Hello and welcome to New Slick. I'm Poranjoy Gohatakurtha with me here in the studio. I have Hemindra Hazari a very very perceptive analyst of India's banking sector. In the seven conversations that I've had with him so far, we've dealt with specific banks, be it the ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, AXIS Bank. We've also dealt with other entities like the Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Group with the India's premium mortgage financier HDFC Housing Development and Finance Corporation. This episode is focused more on the political economy of India's banking sector. Mr. Hazari, after the Punjab National Bank scandal of January 2018, there was a hue and cry that privatization is the way forward, whether it be the then chief economic advisor to the government of India in the Ministry of Finance, Dr. Arvind Subramaniam, corporate captains like Mr. Adi Godrej, who heads the Godrej Group. They form a chairman of the public sector Bank of Baroda, Mr. Ravi Venkatesan, who has a background in the private sector, journalists like Shekhar Gupta. All of them argued that many of the problems of Indian banking could be sorted out if public sector banks were not just consolidated by privatized. That the original sin was committed by Mrs. Indira Gandhi in 1969 when she nationalized much of India's banking sector, which bred crony capitalism, crony socialism, managerial incompetence, moral hazards, and at the end of the day a drain on the country's exchequer. Why do you not agree with this perception or this view? See, I fundamentally disagree with the view is because a lot of it is a political agenda and the political agenda is to privatize as much as possible of the public sector. And the only focus on the many, on some of the negatives, and there are negatives in the public sector banking, there is no denial of that. However, they either they are completely ignorant or they are deliberately ignoring how the economic and banking environment was prior to 1969. How these private sector banks prior to 1969 were conducting themselves and they had, they were ignoring agriculture. They were all metropolitan based. You know, a lot of the key functions that they were doing was actually they were functioning for the only the top sections of society and therefore from an economic model and from an economic policy point of view, there was a need for redistribution of the national income of India. Mr. Hazari, how can you argue that this may not have happened under if banks were privately owned? I mean, they could have spread out to rural areas, given extended credit to small and medium enterprises and cottage industries and under the private sector, there would be greater accountability to shareholders. Therefore, the room for corruption, the room for interference by politicians would be lower. That is the other argument. The argument was that this was not happening. They were trying that argument before 1969, but it was not coming to the conclusion that they wanted to and therefore they thought that it was the nationalizing the banking sector and using funds from the National Exchequer to promote rural development, to focus on small and medium enterprises which were being denied credit. Now, you know, to see actually how it's happened is even after you see the new private sector bank which was set up post 1991, now they have been in existence for about 20 years and what do you find? You find if you look at their focus and their composition of their deposits and credit, it is all metropolitan. It's very, you know, much much less even after 20 years of existence, their concentration of their deposits and credit is significantly higher in metropolitan India than public sector banks, which tells you that they're only focusing and naturally so on the wealthier segments. Mr. Hazari, the public sector banks had what was called the preferred and priority sector. They were mandated to give a certain proportion of their loans to those in the rural areas, for agriculture, for small and medium enterprises, for cottage industries. Now, can you not have a similar mandate for private sector banks and if this is not happening, who would you hold responsible? Would you hold the regulator, the Reserve Bank of India, responsible or the political leadership of the country? You know, very clearly it is the regulator and the political leadership of this country because that is why banks are licensed. It's not anybody can cannot open a bank. You have to be licensed and therefore, there has to be a national objective, especially in a country like India where vast chunks of our population, they survive on sustenance or the, you know, their income levels are very poor. So therefore, your banking system, which is a very key component of your economy, has to go to address those concerns. It is not just for market cap and for rewarding shareholders. Tell me, Mr. Hazari, if you look at what's happening across the world, it's been more than a decade since there was this, the Great Recession, when in September of 2008, Wall Street collapsed, Lehman Brothers went down. We've also had a lot of scrutiny Anima Papers, Paradise Papers, other investigations looking at the activities of Doge Bank, HSBC formerly Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation. So many issues were rigging off, whether it be the London Interbank offer rate, the manner in which they were allegedly complicit in money laundering activities. But we find that the regulatory authorities at some point of time did take stern action. Can the same not happen in India? So if the Reserve Bank keeps these banks on their toes and does its task of regulation in an efficient manner, then many of these problems wouldn't have come about, including the problem of ballooning non-performing assets, loans which have not been repaid. See firstly, there has to be very stringent and penal action should be taken by the regulator very swiftly whenever there is major non-compliance. Unfortunately, until recently in my opinion, the Reserve Bank of India has not been stringent enough. You know, only now we are seeing it when the terms of various private bank CEOs like Shikha Sharma, Rana Kapoor have not been approved by the regulator. Not to mention the investigations currently going on against Mrs. Chandakochar. Well, RBI had no role to play really. So what you are finding in my view, and even in the case of Rana Kapoor and Shikha Sharma, they waited for the term to get over and then they did not renew the fresh term. In my opinion, they should have been removed immediately once they detected some concerns. Now in the case of what you see of non-performing loans, I think you have to appreciate that we are looking at an entirely changed political regime environment globally where you want to privatize your infrastructure. And therefore, but the financing of private sector infrastructure is done by government banks because it is risky and private sector banks don't do that. But when they run into problems, we blame the PSU banks for financing such high risk projects. These such projects like infrastructure should not be financed by private, should not be undertaken by private sector. These are areas where the state should be doing it themselves. But you have said instead of privatizing, the government could buy out the non-government stakes and some of these banks in, as you point out, the government itself, bodies like the Life Insurance Corporation are holding major dominant stakes in many of the public sector banks. But the question is, why in India should we go against a global trend? If the answer is not the ownership of the banks, but the way in which regulations are implemented, then the issue is not an ideological one, but one of management. Firstly, as I said, last chunks of your population, they survive on very low incomes. So, you need to address their concerns and banking is one of the means of where you address those concerns. They have to be provided credit, for example. Now, if you believe that private sector is going to do this, they are not going to do this because private sector very rightly, their sole objective is profit maximization. But can the government not mandate it? No, they have mandated it. Let me tell you, the priority sector targets the same for government banks as well as private sector banks. So what's the problem? The problem is that over the years, you have diluted the actual standards of priority by including a lot of other economic activity which actually does not address the target population that you want to address. So you have to go back to the State Bank of India and the Punjab National Bank and the Bank of Baroda to cater to those who live in rural areas and small boroughs. And it is not a profitable strategy. That is why you require government ownership because these in such business strategies are not profitable. Therefore, the private sector will either ignore such segments or they will exploit those segments and that is not the way you want your economy to develop. My last question to you Mr. Hazari is that what does this entire episode in the ICICI Bank tell you? It's not merely that whether you talk about scams or conflicts of interest or nepotism or corruption is a prerogative of either a public sector bank or a private sector bank. It can happen. So when you look at what happened and the manner in which the whole story emerged about the manner in which Mrs. Chandacocha, her role in the way in which her husband and her other husbands associates, companies gained eventually despite the investigations by the enforcement director. They've been grilling her. They've been grilling all kinds of people for hours and hours and ends. Nothing may eventually come out in terms of criminality. That is true. But I think what it shows though is that the first line of defense is the Board of Directors. And what we have seen in both ICICI Bank or Yes Bank or Axis Bank is that the Board fails to discipline, to do any kind of appraisal of its CEOs or take action against them. Now when a CEO is there are allegations which definitely need to be investigated, prudent Board would have asked the CEO to step down, do an independent investigation. But if you look at the case of ICICI Bank, there's only public pressure and media pressure which finally led the Board to act, till then the Board was refusing to act. And this is what I've seen and documented in Axis Bank, in Yes Bank. So this whole idea that the Board, corporate governance norms will discipline the executive management, will keep promoters in check. Is it very rarely seems to happen? And that is the crux of the issue because the independent directors are very rarely independent. You know in your article in the wire written on the 25th, published on the 25th of February 2018, you've actually argued for re-nationalizing the government banks. Many people would argue that you are approaching this entire issue of the problems of Indian banking from a blinkered ideological perspective, which is unreal, impractical, perhaps utopian, because that won't happen. The reverse is likely to happen. Most definitely the way we are seeing global developments also, that's what we've been seeing since the early 1990s, that there is this belief that the free markets, the way they operate will achieve these goals of national or even broad-based economic development. But at the same time globally as well as in India, there is a lot of data to show that there's widening inequalities and that the market forces are actually aggravating those. They're not trying to converge them. So you're getting policies which are specifically designed to benefit the top sections of society. And again I would add in a country like India, whether you know vast, probably the majority of the population lives on very low incomes. If you ignore them, then you're going to see serious social economic problems. Thank you so much Mr. Hazari for giving us your time, for speaking with us, for speaking with NewsClick. And thank you very much for being with us. We conclude over here the eighth conversation in a series of conversations with Hemindra Hazari, independent analyst of India's banking sector. And if you haven't watched our earlier conversations on the ICICI bank, on ILNFS, on Kotak Mahindra, on UTI bank, sorry, Axis Bank, on Yes Bank, please don't forget to watch these conversations because this kind of conversation, this kind of analysis, you're not going to get anywhere else, certainly not in much of the mainstream media. These are very, very perceptive discussions. Thank you for being with us.


