Hey, what's up everybody? So hopefully in this video you'll be finding out how you can actually optimize yourself to think faster, smarter, and better. I'm spending a lot of time thinking about certain principles and certain methodologies for anybody anywhere in the world to apply in their life so they can kind of optimize the way they think. So you're about to kind of learn certain philosophies and principles from way smarter people than I pretty much what I've done is I've kind of summarized their thought process and how they view the world, individuals such as Elon Musk, individuals such as Richard Feynman. Okay, so I'm gonna break down this category or I'm gonna break down this video in different sections. The first section we're gonna be talking about over here is number one is how the brain works. See, when most people, when they look at, see when most people when they look at kind of becoming smarter or thinking faster, they always look at adding more in their life. They look at the next hack, they look at the next maybe like drug or they look at all these kind of cheats. They're trying to go from here to there without the actual work, without the actual journey and above all, most importantly, without actually creating a foundation for you to have a sustainable way of thinking. So we have to understand for your body or for your brain to work efficiently, it needs healthy levels of neurotransmitters, say dopamine, serotonin, GABA, adrenaline, norepinephrine, all these neurohormones and neurotransmitters have to be at the proper levels for your body and brain to be functioning properly. And then we can go into different categories. We can be talking about the healthy fats in your body, omega-3, omega-6, omega-9, then on the B vitamins, vitamin B, 3, 6, 12, et cetera. These are the ingredients in the recipe to have a healthy mind. And the problem today is people aren't eating healthy. They're eating a lot of high fructose corn syrup. They're eating a lot of junk foods and they're not giving the body, the brain, the necessary tools to create these neurotransmitters, neurohormones and all these vitamin Bs and vitamin Ds, okay? So the first thing you guys got to do to optimize your mind is you gotta get your diet on par. I'm now gonna go into the dogmatic views of which diet is best. I'm gonna tell you what works for me and I'm gonna tell you what works in studies. For me personally, very low carb, ketogenic diet does wonders for me. High fat, not high protein. I put in the MCT oils, the avocados, the butter, the steaks. But, but I'm a little bit more on the side of the pescatarian side where I get a lot of fish, a lot of seafood because it has omega-3s and I think it has a more mineral density than the lion animals, okay?  But that's the first place I would start. Personally, it would be a low carb, ketogenic diet. Second of all, once you got your diet on par, I'll try to figure out your sleeping schedule because listen, your body repairs a nighttime, it doesn't repair it during the day and a lot of studies, actually last year, many studies came out showing that when we sleep in proper rhythm, your body actually recycles certain plaque off your cells in your mind and they've linked to people who have very bad sleep, may cause issues with, say, multiple sclerosis, may cause issues with Parkinson's disease, et cetera. So organize your sleep, get that on point in your life.  What I do is around, say, oh, right now, it's the wintertime, so it sucks, but around six o'clock, give or take, when the sun sets here in Canada, I put on blue light blocker glasses and basically what I do is I also lower down the temperature so the room is very cold. I'm not really surrounded by electronics anytime past eight o'clock, so I go to bed at 10 o'clock, so two hours before bed, I'm either reading books, usually that's what I do, or sometimes I like to do something called a mandala for coloring book. Either or, I'm not on electronics, I'm blocking the artificial blue light, I go to bed, I wake up every day at five o'clock in the morning, I shine this light bright box, 10,000 lux with infrared laser on that side, and then I do Wim Hof breathing in the morning for four to 10 minutes, fantastic. And then, since it's wintertime over here, there's no vitamin D, I go 10-ing about three to five times a week for five minute sessions, what a UVA, UVB mixture evolves. Okay, that's my routine when it comes to diet and when it comes to lifestyle. And obviously it's up to you what you wanna include anything else, certain workouts, you gotta either, whatever. Okay, diets number one, lifestyle is number one. Number two, okay.  And in science, there is no absolute answer to anything, in fact, science is probably the only thing that's evolving constantly. So for example, Galileo said 500 years ago that the earth is round and everyone said he's crazy and they actually killed people for saying the earth is round. But the issue right now is people read something and they're like, this must be the answer, they read that, that must be the answer, that's not the case.  For example, myself, I'm a very early bird, I wake up at 5 a.m., I don't need any priming, I'm literally up, I do my things, and I get from 5 a.m. to like 11 o'clock, I get a lot of work done.  