinking around who those processes are impacting. And so based off what you all have shared, I think that we're sensing your reasoning that some of this isn't like new concepts, right? To be thinking around the ways whiteness has been centered in queer movements. And so I wanna show a quick clip for the sake of time to get to the chance where we can do some dreaming together. But as we watch this clip and hear people talking around how marriage will never set us free, be thinking about how what they're saying is counter to these white supremacist messages that have been latent in marriage equality movements. Thomas for the win again. Hey, I'm married and I'm very much in love with the person that I married to and if I could have done it earlier, I would have been done it earlier, right? But to be clear, I feel like one of my personal opinions is that I'm like, I can love being married all day long. My marriage is not gonna liberate anybody, right? And so to me, I'm like, how we actually center same sex marriage was like the main sort of like LGBT win and pretending like that's gonna be the thing that liberates like people that are struggling in poverty or people who don't have healthcare or the like the only way to build a safety net is actually to do it only in like partnership and or only in a couple formation to me is like to me the fallacy of this whole thing. We're really in some ways taking entitlements out of the public sphere and putting them into the private sphere when we attach our ability to access benefits through marriage. So one of the consequences of the marriage strategy has been that domestic partnership policies are getting kind of dismantled. And that's pretty harmful because ultimately what we'd wanna see in a more progressive world is a situation where our access to benefits was never in relationship to any of the other relationships in our lives and that we can as individuals access a wide range of public entitlements regardless of our citizenship status, our marital status, our national status. We're really kind of in some ways narrowing access to public benefits by attaching them to any kind of relationship form. Really, we shouldn't even have a system where benefits are attached to your private union. Nobody should have to decide whether their taxes are gonna be lower or higher and whatnot based on whether they're partnered or not. I think no benefits actually should be attached to union. I don't think people should have to be in a partnership to get access to those benefits. We can look at the historical interventions of feminists and particularly feminists of color that have critiqued the institution of marriage because it's really about a system of distribution of wealth and if we really wanna create a form of collective liberation then we need to think about everyone and especially the most marginalized people and marriage of course benefits those that are the least marginalized. Sometimes we're told that there's incremental change going on and that we're just gonna start with people at the top. That's a common logic. It's like it's true that marriage doesn't resolve immigration problems if you don't have a partner with citizenship status and it's true that marriage doesn't resolve your healthcare problems if you don't have a partner with health benefits that you can share through marriage. But let's just, we're gonna solve this first. It's one step on the path. In general what we see in social movements is that there isn't a coming back for the more marginalized. When you start with the people who are at least marginalized inside the constituency the well-being does not trickle down. People don't come back for the folks who are left behind. In fact, the talking points used to win those things are often talking points that align with the same reasons that people at the bottom are at the bottom. So we justify that we have an immigration system that requires you to get married to immigrate or we justify that we have healthcare system that requires you to get married to have healthcare. And we don't have any solutions to that being developed. Instead we're just developing, getting a few people who have those things sort of into that status. And so I think what our movements have been saying forever is that we need to put the people who are vulnerable at the center have our analysis of a problem like the problem of healthcare access or the problem of immigration access put the people at the center who are most vulnerable to those dilemmas and then build solutions from there which are gonna be much deeper solutions and which inevitably will benefit all people. They will trickle up but trickle down is a fantasy that doesn't work. So I have another poll everywhere for you. What comes to mind when you hear intersectionality? We come to a close of our time. I just encourage you to thank the people around you for being in conversation, for dreaming with you, for learning with you. I wanna offer my gratitude for the opportunity to spend time with you this morning. I hope that the conversations that were started today don't end here but can be a launching off point for continued work, for solidarity and social change. If anyone does wanna keep in touch I have some business cards if you wanna follow up on anything. And if you have questions, you can come up and chat with me but I just wanna thank the planning committee, those of you who are here participating for the welcome and for all of you to come and engage. So y'all are brilliant, go change the world. We could do a better applause for her than that. Thank you Whitney.