Hello and welcome to Scripting for Artists, my name is Sibyren and in this episode we're going to take a look at custom properties. In the last video we created a panel and added existing properties to it. And this is already quite powerful and if that is enough for your situation then please don't make it any more complex on that. Simpler is often better. However, there are these situations though where you want to attach your own data to things in Blender. To start let's take a look at the kind of properties there are. Throughout the series you've seen existing properties like object.location or context.scene. Then there are the custom properties that you can create in the custom properties panel. Maybe you've also seen these properties where the edit button is gone and where it says API defined and this means it's been defined from Python. This is what we're also going to look at in this video. To give us a concrete goal to work towards we'll be creating a mass obj importer. Each scene will get a property that contains the path of a folder that contains its obj files and then we'll create an operator that loads all the obj files from that folder and finally we'll look into creating an operator that reloads those obj files from disk. So in that way you can have a one-button reload of all your obj files. This is quite a bit of work so let's get started. For this episode we're going to create a new add-on and I've started already. I've added a new Python file I've installed it as an add-on loaded in my editor which is visual studio code. I will quickly raise through this because you've seen all of this before in the previous videos. If you haven't seen this yet please take a look at the videos about creating your own add-on and creating user interfaces. So we start with the BL Info dictionary. I've set the name to the add-on to scripting for artist mass importer. The rest of the information is pretty much what you would expect. Import bpi of course comes next. Then I want to have everything that we're going to do available to us in a panel. There we can show the buttons, we can show the properties, we can do everything we want. I've created a new panel by copying the code we had for the monkey grid and then adjusting it so it's pretty much the same except that it has that label mass import and that is also reflected in the class name. It's now called view 3d pt for panel type mass import. We're going to draw something but not just yet. Then of course we have the register and unregister functions. Those are necessary for any add-on. We're going to add more classes to this file. So we'll have an operator for doing the mass import and then also we'll have an operator for doing a single re-import of an object and then also an operator for doing a mass re-import of all the imported objects. So we're going to have more and I didn't want to copy, paste the bpi Yultas register class and then make sure that in the unregister it's also copied to the unregister class and managing all of that. So instead of that I've created a list called blender classes in which I have only the panel that we have now and then in the register and unregister we loop over it with a for loop. So for blender class and blender classes we'll go over this list and for every item in that list it will call bpi Yultas register class or unregister class and this makes it a little bit easier to add new stuff later because new classes we can just add to this list. Now that our code is really simple let's see that it actually works in blender so that we can be sure that when we start adding stuff we add it on a basis that actually works. So in the user preferences enable the add-on and then here in our monkeys tab we can see our mass import panel. Of course there's nothing drawn yet but that is what we expected so the basis for our code the registering the unregistering and the existence of the panel itself that's all correct. Okay so let's start creating these properties that we wanted to have this is quite simple actually. You know that there's a lot of stuff in bpi.types and we want to have a property on the scene that contains the import path of the obj files that we want to have. So we start with bpi.types.scene with a capital C dot and then the name of our property let's call it mass import path. Now it's very similar to adding your own properties to your own operator except that with the operator we had our own class that we could use to declare the properties and now that class is already there so we cannot add anything to it so it's a little bit different. So instead of using the colon we use the equals sign and then again we assign property they live in bpi.props and a file path or a directory path is just a string so that gives us a string property. Now for the user interface we may want to give it a nice name so let's call it obj folder and we always end it with a comma because then I can add stuff on the next line without having to go back up and add that comma again. This is valid python and it makes your changes a bit more localized you can now add other stuff here without changing the line above. This is in the register function so there we add our property of course we have to delete it again in the unregister to clean up what we did then basically you take this and you say del that property and that tells python just delete the thing and this is enough so let's see how this looks in blender here we have to reload our code in blender 2.83 and nearer you can do that here with reload scripts if you run an older version of blender press F3 and then type reload scripts they both do the same thing except that through the menu you can add it to the quick menu when you press Q and this is the approach that I will use from now on so we've reloaded our code and let's take a look at the scene there you go we have our own property mass import path the default is empty because we haven't set any default and it's just there and every scene will have it we can also change the property from python and keep your eyes on the custom properties panel here which is in the scene tab take a look at that what happens when I actually assign a value you have to wiggle your mouse a little bit to make it redraw but you can see that now that we have assigned a value to it it is actually stored in the custom properties it's API defined which means that you cannot just delete it and this is one of the major advantages of using your properties like this instead of just clicking the add button here and creating a new one when you create it through python you can be sure that the property is there even if it hasn't been set it will have a default so it's one less thing to worry about the other advantage is that we can set sub types and this will indicate to blender what kind of string we're talking about so this is going to be a path and it will be nice if it had like a little button that you could have a file browser that selects the path for you instead of having to type it in the python console all of this is done by blender once you set the sub type correctly so let's do that the sub type is set by the sub type parameter and then yeah pass a string that indicates a sub type in order to find the sub types for a specific property you can go back to blender help python api reference and search for bpi dot props dot string property and there it will tell you which sub types there are in our case it's a directory path or dear path so now let's reload the code and see what happens here in this corner of the interface there you go it has a button to browse and you can select directories because I set it to a silly value it will just start at a silly directory because it's not a valid path but if I change this to slash slash which indicates the current directory of the blend file it will open it here and I can navigate to my obj files directory click accept and then it has set here the path and this is exactly what we wanted except that we want this behavior in our own panel of course and let's do that in our panel code we can remove the pass because we're actually going to do something and let's start with getting the layout so we didn't do this before but do know that every self dot something will do a little dance to see is it defined on this class if not look at a parent is defined there if not look at the grandparent etc so we're saying a layout equals self dot layout we only do this dance once and then just use the found layout object let's add a column and then add the property the property was defined on the scene which is context dot scene and the property name was mass import path that's it reload the code and there we have our property browse button and all now let's go and create an operator that imports all the obj files from that directory and I want to name it quite similar to the operator that already exists for importing obj files so let's take a look at that that is bpi dot ops dot import scene dot obj so let's call our operator import scene dot obj mass so here we have an m2 operator you've seen this before I just named it differently it's called import scene dot obj mass it has an execute function I put in this little comment as a reference and then it calls self report this takes a report type which can be info or warning or error and then a string that is then reported it returns canceled because nothing is done yet again I'm taking small steps I first make sure that the operator is there and that it's registered properly then we can add it to a panel we can click on the button we can see that it works before adding more complexities to it so the operator is here now I copy this name I go to the blender classes list I add the name to the list and that takes care of the registering and the unregistering so what is left now is added to the panel so all we need is the blid name paste it in save in blender reload the script and we have our button we click on it it says no code to load from slash slash which is the error that we expected now the next step is finding the obj files and importing them and afterwards we want to be able to re-import them so we have to keep track of which object was imported from which file the best way to do that is to add another property to the object type so let's do that now before we start actually importing them here in a register function we're going to do the same thing as we did to a scene but then to an object and then it also becomes a string property but then with obj file instead of obj folder so the folder and the file name combined will give us the final path of the obj file because there is no subtype for just a file name it's only for a full file path or a full directory path we'll just keep this as a string and don't define any subtype so before we look at the importing let's add this property to the panel we have the panel code here let's create a new column for this and there we have the property but remember context.object can be none so we have to add a little guard around this none is considered false with python and real object is considered true so if context.object will evaluate it true if it's real object and then draw the property