Now, after lunchtime, my mind tends to slow down, not slow down in an aspect that is bad, but slow down to aspect, it switches gears, it's more creativity. So as the day progresses later, my mind becomes more creative. So it's not really more about the hustle, it's about thinking outside the box, maybe doing exercise to kind of stimulate the contrarian model of thinking or how Elon Musk thinks what's rule gets into a little bit. Okay, so you gotta figure out how your program, you can't go against the grain. If you're not a morning person, you're gonna try to do morning things and try to learn in the morning or read a book in the morning or do exercises in the morning or learn mathematics, it's not gonna fly. If you understand yourself, you understand that in the evening you're more open to more creative work than you do the creative work in the evening or opposite, if in the morning you know that you're a creative individual, maybe then you do whatever you wanna do in the morning, whether you wanna learn a new language or whether you wanna absorb more information from a book, it really doesn't matter, but know thyself. And honestly, you know yourself, so there's really no exercise to it, you already know how you're wired, okay? So that was the second thing, is knowing yourself. Okay, so moving along into really understanding how a person thinks, and this is individualized, and how a person absorbs information because we've been programmed through school, certain people, have been programmed through society and school to think in a very linear model, and the thinking is one, two, three, four, five, A, B, C, D, E, F, G. As opposed to the human, the human mind is naturally programmed to think in fractal terms, meaning it goes from A to Z, Z to G, G to Q, Q to R, et cetera, doesn't go in a linear path, it's very fractal, like fractal geometry or fractal mathematics, and that's how the universe works naturally as well. So that being said, when wanting to learn something new, the whole idea of you just picking something up and reading it from A to Z, it doesn't fly. This is where Elon Musk comes in. He has a great principle, and the principle is most people tie things to stories, like, oh, that thing is green because of yadda, yadda, yadda, or that thing, or did he hear what she said? It's always attached to some type of mythos or some type of story. As opposed to how Elon Musk thinks and same thing how Richard Feynman thinks, they both have exactly the same way or same model of thinking is this. Find out the basic principles of that subject that you're trying to learn. Let's say it's a new language. As opposed to just trying to learn random words or trying to learn, say, just the alphabet of the language, what is the most common principles, no matter what in that language? So you do your research and then you do a deep dive. So this goes back to the foundation. What is the foundational principles of this language? Or maybe you're studying a book. Let's say the book's about investment. So what is the foundational principles of basic investments in a stock market or basic investments as an angel investor? Then you write down these basic principles and these principles are set in stone and these principles is what kind of determines your thought pattern because on the journey of reading, on the journey of becoming smarter and on the journey of absorbing information faster, you will base your new information you've acquired against the principles that dictate the subject that you are learning. And in essence, you become a scientist because what scientists do is they gather data and they take that data and they correspond it to set a theory or thesis they had at the beginning to see if they are correct, okay? So basically what you can do is no matter what you're doing, new language, mathematics, reading a book, understand, and this is where your own hypothesis comes in, you can go to Google, it doesn't matter, you can literally have a cue card but understand the core principles of that topic, okay? Okay, the next thing is quite simple and this is what it is. Most people, I will say generally most, except for a few, most people, when they wanna learn something new, they tend to crunch. Same thing like they do in college university, they'll spend maybe two, three months crunching on this topic, leave it alone, and they never come back to it. However, that's a mistake and it's proven in science that for you to absorb any knowledge or information, you must constantly force your body to regurgitate it at random times. What this means is the whole idea of you studying a topic, the same topic, every single day is outdated. And this goes back directly to what we talked about before, is a human mind does not work linearly, doesn't work one, two, three. So if you're studying something, say in the morning, based on how you're wired, you're studying a new language, maybe Spanish, hola, you're studying new language and maybe you're studying today certain phrases, you're studying today maybe how to add verbs or writing whatever it may be and what you can do is you don't study the same thing every single day.  