So I'm going to bore you for just about 10 minutes, going to give you some very quick info about the conference which you need to know. And then we will be off to a break. And then the conference will continue. My name is Nareesh Jain. I'm known for spamming people.  But it's one of those dirty things you need to do to put this conference together. We are actually on the first day of the conference. Today and tomorrow is the conference. And then on 11th, which is Saturday, we have the post-conference workshops. We have about five wonderful workshops that we've lined up. In case you've not registered, we do have still some open slots for the workshops. So please do sign up. I want to do a quick activity. I know Venkat did one where he asked people to stand up. But I'm going to do a little bit more interesting one. And I have some prizes to be given as well. So there is something at the end of it. So what I want you to do is I want you to quickly stand up and form groups of 10 which have at least one of these roles in your group. Actually all of these roles in your group.  People who've been to conferences, the agile conferences before probably know how we do this. We need one of each. So you need a group of 10, and you need to have one role of each. Whichever group finishes first, raise your hand. I have some wonderful t-shirts to be given away. Any group is done? So I see one group over there. Introduce yourself to your group. You're going to meet nine new friends today. Which is the last group to finish? I have just seen an O. I can actually give these t-shirts away to everybody. No, there are groups which have 10 people and they have all the roles in there. How many lispers here? Does every group have one lisper? This group has one. Two, you can auction one. Person wearing black in each group. Who's got purple? That's the color of the conference, right? All right, so now the hard part. Who do we give these wonderful t-shirts away? I have three t-shirts to be given away and a bunch of stickers as well. The group that finished the last, which found the most difficult to find all the roles. They're the ones who struggle the most. I think that's a group over there. We're going to give it away to that group over here. So if someone from your team can come and collect these three t-shirts, these are courtesy typesafe.  Please come and grab them. Thank you, guys. You can sit down. Not exciting for everyone, but I do have some stickers to be given away later. 234 people last I saw the registration. Not everyone is here.  We have people from 132 companies over here, which is pretty exciting for me. What's more interesting is we have people from seven different countries over here. So let's do a quick exercise just to see who's come from the furthest over here. So I want everyone to stand up real quick. Sit down if you've come from 10 kilometers or less. 50 kilometers or less. 100 or less. 500 or less. How about 1000 kilometers? 5000 kilometers. 10,000 conversion to miles. You need to write a functional program for that. Where you live, basically.  Thank you, guys. As you know, we have two tracks at the conference. This hall will be split into two tracks, so this will be track one, and on the other side would be track two. So we would have track one and track two going in parallel over here. We have another hall across the hallway over there, which is just an open space, and we've kept it for people to hang around, talk to each other, network, and things like that. So basically those are the three halls that we have. Track one is over here, and track two is in that other hall. So open space, we have open space over there for people to kind of get around, talk about things that are not addressed in the conference program. Not everything that you want to get out of functional programming is obviously addressed in the program, but we hope that through the open space you would be able to get some of those questions answered or meet few interesting people other than what you will meet at the talks itself. The most important thing that I want to talk about is the law of two feet. This is something we do at all our conferences. So the law of two feet, how many people are familiar with the law of two feet? Okay, good. Let me explain the law of two feet for the others. You're here, you're investing two days of your valuable time at this conference, and what we want you to do is we want you to get the maximum benefit out of the conference. Correct? So how do you ensure you're gonna get maximum benefit out of the conference? Let's imagine you're sitting in a session and the session is not quite what you expected. It's quite possible that's what's gonna happen that you are in a session and that session is not quite what you expected. So you could spend the rest of your time sitting there and complaining that the session didn't meet your expectation, or you could use your two feet and take yourself to another session or another place where you will either contribute value or get value. So it's completely cool to stand up during a session and walk out of the session, right? Just be respectful to the speakers and other participants, do not disturb them. If you can quietly get up and leave and find yourself another place where you can contribute value or get value, that's what we want. So we want you to maximize your benefit but that's in your hands. It's a very important thing.  