it will evaluate to false if there is no active object and then it will draw the label instead let's give it a try and there we have our property and we can set it per object as you can see now let's build the importing itself so here we are at our mass importer operator let's write a little layout of what it is supposed to do it has to find the object files and for each file import it and record its file name in the object property let's look at that first step this is going to take a few steps actually because for finding files we have to use python functionality and python doesn't understand the blender specific slash slash meaning of relative to the current blend file so we have to convert it to something that python understands then use that to find the obj files then convert it back to something blender understands and import the files first of all we have to turn that slash slash into something absolute and this is done through a function in bpy.path bpy.path.abspath or absolute path will give us the absolute path of the file that we want to import we can check this by reporting this in our error message just pause the video give this a try and then come back here now we have to convert this to a path object from pythons pathlib library and then we can use this import path variable to find all the obj files and loop over them in one go like this this will find everything that matches start.obj so files or directories ending in .obj now for now i will just assume that you won't create any sub directory called something.obj and that everything is an actual obj file that we can import now all we have to do is import it here in blender go to the obj importer and press ctrl c and then you can ctrl v in your code this converts that path object that we have back into a string so that blender understands it and then this whole line will import the obj file so now we have covered the for each file imported and the only thing that's left is recording its file name part of the working of this import operator is that it deselects everything and then it selects the objects that are imported and this means that we can loop over all selected objects and then assign our custom property to them and this is why i like the pathlib object so much it is quite simple to work with if you just want to have the file name component of a path you can just do the path .name if you want to have the drive letter you do .drive and is a very object oriented approach to paths and i quite like that now we're importing we record the file name where it came from so this should be it let's give it a try i'll throw out the existing objects browse to my obj files directory and then mass import everything and there we are the files are imported they're all at the origin and each of them has the obj file name set to whichever they came from now all that's left for us is to make an operator that reloads the obj file to keep it simple let's not do this on mass and just reload the active object that means deleting the object from the scene and then loading it again from the obj file of course before we delete it from the scene we have to make sure that we store the transform of the object so that when we reload it it can be restored so that it's positioned in the same way as it was before we reloaded it first let's start with a new operator let's call it obj reload here i select some text i press ctrl d and that will select next occurrence of that text so then i can just type reload and both the class name and the id name where we change to to obj reload let's say reload mass imported obj and then we can write the execute function for this code i will assume that every obj has one object in it you can extend the code so that it can handle multiple objects per obj but let's keep it simple for now we're going to refer to the active object quite a few times so let's make life simple for us and just call it ob so let's make a little overview for ourselves again first we have to store what we want to remember remove the object from the scene load the obj file and restore what we remembered loading the obj file will not automatically set our custom property in the end that's what we want to restore and we want to be able to restore the transform as well let's remember the file name and let's take a copy of the matrix if i wouldn't make a copy of the matrix then the variable matrix world would be a reference to the objects matrix and if we delete the object that reference won't be valid anymore and you can get all kinds of weird results now removing the object from the scene actually means removing the object from all the collections that it's in fortunately blender gives us a list of all those collections this will unlink the object from all the collections but the problem is that of course well as soon as we unlink the object from the first collection this thing that we're looping over will change changing something while you're looping over it is never a good idea we can do this list op dot users collections and this will create a new list for us that new list is a copy so it won't be altered by removing the objects from those collections making this for loop safe if you want you can also remove the object from bpi data now but this is only safe if it's not referenced from anything else again blender to the rescue op dot users will give us the user account and that is that tiny little square that you see also with materials and meshes when you use them in different places throughout the blend file if this number is zero that means that the object is no longer used and we can actually remove it from blender's memory and there we go from this point on we can no longer refer to op because it's been removed from blender so to prevent us from ever using it again i just say del op this removes the op name from python's memory that means that if i say op dot location here python will scream at us because it doesn't know what op means anymore after this line it's just a little bit of security for ourselves so that we don't do something that's maybe no longer valid now we need to load the obj file again which we've done before so let's take a look at that code we'll have to do this trick again and then we have to do this line for just that one object so let's put this into a function that we can call from both places here i've created a new function that takes a scene and this means that it will return a path little path and i like this notation quite a lot because then you can see what something returns without having to dive in the code and then see what happens this is not something that will be checked by python so it's up to you to actually live up to your word this code is now pretty much the same as this and it returns a new path object that means that we can remove this line and we can just do mass import path context dot scene here i specifically passed this scene and not the context i have to fix a little mistake here i explicitly passed the scene and not the entire context it would have worked fine if we were to pass the context but then you wouldn't be able to see which part of the context was actually used by this function this is why i wanted to pass the scene itself and not the context of course we could have also passed context dot scene dot mass import path but that would make the call a little bit longer and i think this is a nice middle ground but of course you do with your code whatever you think is best now we have to code to get the import path we can copy this line into our reload operator and then we can get this line and put that here and now all we have to do is get from the import path which is a directory to the import file path which is a file name and the import file path is the import path slash mass import file name that we took a copy of up there path objects in python supports this slash notation it will work correctly automatically for any platform so on windows it uses the backslash on linux and on macOS it uses the forward slash now that we have constructed the file name we can pass it to the operator that loads the obj file now all that's left is to restore whatever we wanted to restore so again we have to loop over the selected objects and set the mass import file name now we have to restore the matrix we tell blender that the operator did his job and then we fix two typos namely here colon and here it has to be user collection not user collections finally what we have to do is register and unregister the operator and add a button to the panel we copy the class name we add it to this list we copy the blid name and add it to the panel save the file reload the script and there we have our button as you can see we click on it and as you use from importing obj files there is no active object anymore and the just imported objects are selected in this case susan now let's see if it really reload i put a new file in there cube dot obj and now it should replace susan with that cube and it does so there we have it our code is working we can mass load obj files and we can select individual objects to reload i will leave it as an exercise for you to make a mass reload operator that iterates over all the objects or maybe only all the selected objects i'll leave that up to you so this is it for this episode of scripting for artists this is not the last time we'll talk about custom properties but i think this video has gone on long enough already if you have any questions or comments leave them below and i will see you soon