Maybe study Spanish three days out of the week and two days maybe you do something else in the morning or maybe you study German or Russian, it doesn't matter. In the following week, you wanna study Spanish again and regurgitate that information. The whole idea is you want to regurgitate information. You want to force your body to go back into your database, into your mind and recall what you learned and this creates the new neural pathways that you need to actually connect the dots on what you learned in the past. So the whole idea of just picking up the same thing every single day and do the same thing for what Einstein said before is a definition of insanity. So take breaks, go back and what's great about this is you get a new set of eyes or ears or whatever and you actually absorb information much more efficiently because your body now subconsciously is creating connections that you never thought of before in the first place, okay? I'm a firm believer in controlling your stress and what I mean by stress is asymptomatic stress and symptomatic stress because most people when it comes to learning they wanna learn by forced nature. So they think they're forced to learn because society is telling them to learn or they're forced to learn by their employer, whatever, it really doesn't matter with me but under that circumstances, you feel stressed and I don't think so under any circumstances you should feel stressed for learning. Learning should be a meta skill and you should be fun, you should have curiosity and there's no failure in learning or fail stands for first attempt in learning. So I'm a firm believer in actually understanding how your brain is wired. Certain apps you can use or devices such as Headspace is really good, Muse is really good, any biofeedback tools actually one of the best resources for that is the Heart Math Institute. Check them out, they have an M wave one and M wave two which you can track your alpha, beta, delta, theta waves on the mind which is really good. So kind of summarizing this and looking at the general aspect or the general thesis of becoming smarter and absorbing information is really not an easy fixed solution. It's having a sustainable lifestyle, it's eating healthy to give your brain the necessary tools to have a functioning optimal brain. It's having a proper lifestyle once again to give your body the necessary tools to function optimally. It's also thinking very contrary and thinking in principles, thinking in just basic terms. This is why Elon Musk is so good at what he does. This is why Richard Feynman was one of the best scientists possible because Richard Feynman said it's not enough just knowing something. People know something, oh the color of the bird or he talks about the bird story. That bird is this or the different language now bird is called that, that bird is called this but you know nothing of the bird. You don't know how the bird is the anatomy of the bird. You don't know the heritage of the bird. You don't know where the bird goes in the winter, where the bird goes in the summer. So I think there's a disease right now. Most people they can recall things but they don't understand it. And what Elon Musk does and what Richard Feynman did is they understand the subject that they're talking about. They understand everything. So when you look at this mouse you can't just say the mouse moves because of energy. What do you mean because of energy? You know the mouse moves because I have my hand. My hand is mechanically moving the mouse. Well how does my hand work? Well my hand works because there's nerves and neurons going up to my brain. My brain works because of X, Y and Z. So once you understand how a topic works then you can truly and actually once you understand how a topic works then you can actually educate somebody. And that's a true test of knowing a topic or knowing a subject. Is if you can now take what you learned and truly understand it, repackage it in your own way and teach others then that's when you've become the master. Hope this helps. And like always, if you find value in this video like this video, subscribe this video and leave a comment below. I wanna know exactly what you do, what's your kind of strategies and tactics. And that's it, peace.


Oh my god, this one is funny. And this time helped us realize how smart Vinny is. Oh my fellow snippers, my name is Marlene McOwen and this is Jersey. Take a very good look at her before she jumps out of the video because once she realizes that she's on camera, she is going to bolt. And this is Leo. Say hi to the camera Leo. Leo's like that's nice. I just want hugs and kisses and cuddles. Today we have a really fun video for you guys and I think it's going to be an interesting video as well. We are going to get into the top 10 worst bites that I have ever gotten from these birds or any other bird. And some of the bites that I'm going to include in there happened to other people in my house, but they were just so memorable. I have to share them with you. And I want to thank PistolGirl for this video idea. I read her comment one day and I never forgot it. She basically wanted to know what my worst bites were and how they felt and I think also how I got them to heal. Wow Jersey, I'm so excited that you're excited about being in the video.  