I would quickly want to thank our sponsors without whom we would have not been able to put this first functional programming conference together. So big round of applause for ThoughtWorks who've been the title sponsor for the conference. Anyone from ThoughtWorks over here? A bunch of people, right? Thank you guys. Then we have HelpShift, a BGN group. Thanks again for supporting the conference and being an integral part of the conference. Do we have folks from Nelson? Nelson, sorry. There were more people, right, from your company? Oh, there. All right, thank you guys. And then we have Dialog. We have one person from Dialog. Thank you for again supporting the conference. We do have two sponsors who have the presence out here. So please feel free to go by, stop at the booth and meet them. They're talking about interesting things they're doing. So please do stop by. Few people were asking for Wi-Fi password. We had talked about the Wi-Fi password again. I'm gonna highlight that. The SSID is FooCon, FooSpaceCon, and the password is at the rate FooCon 14. We're hoping it will stand up. We've done a bunch of testing, but as you know, Wi-Fi at conferences is always flaky. So if you don't, let us know, we'll try and fix it. I would really quickly want to thank the organizing team who have put this conference together, would request you to please stand up if you're in the room. Fantastic, thank you guys for helping us put this conference together. Again, for people who've been part of organizing any conferences, I hope you understand there's a lot of effort that goes in behind the scenes to put a program together, to select it, to get the sponsors together. So really appreciate all the support we've got from these gentlemen to help us put this conference together. I would like to have a special thanks to the hotel who've been very cooperative to Event Circle, which is the event management company putting all of these things together, and then Abhishek and BG for designing the shirts, the backdrops and all of that stuff, essentially the website, the theme for the conference. Thank you guys. Everyone's got the t-shirts, yes? We're gonna auction them later. BG had an idea that we get all the speakers to sign a t-shirt and we auction it, right? So let's see how that goes, but hopefully everyone's got their t-shirts. Tonight we have a reception over here at 7 p.m. We've not planned anything, we just wanted to keep it open for people to hang around network. So it's a reception and just an open space for people to hang around and meet other people. So we'll be here at 7 p.m. Everyone's got their lunch coupons in their badges. Just make sure you've got your lunch coupons and remember to bring this along tomorrow as well. There are three coupons in this. You will need this for your lunches, right? That helps us to keep a tally of how many people actually had food over here. That's it from me. That's the Twitter handle. So in case you wanna tweet about the conference and spread the love, please do that. Thanks again for coming. We're gonna take a quick five minute break and then we're gonna get started again by splitting the halls, all right? Thank you again.


Just a moment, please. I'll be down on that. Yes? Um, yeah, listen. Quite nice of you. Oh, Joe. Joe, nice of you. Do you want to say something? I can't hear you. I guess I'll do it. I'll try to be more clear. Oh my god. Oh my god. This is my room. This is my room. Yes. I'll let her know. I'm going to do it for you. This is my room. This is my room. This is my room. This is my room. This is my room. Yes, something sure. Is this good? I'll put it up. What's in here? This is my room. Uh, Joe. I'll take a moment to get to this room. Just a moment, please. Thank you. Are you sure? Are you sure? I'm not lying. I'm sorry. I'm not lying. I'm not lying. I'm not lying. I'm not lying. I'm not lying. Everybody, we have here the innovators and transformers in this fashion. Just in our moderates, we just want to get this started. You are appears. We've been talking about power. I'd like to hear more about your stories in relationship to what you did, how you stepped into a place where you decided to say something that you felt had not been said. Or something simple. I was saying to Robbie just now, you know, and you're the only one that I don't really know that you told me you were earlier, so I just want to say that. So forgive me if I ask any silly questions later. Yeah, I've caught up a little bit. But I just remember we were all sort of in the world downtown. And certainly you know, I was saying to Rob, okay, so how do we frame this question because the one question is going because I felt like we were all part of the beauty panel.  So I think telling the story of what brought you to that moment of performance. I certainly remember and first meeting you too. I was a little later. Yeah. Yeah. And also that you work as a playwright as well. I was thinking about innovation and transforming. I think I have to take a moment back and say transition space because I'm in that transition space. All these wonderful performances and panels here. And I'm feeling the body within that transition space. And I'm going to push through to get to innovation and transform. But I just wanted to indulge for that special T word. So thinking about transforming and innovation. And I think I'm going to start with transforming or go to transformation. And it's been so beautiful to see the performances but also to be hearing about education here and to be at your work with education. And it was a teacher who helped me very much. When I was asking what to do with pain that I had in my life so events. And my teacher said to me transform your pain into compassion. And that was a big opener for me is that because I feel politically that voicing a story and telling the story can be sufficient. I think you know telling the truth telling the story and voicing is paramount. Especially for stories that haven't been told that we're discussing earlier. But what does one in creating with and I think speaking of that work is now I'm just sort of speaking to myself. My eyes closed here in that space of to transform that pain into compassion for the capability of others. And that's that I think is a big starting point for me. What was my starting point? I had so many. I transformed from the child of two musicians classical musicians and thinking that I would have a career in classical music as a singer.  