Well, in New Zealand we actually have a real history of progressiveness around gender diversity. But the unfortunate thing is we're now stagnating, so year on year the statistics aren't changing much in terms of women at high levels of leadership and participation in the economy. For example, only 5% of CEOs and chairpersons in New Zealand are women. So a greater balance of gender diversity and any kind of diversity actually at the senior leadership levels of organisations has been proven to drive greater levels of innovation within a company and creativity, greater levels of motivation within the company, and really importantly, stronger financial performance. And more broadly in the world, greater participation of women in their communities in their countries, so in instances where women are more equal in their countries in their communities, you see greater democracies at play. You see less instability, less conflict, and really healthier functioning environments. So what all that leads to from my point of view is a bit of a revelation about this topic. So beyond it being unfair and beyond the debate around equality for women in the world, which is obviously still paramount, is now you start to see that when women participate more fully in leadership roles, whether it be in their communities or their countries or businesses, you see greater success. And I should say now what I'm not saying is that women should dominate in those roles and only women should lead because the studies really back up the fact that greater balance of diversity of any kind in leadership roles is what where the magic comes in in terms of success for companies. They all go through things like high levels of innovation and creativity are driven through companies, much stronger financial performance through companies, greater team psychological safety, willingness to experiment, team retention, and there are many, many different ways this has been proven over and over again. I guess one of the most interesting things that I found when I was researching this topic was that analysts and shareholder agencies now are specifically looking for the gender index within a company. So they're looking at the number of women on the board. They're looking at the number of women participating at the leadership team level because that's so proven to predict the financial success of the company. What we're really talking about though is not women for women's sake and not women to fill quotas and not women to make sure that it looks right on the balance sheet. What we're talking about is qualified women who are clearly right for the job being put in place so that there can be greater diversity of perspectives brought to the table. There are many studies that have been done over the years that look at the issue of bias in the workplace and in fact so many that people now talk about the admiration of the problem. So many of the studies stop short at just saying there's bias and there's a problem for women because bias exists. What I think is a better way to think about it is social scientists say bias really exists as young as the age of three. When we're all little we understand and pick up from our families who's the in-group and who's the out-group and it begins. So anybody that says that they don't have bias is probably not telling the truth because we all do. How this manifests itself for women in the workplace is that there are in-built gender stereotypes that a lot of people have about women and when they're being interviewed for jobs or when they're going through performance evaluations people use bias which is really a cognitive shortcut a way to not to have to make so many decisions how do I quickly make a snap decision about this and they default to things you hear it talked about all the time in the literature like the motherhood penalty. The mother and they start to think through but is she a good mother should be good to her children or on the flip side is she committed to the job is she really going to be able to deliver now that she's had children and so those kind of biases come into play. There's the likeability penalty when women lead it's uncomfortable for many people because they were brought up to think that women should be behaving in a certain way and not necessarily leading in the way that women lead and so it's those biases that tend to trip up women along the way but there are many companies that are doing a lot of work in this area New Zealand Defence Force, New Zealand Police a lot of the banks in New Zealand are looking at bias whether it be conscious or unconscious and trying to really work through that and make sure that that's not an inhibitor for women in the workforce I think the most critical thing is that it's led by the top so that the CEO of the organisation is informed educates people and is very clear about the business case of a diversity within that organisation I think the error is to try and put that to the HR department and say it's an HR responsibility so I think first of all CEO led direction on that I then think a link to the business strategy is really important so a lot of the companies that I've been talking to look at this as a competitive advantage and a potential competitive advantage so yes it's about equality, yes it's about fairness and inclusion but actually if they get it right you can see the effects that it'll have on the business I think first and foremost I would give advice to young women in business to really understand themselves and understand what's unique about themselves so in the past I think we all used to look to establish set models and ways of leading and compare ourselves to those and say could I do that and if I can't see myself in that situation then I can't be that person or I can't have that job whereas I think what's happening now is there are much more progressive role models for leadership out in the world and I think understanding, you know it sounds funny but understanding your unique power, your superpower and building around that and becoming your own leader is really important advice I also think taking on big challenges is important I think you know there's a famous statistic that men jump in when they're 60% ready and women wait until they're 100% ready and I think the men are right to do that and I think you know a lot more young women that I see I talk to and say jump in take that challenge you can actually do it now and then there's two more things that I would advocate for young women now resilience is as important as it ever was I think Hillary Clinton describes it as you know taking criticism seriously you might learn something but never taking it personally because it will get personal and I think delineating between the two is really important and listening and making sure that you're resilient enough to listen to that criticism and process it in the right way and the other thing we spend a lot of time talking about is confidence and this is a real problem for a lot of young women coming up in any industry because they fundamentally can be doing an incredible job they can be nailing all aspects of the job but you see it time and time again on performance reviews where people end up saying I just wish she'd be a bit more confident and the problem with that is that can actually sound like another criticism for them I think it's if you do these things that I'm talking about a finding who you really are and what you could uniquely bring to the table rather than comparing yourself to others and working really hard and being resilient then I think you can overcome some of those confidence issues that I'm talking about


He got the 2020 Harry Tubman National Freedom Award, which is a big honor. And so congratulations of that. And so, Marika, where are you and how are you? Well, I'm actually surprisingly very good. I have been, Frank, you know, trying to behave myself and stay social distance.  But yeah, so I'm especially, you know, as an elder, I'm, you know, very grateful to feel very healthy and well. So thank you. But even before we get started, I just wanna take a moment to thank you, Frank, to thank the Siegel Center for Theater, to thank Andy and Thea from HowlRound and all your funders and organizers and staff who make the Siegel talks possible. And especially to thank all those who have registered to listen and participate in this conversation. Thank you. Thank you. So how do you experience this time?  What's on your mind? Okay, so I wanna give, before I jump into this, I wanna give a little bit of background and context for the commentary and thoughts I'm gonna share today. So a few years ago, I was invited to speak on a panel regarding cultural diversity at the Public Theater. And during the brilliant Under the Radar Festival, which I'm sure you're familiar with, which was founded and produced by Mark Russell, during that conversation, I commented that I would like to address racism. And the European Caucasian man emphatically declared, I definitely do not want to talk about racism. I thought to myself, well, I guess not because it does not, or at least you think it does not, impact your everyday life, your work, your thinking, your imagination, your creativity, your very being. And around that same time, I was also invited to speak on a panel hosted by Kaiisha Johnson, who founded Women of Color in the Arts. And this was at the conference that we just mentioned, Association of Performing Arts Professionals, APAP. And that was also a conversation regarding cultural diversity. And during that conversation, an American Caucasian man commented with unmasked irritation, I must say. I've heard this all before. Why do we keep having the same conversations? However, a young, 20-something-year-old African-American woman stood up and asked to speak, and she commented, I've never heard these conversations before. This is always, I mean, this is all new to me. So I have to confess, Frank, that I'm always surprised when people ask me to speak because for those who know me for the last 20 or 25 years or so, I've had one primary topic of discussion, and that topic is racism.  So it's a conversation that seems many have wanted to avoid or just get over it, as I described. So I must say, I now find it interesting that it seems just about everyone wants to have a conversation on, you know, or a workshop or a salon on race or the political or social justice. And perhaps, you know, I now say, perhaps if we had spent 20 or 30 years ago having open and honest and transparent conversations about racism and injustice and oppression, we would not still be talking about the euphemisms of diversity, equity, inclusion, as if they were the newest thing since life bred. But when Asian people, Arab and Muslim people, Black people, Indigenous people, Chicano, and Latino people wanted to have the conversations about race and the political or social justice, we were usually told those issues had little or nothing to do with art and aesthetics. And in fact, artists who made those issues integral to their work were often dismissed and even denigrated, especially by art, dance, theater, music critics, and even their own cultural colleagues. And usually, we were accused for engaging in so-called identity politics that supposedly corrupted artistic excellence and quality and pure art, even as recently as March at an informal dinner, when we could still go to dinner at people's homes and educated, prominent, well-known, highly regarded and awarded artist said to me, with a little bit of a smear in her voice, I'm not interested in identity politics. So luckily, I had her email address. I later wrote to her and I asked, what did she mean by her comment? And I clarified, most African Black people don't have the luxury of dismissing or divorcing ourselves from the politics of identity. For centuries, African Black people had our culture, our dignity, our history, our identity beaten out of us and had our recognition, resources, respect, and reward robbed from us. And so it was, I think, one of the reasons why the eminent scholar, Melana Keringa, created the restorative principles of Kwanzaa, also known as Nguzo Sabah, and one of those principles is called Kujichagalia, or self-determination. In other words, to define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves rather than to be defined and spoken for by others. So I'll pause there, unless you want me to continue. Please go on, that's a very important, please go on. Okay, so conversations about race and racism, and I know they're not easy. In our typical conversations about art and culture and curating and presenting and producing, we most often have discussions about best practice, process, funding and philanthropy, institutional security and sustainability, and so many other topics, of course. Sometimes we have