Okay, so we're going to get right into it, but before I get into it, I just want to tell you two things. For those of you who are new here, Jersey, yes, she has anxiety. She is a plucker. My birds are rescues. I feel like I need to address that because sometimes it's in the comments. And the second thing I want to do before we get right into this video is give a shout out to a very special sniffer named Luca Heidebricht. I really hope I said that correctly. But here's the thing Luca, you sent me a Christmas card or a holiday card. And I know it's been a while, but I just wanted to thank you because your card came at the perfect time. I was reading comments and I don't even remember now. See, this just goes to show how you should just let things roll off your back because it just doesn't matter. But I was reading comments and I was just like, I don't even know if I can do this anymore. Sometimes you could see one comment and it could just bother you so much.  And then I went to my PO box and I got this card from you.  So thank you so much. Your card is everything to me. So I just want to let you know that I got it. And I hope you see this. So yes, I love you guys so much. All right, let's get right into the video. Oh, Jersey, you're headless. You have a lot to say now. I tried to put them in some sort of traumatic order with number one, being the most traumatic and starting with number 10, but you'll kind of get to see that a lot of them are all kind of equal, especially the ones at the end. So I'm going to start with the least painful bites. I remember albeit very painful. And before I start with my top 10 bites, don't forget to put in the comments, your worst bite that you've ever gotten from your bird and why because I love reading those and I love hearing them. And I think it's great for other people to read them. Okay, now before I get into the official, official top 10 list, I just want to tell you about this one bite. And the reason I didn't add it to the list is because I can't remember exactly why it happened. But I just remember one time my sister getting ripped to shreds by my lesser sulfur-crested cockatoo tie. He's our family bird. And I don't know, he just bit her and I just remember blood everywhere. But the thing is, I don't remember where he bit her. And I don't remember why because it was a long, long time ago. So I didn't add it to the list. So let's get right to it. Number 10, Rocky bit my chest. Yeah, he literally bit me right here. I actually do not have a scar. So that's pretty good. It was a long time ago. This is what happened. I don't remember all the details, but I remember Rocky flew. And it was like one of the first times he ever flew in his life. Now, Rocky is a 26 year old rescue bird. At the time, maybe he was about 24 years old. Birds that large don't generally fly around a lot within a house because they know their boundaries. They can feel that the walls are too tight for their wingspan and for them to have time to really take off. So on this particular day, I don't know why he took off, but it was unusual. And he must have gotten scared of something, very possibly a gardener might have crossed the window. Things like that can happen where a bird can get spooked and he flew. And because he wasn't used to flying, although he has flighted, he flew into the glass door. So he hurt himself a little bit like that's a lot of mass going into the glass door. So when birds get hurt, they just kind of like chill out. He was dazed. Let's just say he was dazed. And so I ran to him and I picked him up and I brought him close to me and I had a good five minutes of like giving him a head massage to like relax him. And then George shows up and he didn't want to look like a cheater. So he bit me right here and of course went to George and acted like the big baby that he is. So I got a little bit of really good attention and love, but I was pretty much abandoned once George came into the picture so that he could be babied by George and not look like a cheater. Number nine, Vinny bit my face after being really loving by the way. Now I've happened to send number nine because it wasn't really that bad of a bite, but it is because when those birds bite they like latch on. But I knew why he bit me. This is what happened. I was on this movie for like eight days and I did come home every day and George was here taking care of the birds. But obviously like most of them, I am their main flock member. So they love me, especially Vinny. And even though I would come home every day and you guys watch me on Instagram, you see that I shower with my birds. Even if I come home late, I really make time to hang out with them. So even if that means I'm gonna get less sleep, that's what I do. So on this one day, I think I had already been on set for like five days in a row and Vinny was not happy about it, but he didn't let me know quite yet. I had the birds on my shoulder and I was kissing all of them. I had three birds. I think I had Picasso, Jersey and Vinny. And they were really excited to see me and they were showing in, we were taking turns, all of us getting a head scratch and a kiss and so forth. And after a good 20 minutes, yeah, it took him 20 minutes to produce his, you know, big bite finale, he just bit me. And the funny thing is, I probably have it on video somewhere, but I mean that was like five phones ago. It was kind of shocking. Like the way he bites, it's like he just goes and you just like, ah, and when a bird bites, you have to like try to stay as still as possible or you couldn't make it worse.  