And then I started to act with people from the living theater and I read Arto and then nothing was ever the same. And then I ran into the Dottas and I started working with Dottas material with a great performer by the name of John Wilson. John W. Wilson who worked with K2K and was just a genius. But I guess we're oddly because I found so many different kinds of voices. I had to come across the river as something that I started when I was a child really as a writer. And because to me it was the most concentrated intimate precise pristine form with which to distill my thoughts. And it's one thing to perform other people's words and to interpret. But when you perform your own words and your own journey and specifically when you can relate that journey. I mean I'm not a fan of self-indulgent work. But I don't think that there's anything that can be said negatively about putting your work through the sleuths of your own subjectivity in order to reach a greater objectivity. It creates an uvray into which you can really just dive in and invest yourself. And there are only a few things that I can say about transformation and one of them is you have to tell the truth. And being a kind person that's pretty easy for me. You have to you have to face your demons. And I think we've talked a lot about that on the panel. I don't really need to. I think we all know what that one's about. And you have to use everything that you have. All your experiences good and bad. Everything you've heard. I love the notion of listening being the most important part of the circle. Because the listening is where you find that common room, the foundation, you know, from which to draw power similarities. There are so many things as artists that we need to address right now. That's all we talked about as well. Michelle was just saying to me, oh, I love the daughter. And I, you know, Donna taught me a lot because because those were the people who were completely bought by something that had never happened before in the world, which was the advent of a world war. And these artists just they could not get it and it freaked them out. And all they could do is create laughter from such a situation. And we saw that also happen in Yugoslavia. You know, they had that cookbook. Does anybody remember that cookbook? Well, it's in here. People who were under siege wrote a cookbook. And it was and they were all theatrical artists and visual artists and they were all like living under siege during the war in Bosnia. I think it was a Bosnia cookbook actually. And they created humor out of their their tragedy, which was a real tragedy. We were once again up against ethnic cleansing. There's been many ethnic cleansings in the world, so we're happening right now as we speak and sit here. And still we have to laugh because laughter is the most profound thing that we can attain to and to understand that deep laugh. Just like that deep gasp when D'Amica was revealed herself. D'Amica, I guess. Thank you. Now I sound just ignorant. But considering that I was asleep about 20 minutes ago, not because of you guys, but because I had sort of slipped into a little old lecture thing. And this is something else that's dictated my work is being a diabetic, which we're gnarling and I share. We performed on this very stage together. And we had our little glucose tablets and we laughed about that.  And that's transformation when you can find a through line from the truth to a vision. Well, a transformative moment. I mean, I think we all I think it's all I think it's constantly about invention and reinvention. And I think as a child, I was a teenage actor. And what happened was, you know, because I grew up, you know, in the 70s. A lot of stuff that was available at the time was, you know, the black musical stuff like that. And in film, there's a lot of, you know, black exploitation. You know, how many ways can you say, oh, there's not too many ways you can say this. And so I began to write as a kid. And so when I was 1975, you know, the few adults that were around me, I grew up in Harlem in the South Bronx and it was pretty rough back then. And, you know, there's a great young Ian writer named Aldo Carritanuto, who says knowledge separates you. And I would look at who was raising me and the way I was being raised. And I knew that there was an alternative to this, but I just didn't really have access to it. And I also began to write then. So like in 1975, I was about to be 16.  And I saw you on Broadway. And I found out that Endezaki also wrote the piece. And there were a few of us that stood up and it was myself. Maria. And it was a girl, a white girl from Long Island. And when Bang Bang came on, you got up.  