the conversations about race and racism, but too often those conversations get stalled or stalemated by our limited knowledge of the subject, just like dance, music, theater, literature, the topics of race and racism require reading, research, study, and yes, analytical thinking and critical discourse. And I'm gonna repeat that, just like dance, music, theater, literature, the topics of race and racism require reading, research, study, and yes, analytical thinking and critical discourse. And I'm going to quote from one of the resources I would like to recommend to those who are listening. It's a book that I've been using as one of my Bibles for a couple, maybe even three decades now. It's called Work Papers, Rethinking and Restructuring the Arts Organization. It was written by Nello McDaniel and George Thorn. And the quote is, the language we use to talk about race is often harmful, inaccurate, sloppy, and it too often causes people of color to feel marginalized. We must begin to build a lexicon that makes greater sense, that gives us all our dignity, that speaks to who we are, rather than who we are not. I've been wondering why the social services don't talk about cultural diversity, they talk about racism. And those questions and conversations are never as tidy as the ones we have about cultural diversity. The corners don't get tucked in and they're not always as polite. End of quote. So I just have to say that, after decades of conversations and contradictions, one of the most challenging and perplexing issues for Baraka Saleh is how to address racism, especially as it manifests and rears its ugly head in the arts and cultural sector. And to echo the previous quote, Nellie McDaniel and George Thorn, if we are willing to have conversations about all those other things, as I said, funding, philanthropy, best practice, process, let's be willing to have the conversation about racism. Unfortunately, we usually prefer to have those polite conversations rather than the open, honest, transparent outside of our comfort zone conversations. The question is especially frustrating to those of us who refer to ourselves as the creative class, perhaps more than any professional sector. We imagine ourselves to be enlightened and liberal and noble and in other words, we are quick to self-defend. I'm a good person. I could not possibly be prejudiced or racist without realizing that we all function within a society and system that is propped up and perpetuated subconsciously, subliminately, subtly with institutionalized racism and racially charged cues, codes, stigmas, stereotypes. The ones we do not see or recognize in our mirror. So what can, of course, people wanna know, well, what can we do? What can we do? And so one of the things that I often talk about is it sometimes baffles me that we do not see the critical need to address language and change in our language. And often such attempts are unfortunately dismissed as political correctness or with a rationalization that we just need an easy handle or way to talk about groups of people or types of people or types of organizations. It also baffles me, Frank, that people do not understand that when you call someone out their name, that's what we used to say in Detroit, when you call someone out their name, it can be perceived as both insult and injury, especially when we can simply ask people, how do you reference yourself? How do you call yourself? As one funder once said to me, I don't wanna racialize the work that I do. And yet that same funder did not have an issue with putting people in distinct and separate racial categories. Minority, people of color, Alana. Now, I'm just like, and now we started using the term BIPOC, which just drives me crazy. So for those who may not be familiar, for example, Alana had become the term to reference African, Latina, Latino, Asian, Arab and Native American artists, communities, cultures. My question is, when will we let go of attempts to categorize, homogenize, monolithalize? That's a word I made up, by the way. Monolithalize people into one lump sum. When will we let go of cold words and euphemisms for race? And I'll say what those are. Ethnic, disadvantaged, disenfranchised, minority, multicultural, non-white, people of color, underprivileged, underrepresented, underserved. When we define or reference ourselves with those terms, I feel like it justifies, validates being funded, perceived, even exploited as lesser than. Those terms are always couched in the codes of being lesser than. I never hear Caucasian people refer to themselves as disenfranchised, disadvantaged, underserved, underrepresented. For decades, many of us have earnestly tackled these issues and I know many people feel like it's a moving target, but let us be clear. This is not an issue of convenient labeling. This is not an issue of political correctness. I believe that language and lexicon and labels are important barometers of cultural consciousness.  We have to finally be able to move past, as I said, the codes, the stereotypes, the stigmas, the racially charged cues. So again, I will pause unless you want me to keep going. No, I think, you know, listen, I mean, you have been at the Segal and it's true, you were one that always raised these issues that always talked about this, but it was not felt as significant as it is now, which I think is hopefully a step. Yes, and that brings me, you know, even Frank too. You know, I'm asking a lot of people now who are wanting to have these conversations. I said conversations and workshops and, you know, et cetera. You know, so what I want to know is why and why now? Why is the conversation important now?  And, you know, having a really hard time trying to get people to understand that we were being, you know, not marginalized, we were being oppressed and brutalized long before the killing and the public lynching and murder of Mr. Floyd. So, I will continue with, we must be willing to consider that unless we devote, this is actually a quote from a book I've just finished reading this summer, Frank. It's called, and some of your readers may already be familiar, and if not, we all, I don't care what race or culture you come from, I think this book should be in everyone's library. It's called White Fragility, why it's so hard for white people to talk about race. And one of the quotes that I appreciate is we must be willing to consider that unless we have devoted intentional and ongoing study, our opinions are uninformed and even ignorant, unless we are willing to admit or to consider that we have devoted intentional and ongoing study, our opinions are uninformed and even ignorant. And going back to that issue of terminology, I'm now quoting from Dr. Amalia Mesa-Baines, and again, I'm gonna give this as a resource at the end of my comments. This is from the book, Voices from the Battlefront, Achieving Cultural Equity. The multicultural discourse grows confused and falters on the issues of language, terminology, and naming. As the mainstream continues to appropriate multicultural themes, the descriptions of race, ethnicity, nationality grow more euphemistic. In such a context, cultural groups must struggle for specificity in their representation against the vague homogeneity imposed by a dominant culture. For example, the term Chicano, and this is a Chicano woman writing this, the term Chicano echoes a self-description of the historical, political, and cultural references of the largest group within the greater Latino communities of the United States. The Chicano experience provides fertile ground for examining critical issues of identity, origin, history, ancestry, affiliation, and activism. The language of the indigenous brought a conceptual base to the Chicano movement. Consequently, the conceptual base of Chicano thinking absorbed elements from various pre-Hispanic cultures. Artist and writers rearranged, reimagined, re-positioned creative and flexible devices to name and mark and identify people, places, and beliefs, culturally, politically, spiritually. And that's Dr. Amalia Mesa-Baines, who is herself a MacArthur Genius Fellow. So I would just like to, you know, conclude my comments and then open it up to yourself for others who may have comments or questions.  So number one, as I've previously said, read Research Study. And I would actually like to recommend three books. The first one is Voices from the Battlefront, Achieving Cultural Equity. This is still, even though it was written, let me just see here, even though it was published in 1993, almost 30 years ago, by Marta Morena Vega, Dr. Marta Morena Vega, who was founder of the Caribbean Cultural Center in New York, an excellent book and also one of my Bibles. The other book that I mentioned and read from is called Work Papers, Rethinking and Restructuring the Arts Organization, as I mentioned by Nello McDaniel and George Thorn. And lastly, the other book that I quoted from is White Fragility, why it's so hard for white people to talk about racism. And even though this particular book is not specifically about the arts, it really has helped and enlightened me to have conversations about race and racism in the arts. So that's number one, Read Research Study. Two is Be Conscious of Language, another book that addresses the consciousness of the language that we use is called Language of Oppression. And I'm gonna send these to you so that you can share them with everyone. And, you know, taking a stand, you know, one of the things that we don't do is when we hear those conversations, whether it's at a dinner table, as I mentioned, or whether it's at a panel discussion, we don't stop people and say, what is it that you really mean? What are you saying? And let me share with you my experience in reference to what you're saying.  And then the last thing I would like to say is a quote by, oh, oh, and again, you know, attend as many conversations as you can, but as I say, go informed, read research study. And as a matter of fact, I would like to suggest and recommend to your readers that DC Black Repertory Theater is going to have a conversation called Black Theater Matters. This is gonna be a symposium panel on systematic racism in American theater. And I just realized I forgot to write down the date, but I think it's October 16th or 17th, but I'm sure you can find it on their website. It's DC Black Repertory Theater. The conversation is Black Theater Matters and there will be a panel on systematic racism in American theater. And then last but not least, I would like to read a quote by James Baldwin and this goes back to this issue of reducing people to synonyms and easy language. James Baldwin made a vow to young civil rights activists, if you will promise your elder brother that you will never ever accept any of the many derogatory degrading and reductive definitions that this society has ready for you, then I, Jimmy Baldwin, promise you I shall never betray you. Let me read that again. James Baldwin made a vow to young civil rights activists, if you promise your elder brother that you will never ever accept any of the many derogatory degrading and reductive definitions that this society has ready for you, then I, Jimmy Baldwin, promise you I shall never betray you. And in that spirit, an organization, a newly formed organization called the Creative Justice Initiative, has declared, and this has been signed by numerous individuals and organizations that says CJI, Creative Justice Institute does not use acronyms that include BIPOC, ALANA, among others, that erase or diminish our racial ethnic and cultural historical legacies. We believe that it is in honoring our unique contributions that we establish common grounds of understanding. That's it. Questions, comments, queries, criticisms. This is a very important and significant statement and as you said, you went from your bio within 30 years, you have been engaged in these conversations and discussions and trying to make a meaningful difference. And it's, again, you have to also talk about this today instead of perhaps all the ideas for our festival, what are you curating? But it is of significance. I think you once mentioned the Fannie Lou Hammer quote, that you're sick and tired of being sick and tired. Yes.  