So I was able to go and be on set the next day with makeup. It really wasn't that bad, but man, when a bird bites your lip, it hurts. So he was pretty much angry that I was away for such a long time. On to number eight. Okay, this one didn't happen so long ago, maybe within the last eight months or so, but we had guests over and Rocky, he is like the king of outside. He loves to be outside. He screams to be outside every day. But when he's inside and there's guests over, if anybody goes outside, he gets really upset. He wants to go to Sandy, my doggy. So Rocky wanted to go outside because George and a few of his friends were hanging out drinking their coffee. So what happens? Rocky shows up at the window, but there's kids around. So I don't really want him walking on the floor. Not because I don't trust Rocky, although you should never 100% trust a bird like that, especially Rocky, because for those of you who don't know, Rocky is my harlequin macaw that had been locked up in a cage for 10 years before we got him. So he has some aggression issues, but mostly because I also don't trust the kids. Like I don't know if they're going to approach him, if they're going to run around, if they're going to make him nervous.  Rocky did not want to be on a stand. He wanted to be outside. So the mere fact that I offered him something he didn't want that offended him and he bit me and there were guests over. And obviously I don't even scream at this point when I'm bit. I'm just like, you know, trying to stay still because one, you don't want to let them know that it's working if they are angry because any attention is good attention to these birds. And two, if you move your arm when you're getting bit, that's just gonna result in much worse of a bite. So let me show you this bite right here. It's now a scar. It was a beautiful triangle in the shape of a beak. So what do I do for it to heal because you asked that as well. George's dad makes this clay mask 100% natural. And the amazing thing about this mask is that if you put it on any wounds, it acts kind of like a liquid bandage. It keeps your skin together and keeps it from scarring really bad. And it'll also really help it heal. And so that is normally what I do. But I think on this one, I didn't put the mask on and now I highly regret it because you see that big scar that's there on to number seven. Number seven is also a rocky bite.  In fact, I think she's scared of a lot of animals. So I was trying to make everything look just really cool. She's been over the house many times since but on this day, I could just feel her fear. So here we have this large macaw walking around on the floor. And I guess he wanted to come to me or I went to pick him up and maybe the dog scared him. I don't even know. This is one of the ones that I don't know what exactly happened.  It's just been a while and Rocky bit me so hard. I'm going to show you the scar. It's in such a crazy place. I don't know if you could see it. It's like a white line up here looks kind of suspicious. He bit me so hard that I just remember keeping my arm in one spot. That's basically what you have to do when you have a bird bite you. You just got to keep still because you don't want to make it any worse. And that's why this scar looks really good. One because I was able to put the mask on this one so I don't have any red marks. But here's the funny thing. I just carried on as if nothing happened. I was bleeding through everything that I put over this bite. I was just acting like nothing happened and George was there like, do you want me to put the mask on it? Do you want me to put this? Let's put gauze. Let's put this. I'm just like, yeah, I'm good. Okay, we're just gonna like clean up just like I did with the last bite. This is pretty much how I handle things and then we'll get to George and how he handles bites. It'll be a whole different story which brings me to number six. You guys might know about this one because it happened in a video but I wasn't filming. Leo bit George. Yes, this, this sweet little bird here and you want to know why he bit him because Leo is obsessed with children. So he had a play date and a young lady named Leah came over and hung out with Leo and George wanted to say hi to her and he made the big mistake of going to hug the little girl when Leo was on her shoulder and Leo just ripped his face from here to here like lucky as a mustache. Like at this point I don't even think George can or should shave and he definitely couldn't for a while because like he was, I just he had to like mask himself and glue himself. It was pretty bad. George did admit that like it was 100% his fault because he should have known to not approach. It was just instinct. Someone was here. He wanted to give them a hug and didn't put it all together fast enough so but the one funny thing about that is that George was like done for the day. George was like in the bathroom with the first aid kit.  