But the point being is that I found out that you could write and be in your own work. That was the sense of that. And there was a word that you would use because you had some students, there was a story that you told early on about playing the other where I met some of your students. And the word universalism came in because we were three teenage girls that were different races, different ethnic groups that stood together when that song came up and we danced. Thank you for letting us dance. Giving us permission to dance. So that was the beginning, literally seeing that. And also after that, I started going to New Year's Week in Paulus Cafe as a child when I was on sixth grade. And I would see Zaki read certain things and stuff. But that's you gave us permission to dance. Hello. And also another thing that comes to mind with you, and I'm going to leave it here, I came across a terrific quote. Artists like the saints are the receivers. Their job is to summon every emotion, every skill to remain skinlessly alert in order, as Picasso says, to find. And the person who wrote it is a woman named Jennifer Lash. Jennifer Lash was the mother of Ray Fines. She was a brilliant writer. She died right before Schindler's List became, you know, but she wrote that. She's a brilliant writer. She came up with that text talking about what it all skinlessly alert. That's what you do. You give us permission to be skinless. Could you have the nerve to step into these dangerous places? Someone earlier talked about bravery as a bravery or courage. Daniel said that. Yeah, I like that you mentioned that. And I think that courage is an aspect, but it is also what it is. So I'm interested in your experience of finding the nerve to go to the light and give voice. And this is a question that could be a first time. I think it's so much a part of the work that happens all the time. I mean, in that time, as a performer, each time you work, you have to get the nerve to talk about the nervous. And everyone says, oh, it's good to be nervous. But it's held to be nervous. So stories about stepping in. The times when we were doing any dance and all the solo work, and what everyone here feels, the energy that was around them. So I would say the early 80s into the late 80s into the early 90s, you know. And certainly, Karen, you were a very public figure with some other people. You became the symbol for a lot of us when the funding got taken away. You know, you became like this sort of, no one really, I felt like your name kept cropping up in conversation. What is it they call those things now? Is that how you say it? Back in the day, because people who'd never even seen your work would toss your name around, like an example of that kind of body work and, you know, oh, we should pull the funding off. So you were in the light whether you wanted it or not. Certainly, you know, I'm curious about that kind of public, oh, now I'm this person that stands for a lot of things, not just who I am, you know. Whether you want to or not. So there's that. It's probably what happened to you, you know, Sally's right. And with some of the work, if you experienced that. So, and Dale, you know, if you also had experienced that in your solo work, I wonder, you know, as women doing that kind of work, going in the light, sometimes that light can be really harsh too. And we have no control over it.   No, forgive me. It's an opportunity to hear from you about it. So whoever wants to take it. That's, there's a lot. I know, I know. And you know, you can say, I don't want to talk about it right now. No, I think it's important to speak about this. And so I think I'll talk about the, I'm going to break into points that were brought up. The idea of bravery, of courage, and also on the work censorship at those times during the culture wars, which I was a big part of. And I think I was after one of my friends, which was just wonderful that we put together here. Really icons these villages. We're talking about, brought up about censorship and those times that they can be these times. But with my age and my experience, I come to realize and to understand that my censorship and what I experienced is really at the expense of many people that were never recognized in particular, artists of color. Because the fact that I was, you know, censored or to be put in light is a form of racism at the expense of others who were not given certain visibility or even to be considered to be kept a certain value to be silenced because there was not enough recognition. I feel that I was not able to express that at that time because I was put into that position of the white male body who was heterosexual at this position. So I think that I was kind of used to my body in that way. But what I realized is that it really isn't... I don't think that what I experienced really was really censorship at all. And so when people speak about those kinds of times with a nostalgia, it makes me very angry. And it also makes me very angry. And that is where I have not risen to that place where I can take that anger and transform that into compassion yet. But I also have a lot of thinking about downtown culture and the fact that my complicity of gentrification and that my success and my visibility and my position and because being censored then creates a space for me in the marketplace. And I've done very well.  So I could probably speak about that for about another hour, but I won't, I think people have that. I think it's an important thing to bring up. And thank you. I mean, that's kind of... I just wanted to open that door a little bit because hearing everyone talk about the peace sounds actually made me think about Europe and how they were treated back then. Yes, I think that there was... What was the year that... which I said, I saw that the work I was doing was about it being in the audience and how beautiful it is to be able to have this opportunity to be with other people that were in the audience too so that it's not an alone experience. And that... I'm very grateful to be able to have that moment. But I would like to ask you, what year was it? Because I thought it was 1986 that you wrote, right? What year did you write it? When did you perform it? It was later. It was in 1991. Well, officially it was done in 1991. Yeah, so I saw that. That was that the premiere of it? No. I'd done it in work, as a work in progress in other venues at PS122. We did it. But we did it. And I'm... You know... Yeah. The time is in the days come, Jesus. But I wrote it in 1989 and Genie and I started just working at it the first time I did it. I did it alone at a conference that some people may have been at. A woman performer's, Anna Deere-Smith was there, a coordinator of Tropicana, myself and some others. And that must have been around 1989. And I was presenting it as an idea and I did the moment of the disruption. So that was the time before the kitchen. I'll talk very briefly about a moment of personal brainness, I guess. We're fear. I love that when they talk about being... They kind of go hand in hand. I wish I didn't do this. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Well, I might do it. Yeah. I think they go hand in hand. You have to overcome your fear in order to be brave. In the early 2000s, Judith Molina was doing a piece called Monty and Jane at the Living Theatre on Clinton Street. And I asked if I could understudy the role of Monty because she was having a lot of health problems and I just thought it might be cooler if she had some backup. And Judith and Hannah wanted to see me do a run-through because I was going to... I think we arranged some special performances so that I could perform the role. And I had... There's a nude scene with both women in that show. And I was 56 at the time. And I had never taken my clothes off in public. I mean, sort of, kind of, almost, but... You know, but... I've pretty much done everything on stage, giving birth, having sex, dying. Really? Not taking my clothes off. Get that gun on, you know. Haven't you? I'm excited.  So wonderful. Anyway, there is a thing about being a woman of a certain age and taking your clothes off. And it was very, very challenging to me. And the lighting person was not there that day. And so we did the whole thing in work lights, which had to be like a nightmare. But it was really... I mean, you know, for most actors, that's a big...   The world demands it. So it was a big deal for me. It was hard. And so it was... That was a real challenge for me. Now, we've all... I'm people on this panel. I'm a white girl. I know it.  I live the life of privilege, so to speak. That's really not to my liking. I would like everyone to have privilege, but... So that was my biggest challenge. It was like taking off my clothes, so to speak. But I think that as being... There have been other challenges. But I think that being a woman over a certain age and doing nude scenes, which Judith did all the time, was a clue. You know? I think that, you know, she talked about it a lot, too, actually. So, yeah, that's what I have to operate. I think... I was talking about this at dinner last night, a little bit on the train ride up. I did a memoir piece called Forever that was done at New York City Workshop like two years ago. It's about how my mother unconsciously introduced me to art, you know, because when I think about what was in my house, Ravel's Balero was in my house, James Baldwin was in my house, Dickens Hard Times was in my house, and then when someone... I was at... It's a long story as to how I was to write it, but the thing being is, you know, as you get older, I think you begin to look back. When you start hitting like... I think when you start hitting your mid-40s on up, you begin to kind of go, did I do this right?  And it's also... And even though it's quote-unquote autobiographical, because I'm not interested in that per se. I mean, it still comes down to theater, beginning, middle, end, story, conflict, resolution.  I don't have a therapist. So... Because I would like other people to do Forever, actually. But it was also, again, being able to, because this is what happens sometimes with the solo, the solo genre specifically. When people write about themselves, do they have the ability to see themselves as characters? And also see your relatives as characters? And also to give credence, because, for instance, in terms of the art of writing itself, I had to look at the person who was my mother, and she was not always my mother. She was a child. She was a person in and of herself. And also, again, the three fingers pointing back at you to see myself, honestly, to create this theater piece. Not this confessional, but this theater piece. So to do that, I had to really go to a hard place. And somebody who does that, who did that, God bless, who's from this state, they asked Anne Sexton, why do you write the way you write? And her response was, I have the right to invade my own privacy. But to add to that, it shouldn't be gratuitous, it shouldn't be just self-confessional to the point, where you have to look at yourself, yes, but also to create this piece and to be a self-honesty that really has to come through, but still within the reigns of theater. So that was a hard thing to do, to look at that, to look at these people who aren't related to it, to look at myself, but also go, okay, how do we do this and really make this work and make this function? Where it's just not my story, but it becomes, yeah? And I, because I saw this piece, and I thought, wow, she's the only one on this stage. I mean, like, and you had those letters, those quotes, you know. Like a live museum, yeah. There were pictures of my family, it was like a museum. And I really, you know, because I was still teaching then and I was thinking about leaving and going back and sort of, what's next for me as a writer? Do I perform again? Or do I just write for other people? Because I love writing for actors. You know, I just do it. It thrills me and I can go. Or do I work on another? So I was very like, I went to see you and I remember I was by myself. She wrote it. She's in it. She's wrestling with it. And there was a very tough scene for me. Towards the end. And it's just like reliving being alone on stage. I don't know if I could do that. I know Marshall, but, you know, but Teenie Town were not alone. But, you know, I don't know if I could. So I just wanted to hear from all of you. Those sort of moments of grace and terror and beauty. I love that word beauty. So I'm connecting it to the conversations we've been having all day. What that takes from us and, you know, what you have to bring to it and the terror of going out there and, okay, I've got this thing I'm doing. It's a slow strip tease. Yes.  