Or do you see now something that is changing in this time of COVID? Well, that's an excellent question.  And it was that question, or actually the response to the question of that young woman at the APAP conference who stood up and said, you know, when the gentleman said, I've heard this all before, why do we keep having these same conversations? And that, you know, 20-something African-American woman said, but I've never heard these conversations before. This is all new to me. And so that is what gives me encouragement. I'm now honored and blessed to say, not only do I work as an independent consultant, but I also mentor not even many young people, many folks who are our age, and including, you know, a wonderful woman. And I believe actually she's listening, so I'll give her a shout-out. Her name is Susan Trice, and she's the finance director at Deeply Rooted Dance Company in Chicago. And Susan said to me, you know, I've spent all my life in finance, in business, in corporate America as a black woman, but Baraka, when I heard you speak, I had never heard anyone speak about these issues, especially as they relate to art and culture. And now that I, you know, work in an organization that's all about art and culture, I want to know more about what these issues are and how I can address them, not only for my organization, but in my life. And I think this is critical also, Frank, that we're not just talking about how we address these issues in our work, but how do we address them in our life?  You know, if nothing else, you know, if you don't have an immediate comment, you know, say, read a book and give them some suggestions of something to read, you know, and I have to share again, you know, in the informal setting a few years back, this is only maybe about two or three years ago, I was having Thanksgiving dinner of all things, I should have known better because I always celebrate Thanksgiving doing prayer and meditation, you know, it's a time for me to give thanks on a personal level. And so I decided to accept a dinner invitation on a Thanksgiving evening, which I never do. And I thought I was the only Black person in the gathering. And so I thought I was getting ready to pat myself on the back because after about two or three hours, we were all getting ready to leave and a woman said to me, can I ask you a question? I was like, oh no, here it comes. I thought we were gonna be able to get out of here and go home without an issue, you know, that usually happens at family dinners and gatherings. The woman who again is educated, well traveled, I would even say rich if not wealthy has been all over the world. And she said to me, you know, what can we do about race? And I was like, oh no, here it comes. And I said, well, one of the reasons I feel like we're still having the conversations about race is because we cannot be open and honest and transparent. We're still trying to have the polite conversations that don't get us anywhere instead of saying what we really think and feel and respectfully, I don't mean of course disrespectfully, but saying with honesty what we really feel and think, we can't get past, you know, the conversation of racism and maybe we never will. I mean, that's what Ta-Nehisi Coates said, you know, we're always gonna be dealing with racism. But she, but so she then says, but okay, so then can I be honest with you? I said, absolutely. She said, well, I think that everybody in America should be absolutely required to speak English. I was like, oh no. I said, okay, well, if I can respectfully be honest with you, I disagree.  So no, I do not subscribe to the fact that everybody in this country should be required to speak English. She retorted, but it's the lingua franca of our country. I paused and I said, no, it's not. Let me tell you what the lingua franca of our country is. It's called Navajo, it's called Lakota, it's called Sioux, it's called indigenous language. And there's not a city, a state, you know, that you cannot go to that doesn't have a lake or a city or a street or a mountain or a hillside that is not named by the indigenous people of our country. That's the lingua franca of our country. And so if you think there should be one language, I suggest that you start studying one of those languages before you think everybody else should speak English. So those are the things that I'm saying. It's not just about our work, it's about speaking up and addressing again, you know, racism, homophobia, classism, sexism, you know, all of it, not just in our work, but in our everyday lives. And that will eventually translate and become an integral part of our work as well. Yeah, it's true. And on top of it, the Sioux language or the hardest to learn right there, not as simple and easy, you know, I think they're complex and great languages, so full of meaning and connections. We actually do not know because we're not able to speak and learn them. So we don't see the world through those languages which would make our experience of life. Yes.  And I'm like, wait a minute, I don't mind the melting pot meaning people come together. That's one thing. Or people even come together for unified goal and purpose and solidarity.  You know, those have become our American uniforms. And to say that you're only American if you dress like this, talk like this, think like this, create or do your work like this, I think is a very dangerous thing.  To me, it's no different than, you know, wiping out our ecology. You know, what are we doing? Let's think about what we are doing as well as what we are saying. Yeah, yeah, it's true that in French, la Troie de la Différence, they're right to be different. And which is the significant and that majority does not mean, you know, true democracy or freedom of speech on the contrary. I mean, in the German experience, of course, in the Third Reich, you know, it was also very national. Was one community, you know, one people liked each other and said we are one. But it was devastating, the greatest unparalleled, you know, disasters of history of mankind came out of it. And it should be a very big warning to everybody. And I think art should perhaps be then on the side to say, no, there are differences. They're different things. It's interesting and it's good. Edouard Glissant, who's a great writer from the Caribbean who actually taught at the Great Century, he said, it's a failure of imagination. You know, what you said that the brutality in our society and the systematic oppression and institutional racism, the white supremacy, sexism, homophobia and so on. He said, it's also a failure of imagination that there could be a better world, a different world, and I think art imagines it and for a moment it's real, it's anticipated. And if it's real, it could happen on a stage and a concert and a book in a poem. It can also happen. You once said, I believe in education, but not confrontation. Oh my goodness, where did you get that from? It's reals, it's out over the years. I mean, I read them. You read them, oh my goodness. Thank you, Frank, I love you for that. Yeah, the big blue font, which doesn't make it always easy to read, but I do. So do you think art is education? What's your idea? Well, without question. And education does not necessarily mean didactic. Again, I just quoted James Baldwin, who in my opinion is one of the most brilliant and subtly sophisticated writers I've ever met. People always, I have to say I'm one of those folks who used to be very, well, I won't tell you all the names I've been called, but one of them is, one of them has been the belligerent black woman. And I've been called the belligerent black woman just for standing up and talking about the very issues I've just shared in this conversation with you. And so I had to realize that to get people to hear what I was saying and also for me to hear, Frank, what other people were saying, that I not only had to educate myself, but what I desired to do was, not just to fight with others, but to educate others as well. And that's why in all my talks, I always try to leave folks with resource material and materials that they can educate themselves. Because I'm at the point in my life where I've been done, and this is not to pat myself on the back, I'm just stating this as a fact, I have done so much study and research. For 27 years, I know I have friends who are getting ready to roll their eyes for those who have known me long enough. I spent 27 years without a television. All I did was read research and study, read research, study, read research, study, 27 years. And so now I'm often not willing to have conversations with folks who don't. If you just wanna tell me your opinion, to be honest, with all due respect, I'm usually not interested in your opinion. I really want to know what are the facts or even sometimes, yes, what is your direct experience, but just people spouting their opinions, I feel is not particularly helpful or useful. And I will go back to that quote by Robin D'Angelo, white fragility, why it's so hard for white people to talk about race, in which she said, we must be willing to consider that unless we have devoted, intentional, and ongoing study, our opinions are uninformed and even ignorant. And so yes, it is for me now in this point in my life about education, not confrontation. And going back to your question about, am I sick and tired of being sick and tired, it also goes back to educating that next generation who is still gonna be dealing with these issues and these dilemmas that we have in our culture. And so making sure that they are armed and educated with the information that has been so generously shared with me by Dr. Marta Morena Vega and her book and others. It's just, I can't emphasize enough, the books I shared, those were gifts in my life. Those were guidelines and lights at the end of the tunnel when I was in early in my career, when I was so frustrated and could not figure out what is going on? What is going on? So yeah, education, not confrontation is one of my aphorisms and thank you for paying attention. Thank you for reading, yeah. Yeah, and I think if I