I call it baby ositis which I clearly don't have because when Rocky bit me much worse I just continued on with life and cleaned it and he's like I have a headache now but I turned on the cameras and he's a Leo so he kind of like got into it and it kind of helped him a lot but man like does he handle a bite differently. Although I will say bites on the lips. They hurt a lot. Okay number five. I did a whole Storytime Sunday on this one because I just thought it was really kind of funny how the circumstances happen so check out my video. It'll show up like right here where you could click on it and watch it. It's a Storytime Sunday about Ty biting me. It's just really funny. Ty is our lesser self-recrested cockatoo that lives with my brother and he bit me for a very good reason in bird language. Reason that's not my fault but this is just one of the popular reasons a bird can bite you and by the way I will have another video on other reasons that birds bite you so don't forget to check that out. I'm gonna try to tell the short version of the story for those of you who have heard it before. Very sorry. I went to Houston Texas and they had all these beautiful birds in their backyard. My parents like just wild bird. They have cardinals and blue jays things that like I don't really get to see here. We have scrub jays. We don't really get these beautiful like I don't know I just haven't seen them in my backyard but anyway I was so excited and I made this tea and I was like looking outside and my bird Ty loves to be outside and I wanted my dad to unlock his cage because Ty already was outside but since no one was outside to watch him he's obviously like safely locked up. I approach with my tea and I tell my dad please unlock this because I'm gonna go sit with Ty and my dad says no you cannot go out there there is mosquitoes everywhere one going to bite you you will not like it outside and I'm like dad I got my tea it's gonna be beautiful just unlock Ty and then he goes and Ty is going to bite you too and I don't want you to scream if Ty comes and then I'm going to be worried and like I just put my foot down and like the joke in my family is that when I was born I became my dad's boss so what did he do he unlocked Ty and I proceeded to have my tea and it was just beautiful there were like birds and cardinals and everything everywhere I just loved it okay and then mosquito bit me and I'm like oh my god and then another mosquito bit me and I'm like oh my god now in Los Angeles mosquitoes are not really a thing like you know we just don't really have to deal with them often so these bugs are biting me all over and Ty's on me and I have to put the tea down and Ty is just not excited about this and I don't want to make him nervous by moving around too much so I'm just trying to you know handle myself and all I want to do is like scratch the itch so I go and take Ty and try to put him back in the cage but he was not happy he didn't want to be in the cage obviously just got out we were just gonna relax and so like I go to lock it and my pinky's sticking out and he just bites it oh my god like just I swear I don't even think you guys could see this scar I'm gonna try but it's basically like this white scar that just blends in so and then I started screaming and my dad comes over and he goes what happened he goes I told you I go but I wanted to see the birds the bees and the trees and he shuts the door pulls up the blinds and goes look from here and in all my misery of the bite I don't know I just thought that was the funniest thing so that is bite number five number four oh my god guys this bite was from my African gray George for those of you don't know George as he has passed he is the whole reason that I made this entire channel after he passed and so you wouldn't think there'd be a bite as prominent did you just bite me as prominent as this one right up here at number four from my beloved bird but yes there is and this one was pretty um pretty pretty unheard of so I don't know what I was doing I think we must have been eating a breakfast or something and I went to give my bird a kiss or he wanted something that was in my mouth which obviously just so you guys know our saliva is toxic to birds so you really don't want them going into your mouth although you'll find like a lot of birds really try to do this so when I kiss my birds I'm always kissing the top of their beak so I don't know how this happened but somehow he got a hold of my tongue okay I don't know if I was eating something but this bird oh wow do you see that guys there's these crows outside so Jersey's getting really excited this bird sliced my tongue okay he just sliced it and it hurt and it was bleeding everywhere so bad that I didn't know what happened like it happened so fast like birds can move very fast so you have to be very familiar with their body language but even then sometimes you just don't know what's going to hit you and it was just kind of like I must have went hey and like he grabbed it