Always. I know. Black on black, baby. I would have loved to see you be 56 years old and naked. I think that's really powerful. I do. I mean, I think about that. I think about that. So, let's all take the other one. I was waiting for this part. Is this the part where they take it closer? Yeah. Oh. Do we have time? Should we just see maybe a couple of comments? Yeah. Or questions. If there's any questions, we'll do that. We are running over time. Two questions. And then Carl. Is that Xupong? Yes. Hi, my name is Xupong. Hi. And I work at Goddard College and many years ago we brought Robbie McAuley as the guest artist and she worked with our students on this question that has haunted me ever since. Who are your people? And it haunted me because I'm an immigrant from Taiwan and I am supposed, I feel like I'm supposed to say my people are the Taiwanese and in one sense they are but in another sense you are my people. Artists, creators are my people. And so my question is I would love to hear from each of you what that struggle looks like or if it's a struggle with that question of who are your people? Several responses and first I was listening to you and really just hearing and listening about your question and who you are and I was thinking oh that would be a beautiful piece for you to start to work on and that's where I was going first. It's a great title to this. Who are your people? And how we are to be asking and be discerning and to be deciding and the challenge but yet at the same time when you said and you were looking down as we are your people and I'd like to say I'm happy I'm your people and that is that feeling right when you're making art and that feeling and I think that's why many of us within theater a little bit different than but in the theater arts that feeling of a family or a connection when you're working there together and the commitment and everything that you're doing even in that sense within the audience there's nothing like it and that's why I as opposed to in that film experience so as I say yes I hear you about them. Anyone else want to address a beautiful comment or question for this beautiful question because I know whenever I'm on the subway I'm very unashamed about looking at everybody around me and it's really something because and I know this is going to really sound canned yes and I don't mean it to maybe it's because of that generation but now I just I just feel when I look at people well that's my that's my person that's nobody looks different to me everybody sort of looks like I mean not that I don't notice obvious differences of course but it's nothing that I negate it's just like nobody looks different to me I feel like I know everybody and it's really weird but and I want to say one other thing that I was going to say later on but I had an early marriage my first marriage was early and my first husband's parents were midwesterners and alcoholics and my father-in-law when he met me told me well you know a Jew is just a nigga turned inside out dude how long did you stay two weeks after that oh the marriage but it wasn't my husband interesting that he didn't use the word kik since he used the other but I guess Jew was bad enough for him and so I've never really felt marked by my Jewishness because I'm not an observant Jew but I certainly am part of that tribe I think we find so many artificial ways to separate ourselves from each other and it's bad enough that we have skin I mean just skin that we can never really really but yeah so yeah that's all well I think you know the family of artists that's a whole entity in and of itself even in terms of everyday things lack of integration means retrogression eventually extinction so you can't help but not have things be 1921 is when Noble Sissle and Louie Blake I'm sorry 1926 in Paris to do the play called Shuffle Along and Shuffle Along introduced the world to Josephine Baker and one person that was there to greet them was Stravinsky Stravinsky said it's very important that I meet you because you are the music that I am playing when yeah you are the music that I am playing Charlie Parker had to meet Stravinsky because he said I wrote Billy's mouth because of listening to you so this is what I mean all of this is integrated when you read Shakespeare you read the work of Ben Johnson you read the work of Terence Terence was in North Africa so this is what I mean I'm saying is that you cannot have I mean even in terms of the logistics you cannot have one without the other so yeah you're tired on these but you're also a lot of different I am as well I mean within the course of the day I might be listening to Ben Morrison I might be listening to Patty Schmidt I might be listening to Bowie you know what I'm saying when somebody tries to pigeonhole me I'm the one person for you to come that should be so like that one more is it okay is it okay if we just we're way over it's a beautiful place to end so thank you so much just take five or less I need a little bit of help to get this monitor out I can't sure do you need somebody to help you I think I need a little bit of help I think I need a little bit of help to get this monitor out I think I need somebody to help me get this monitor out