remember right, you also mentioned some of it, I miss remember, but that everything is about, Angela Davis said, it's a struggle about revolutionary transformation. She said all the things that are happening what we have to focus on is a transformation. Revolutionary one and I agree, I think it is a time now that showed more than ever that there needs to be a transformation, that this is a time of change. Maybe things have already changed. So, but we're also here to talk about art or listen about art and theater performance. You said the books were the transformative moments but I know you created the Alternate Root Festival, the South Asia Theater Festival at NJPAC and others. What do you look in art or what art do you present? Do you feel should be presented to be part of that revolutionary transformation? What do we need? Well, I want to thank you for again, sharing that quote by Angela Davis and I would also like to share this quote by Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation for those of you who are not familiar because and I say this because once again, you know, there were times when I was saying all these things and I was the lone wolf and people were acting like I was crazy or people were treating or talking about me behind my back or saying to my face, you know, belligerent black woman but I was in a, I was on a, again on a advisory committee for APAP and we were, the committee was planning for the next festival and I brought up the question of why aren't we talking about revolutionary change in any of our APAP panels or discussions or plenary sessions and somebody emailed me afterwards and said, oh, you know, you were an embarrassment for bringing up revolution. I was like, what world am I in? And so then Darren Walker came out with this quote and I was jubilant. I sent it to everybody on that panel. I sent it to the president of APAP. I sent it to all of his staff. This is the quote from Darren Walker. Changes in the world around us demand more than ever that we recognize and celebrate art, creativity and freedom of expression as the revolutionary forces they are. Widening inequality, growing extremism, evolving technology and volatile markets, render art and its unique role in affecting social change more important, not less.  And so I'm, when I'm presenting, I'm looking at or now get curating when I have the opportunity to do so. I look at artists from all over the world who are talking and seeking change. One of those artists that I have the pleasure and privilege to work with is someone who's actually participated in one of your previous conversations, Frank, and that's Stacey Klein. Yes, with Double Edge Theater. And for those who are not familiar, you need to go to that website, Double Edge Theater in Ashfield, Massachusetts. They are doing amazing and phenomenal work. They call it Art Justice. But, you know, again, people want to be critical and say, well, you're not looking at the aesthetics, Baraka, you're not looking at excellence in arts. And I say to people, excellence and quality, no, no cultural boundaries. You can still deal with the issues of life, the issues of politics, the issues of social justice, the issues of change, and yes, the issues of revolution at the highest artistic and aesthetic level. I don't care who you are. And again, those are the kinds of works that we saw with the, you know, Amity Baraka's of the world and the Douglas Turner's of the world and the Nina Simone's of the world and, you know, art and culture, you know, high art and high culture, no, no cultural boundaries. And so I am, yes, often looking at people who are struggling with and dealing with those issues in their communities because they're the ones who often do not get the voice, who do not get heard, who do not get a stage. That's why my programs was called Alternate Roots because it was not necessarily about mainstream presentation. It was not about, you know, Broadway, as much as I love Broadway, I frequently buy tickets to Broadway presentations, but can we also give voice and platform and resources and funding and contracts and opportunity to those artists who don't get heard and their issues? One of the things I try to do, one of the things that I did at New Jersey Performing Arts Center is for 10 years, I produced an international hip hop festival. Now, for those of you who don't know New Jersey Performing Arts Center, this is not to brag or boast, but this is just to give you the context. It's a $180 million art facility. At the time that I worked there, it had a budget of about a little over $20 million. It had a staff of over 100 people. And I say that because the last thing that people thought was coming to New Jersey Performing Arts Center was an international hip hop festival. And I have to give kudos and to our former president and founder, Larry Goldman, who when he received letters, he actually received a letter from a wealthy patron who said, if Baraka Saleh presents hip hop at NJPAC at New Jersey Performing Arts Center, she was gonna withdraw her support. And he said, we would hate for that to happen, but let me tell you this is what an arts center does. It provides a platform for presentation of voices that don't get heard, and especially on a platform at that kind of high level. So yes, I'm proud to say that is indeed the kind of work that I've tried to do throughout my career, not just that New Jersey Performing Arts Center. It actually also has an incredibly beautiful stage and the good acoustics is something that went right in a new building, often theorists don't work. It doesn't, coming to hip hop also, which came out of the Bronx when the Bronx was still burning, when there were no arts grants and nobody helped them and they did something on their own, as you said, by us. And in force, it became a culture that actually went around the world. It's stunning actually, as a great American contribution to contemporary music that such a center would have the people on the boards, which also perhaps is a bit of the problem that in the part of Europe and other places, yes, you have people who support the center on a board, but you also have artists or it's artist driven or artists that have the same voice. It was probably, I don't know how it was on the NJ board, was there just an artist, a working artist? We presented lots of organizations. I know it's not, you pay money and you participate and so then it changes the conversation. So yeah, structurally, things will have to change to also get better, better theater and better access. I wanted to read something also from you. You said, what should be on stage? What is in there? You said there are the questions you always ask. Who are we putting on stage? And what is really on stage? What's the type of interaction we expect to have with the audience and community? And what impact will it have? So that I think is a big question, especially the last ones, the interaction with the community and the impact it will have. What are your thoughts on that? Well, absolutely. There's no question that impact and connection with community is just as critical as what people are seeing on the stage.  Yeah, what do you mean by impact? What is that impact? So again, if I could just even give an example, one of the good things that actually came out of 2001, at least for me at New Jersey Performing Arts Center was my budget got significantly cut because as you know and for folks around the country, arts organizations in New York after 9-11 were having a really difficult time. Just like now, people did not wanna go out, people were afraid to go out in crowds, afraid of terrorism and potential bombings, all of that. So many of us lost our subscription series. We lost people who regularly came to our theaters and our performing arts centers.  And I was like, no. The only thing I asked is that you let me cut my budget and not let an administrator or a finance person cut my budget. And so I had to then really focus, Frank, on what was important to me. And so what I went back and asked is I want to cut the main stage programming. And what I prefer to do is implement a residency program. So that artists, whether I'm bringing artists from, you know, Mozambique or theater artists from Cote d'Ivoire or theater artists from Portugal or theater artists from Taiwan. I mean, I brought theater from all those places, but that they have an opportunity to connect with my community. So they weren't just here for a performance or two and go home, they had residency opportunities. To go and spend time in my, not just my schools, in churches, in community centers. And what that also did is not only have an impact, it built an audience as well. People wanted to know, you know, as one man said to our marketing director, that Baraka Saleh, I never know what she's gonna bring to NJPAC, but I know it's always gonna be something of high quality and I'm going to learn something. And to me, learning is impact. And giving people from across the world the opportunity to intersect, interact, and learn each other's cultures, I don't know of any greater impact than that. And so this was, and what I would also do is create programs and manuals that weren't just the standard program notes, but publications and resource materials and education materials about the culture. Who are these folks? You know, I brought folks who had never performed from outside of their country. We call them pygmies. Their real name is the Baka people. And I brought people who had never performed on a stage but you talk about, I had to educate myself about what was an appropriate way to bring these kinds of, you know, they didn't even have a word for art. They didn't have a word for artists. This was their everyday life. And how do you present that on a stage? I own another organization, another theater company from Cote d'Ivoire, I had to bring dirt. They wanted to perform in dirt on the stage. So I had to bring dirt. And then they talked about that they travel with the earth and the dirt because they perform barefoot and this connects them back to the African land they come from when they have to go to other places and perform. So, you know, all that kind of learning experience not just for the audience, but for Baraka Selay, for my production staff, for my usher staff, for my box office staff, for everybody at New Jersey Performing Arts Center, it was always about us learning and impacting not only our audiences and our community, but each other. So when artists were visiting, you created a schedule that they went into churches, community. So you really worked for that.  So what did you do specifically that the artist experienced Newark or America? Yes, I'll go back to that group from Mozambique. It was actually the theater and dance company of Mozambique, the national theater and dance company of Mozambique. And so one of the things, and often I ask artists, you know, we think we have to plan and tell artists what to do, that's not it. Ask people, just like I'm saying, ask people how they want to be referenced. It's also about asking artists what they wanna do. And they specifically said, we wanna go to a gospel church. We've heard about black churches in America and we want to go to a church. So indeed, we found a church and not only did they wanna go to a church service, but they wanted to go to a choir rehearsal. And what happened was, the black choir in Newark at this Baptist church taught them a gospel song and they and the folks from Mozambique taught the Mozambicans a traditional African song and then they both performed the songs at a Sunday church service. Oh my God, you talking about a rocking good time. We had a rocking good time. And sometimes that's just important as the learning. Sometimes it's just about, let's not make this all deep and intellectual and philosophical. Sometimes it's just about having a good time. And then afterwards, we all had dinner. We call it in the black church after the service is over. We call it fellowship. Then we had fellowship and we had their food. They brought some of the cooked some of their food and the black people at the church in Newark cooked some of their food. It was a good time. And sometimes it's as simple as that. Yeah. And in a way, an ancient tradition of mankind, to sing for each other, to dance for each other and then you share some food around the fire, you know? So, and that also is connected to that field we are in of performance and it became so highly designed by experts who study, you know, for years and you pay money to have that experience but there is something next to it. And we have to create, I believe very strongly, these forms, what you also, in a way, a pioneer. How did you find the true from Mozambique who has never been on a stage? Well, luckily. What do you say to curators? Do that. And then you're free.  And again, I'm not saying this, Frank, to brag or boast. I don't present work that I don't see. And so, you know, well, people say, well, you know, well, you worked at New Jersey Performing Arts Center and you have a $20 million budget. I've also worked at organizations, Frank, that had a, you know, staff of two and a half people and that is not an exaggeration. But what, because I'm passionate about what I do, I've always been able to find funders who I'm able to convince or the organization, you know, like when I perform, I mean, when I was the vice president of programming at the Houston International Festival, they encouraged me to get on the road and travel. When I was at a small community-based organization in Brooklyn, which is how all this happened, it's 651 Arts. It was founded by the inimitable Mickey Shepard. Right, in the family. Yeah, some people may know that name. It's still going strong. She started a program called Africa Exchange and she asked Baraka Saleh to be the director, the program director for Africa Exchange. Luckily, Mickey went to the Ford Foundation or maybe the Ford Foundation approached her and we were able to get over a three-year period, $600,000 over a half a million dollars to implement this program. It was not a presentation program. It was only a residency program, allowing artists from the African continent to be in residence with their peers here in the United States. And actually, I'm gonna say to their credit, it was the Ford Foundation that said, you need to go to Mozambique and meet, his name was David Abelio, the founder of this company. And I was like, yes. Absolutely. And so, I think also one of the reasons that Mickey had asked me to be a part of this program that she initiated was because I had traveled on my own as well to the African continent, even before participating in that program. But with that program, I traveled, we forget we have an African diaspora. It isn't just Africans. So, we forget that Brazil has the largest population of people of African descent, not the United States, Brazil. So, yes, I traveled to countries all over because there are people of the African diaspora doing amazing art all over the world, all over the world. And unfortunately, that's usually because they were colonies or plantations. So, I can't help but put that in. The reason we have black people and so many black people in Brazil is because it was a colony, it was a plantation, it was a fourth labor camp. The reason why we have so many black people in Great Britain is because Great Britain went around the world marching and declaring the sun never sets on the British Empire and colonizing people all over the world. The same thing with the French, whether it was Haiti or Morocco or you can name a number of places. And so, we don't wanna talk about racism. We wouldn't have people in all these places, all these multicultural communities, if it hadn't been for that history. Let's talk about that. Okay, I'm not hearing anything. Are we, did I lose, oh, okay. So, we are at one o'clock and I just want to, before we finish, I just wanna read this last thing. This is a quote from one of the... What are your plans? What's happening? What's on your story? I now, as you read, I now work as an independent consultant. And what I love about that is I never know. I never know what's next. And it's one of the most, it's the most, well, I've had some pretty exciting experiences and opportunities in my life. But working as an independent consultant, I never know what's coming. I will tell you this because we're gonna come and knock on your door. Stacey Klein and I are talking about developing what we call armchair conversations that we, that she and I curate and some of them might be just with herself and myself and we want you to host one. How about that? We're putting you on the spot. Well, that is good that you are going ahead and that you also, you know, it's important to share your experience and also your historical perspective of what seems to be very new in a way to so many, but in a way it's a very long, long history of centuries and in revolutions, you know, 100, 150, 200 years, you know, till they find the right form and be in the middle of often upheaval, I do think, so your work is important. Also the curation, what you and you tell artists what to do and what way in what form especially and how to connect to the audience is something that we all can learn from. So, yes, go ahead, tell us your quote. What do you have there? Okay, so this is the last quote and this is because so many going back to what I initially said about so many, it's so hard to have a conversation about race and racism in the arts because, you know, we can't imagine that it might be me. We can't imagine that the person that we look at in the mirror in the morning could possibly be racist. And so this is a quote from one of my spiritual teachers and it's become one of my favorite quotes. Everyone has bias and prejudice. Everyone has likes and dislikes.  The problem comes when you have the power to abuse me, oppress me, publicly lynch me with impunity, without justice or justification. The problem comes when whether or not you like me prevents me from equal housing, education, employment, healthcare, opportunity, that's racism. And that's all. Yeah, that is a very powerful quote. That is actually racism that comes to that. And it is a significant, that is a very, very significant quote. And we all should carry those in us and we all need to including us in our little seal which is now smaller than your smallest organization you have, but you know, this is of real significance. And of real importance. And it is what we have to use this time we are in now. So many people have died also from this COVID moment. It's not the biggest movement on the street, the biggest civil rights movement as one could say just by number. So really this last quote is something which we should all carry with us there. Where did we contribute? Yes, reminder to all your listeners, DC, Black Repertory Theater, Black Theater Matters. Annal on systemic racism in American theater. And maybe we invite them for a follow up conversation. Also as a book of what of interest I think Isabelle Wilkerson, you know, she did cast, she wrote cast at the origin of our discontent where she basically says it's a cast system that has been created in America. It's been implemented. It also explains why white people vote against their own interests, because they perceive themselves of being of a different caste and that it's more significant than she says. This is wrong. It creates what she calls a software discomfort but it's an important book, she's in New York Times, while Joan was just to add it to that long and significant list you have here. So there are really, thank you, thank you for sharing that with us. And also I know it's part of your education effort but still it's also not easy. I can only imagine what it means to talk about this for one year, two, 10 years, 20 or 30 and again and again and as you point out in a field that should be on the right side. And I do think that art has been on the right side on the struggle, the complex struggle for freedom and for free speech and for liberty but we all have to do more. It is not enough and we cannot take ourselves for granted. It's why art is great. It does question us. And as Caracas said, it's good to have conversation that are uncomfortable, not cozy, not everything with that but to really, really also be honest, a radical honesty. And I know you also mentioned, you know, that the radical love exhibition at the Ford Foundation that also seems to be a guiding light. We would love to have Darren Walker on here. Darren Warren on here, he, Darren Walker. Yeah, so one day maybe it will be possible but it is something that is of significance and there is transformation is needed and you are part of it and we all should be part of it in our lives, as you said and not just in our art, so it is authentic. Tomorrow we have Gideon Lester from, great Gideon from the Bard College where he is running the theater program is producing extraordinary work. And there was Tanya Corey from Lebanon from Bay Road, who is a collaborator of his. And Friday we have our own prelude curators, David Prune and Miranda Heimann and they will talk about the prelude festival. We have done this for over 15 years, work from New York artists, New York companies, work in progress and of course it will be online. It's one of the very few festivals and the nation that is going on is before. So there will be, and just a little tell us a little bit about their process. They are still in very much in the middle of America. Again, really, really thank you, thanks Halraum for hosting us. Tia, Vijay and everybody and me from the Segal Center and let's keep the conversation going, as you said Baraka. And so really thank you for taking the time and energy and bringing your- And thank you Frank for hosting these very critical and important conversations. I get asked to do a lot, but this was really important for me and I think the work that you're doing is very important and these conversations, these are the kind of conversations we need to, as I said, need to have more often than not. And I wanna thank you for being brave enough to make them possible at the Segal Center. Thank you, thank you. And again, thanks to you and stay safe. And while listeners hope you stay safe too and stay tuned and you will be able to tune in again.