and like pulled it and this is George was not an aggressive bird this was obviously years ago at this point so I don't remember the why usually it's very important to figure out the why so that you know what you did to prevent it could be anything and I'll have a video out on that as well like a really fun one I went to the sink and just like blood was pouring out of my mouth and I had a photo shoot for the cover of a movie that I had done and I went there with like ice in my tongue and I just remember really legitimately not being able to talk because normally I'm like whatever I'll be fine and I just powered through things but I just could not talk the pain was unreal okay but I'm telling you guys this because I just want you to know that like no matter how perfect you are how much you understand birds sometimes things can surprise you and there's always outside factors so you just don't know what's going to happen number three oh my god guys number three another African gray but not George it was an African gray named Roxy that we had rescued and Roxy was kind of with us all in all a very short time because Roxy flew away and we didn't find her and that will be a story for another day but basically Roxy we found Roxy on craigslist it was a person trying to exchange this bird for like something stupid and I just felt really bad and I showed it to George and George fell in love with her and we just went and paid him for the bird so that we could rescue the bird Roxy was a plucker Roxy was just in really bad condition when we got her like she was on the floor of this apartment where there were all sorts of things like we just like cleaned that cage out when we got Roxy but Roxy immediately loved George this bird loved men right away I had a roommate at the time and my roommate was like oh so who's the new bird she came to me right away but Roxy did not like me and I guess I didn't have long enough to really work with Roxy I was trying so one day Roxy and I weren't getting along and I was working with her and everything was great and I was alone because you always want to work with the bird you're trying to bond with especially if the bird is bonded with somebody else you want to work with that bird alone without the person that they are more bonded to because they also don't want to feel like what are you doing that's that's uh no Jersey did anyone tell you you're on camera so birds don't want to feel like they're betraying their partner and unfortunately the way we have birds and captivity they often look to us as their partners something that is really hard to prevent once George came into the picture I don't know if he just had walked in Roxy just launched at me and bit my face from here to here kind of like what Leo did to George and it looked bad I am so lucky it healed like on the line here but it looks so bad and the worst part was I had an audition the next day for general hospital I mean it looked bad I looked kind of like it just looked like my whole lip went up like this it looked so bad and uh it just looked so terrible and I didn't even know if I should like warn them ahead of time so I had to like go into my audition and pretend like I didn't know that I looked so weird I probably should have addressed it because after that audition my manager literally got feedback and it was not as pretty as her picture I think I cried for a very long time and then my manager said don't worry honey they love you on a Tuesday hate you on a Friday and he didn't meet me he just met in general in the industry and it's so true because later on I think exactly a year later I went in and the same guy loved me so that story stands out very prominently to me because uh it came with a year long of trauma until the day that I did go in there and felt good about myself and and did well and like felt like I redeemed myself in a way okay number two oh my god this one is funny this is a time that Vinny bit George and this time helped us realize how smart Vinny is so Vinny was with us for a little while before we knew exactly how his personality was we named him Vinny after the movie my cousin Vinny because it's one of my favorite movies of all time and I'm from New Jersey so it just like was very fitting but little did I know that naming my bird Vinny would make him out to be the gangster that he is for those of you new to the channel and don't know who Vinny is um you need to check the Vinny files and also my videos with my subtitled talking bird because you will just love Vinny oh Vinny's a gangster and Vinny has the bird on this shirt this is my merch by the way I love it it's raining out so it doesn't even matter I wear it every day regardless and you can buy the merch in the description below here's what happened Vinny and George's relationship always was kind of weird in the beginning there was a time when George said it's either me or the bird and I was like well I mean who do you think I'm gonna choose the bird I don't care what anybody says my birds are here for life right I made a commitment to them so that's not gonna happen Vinny used to like chase George's shoe so like George would be walking and Vinny would like attack his shoe and so George would like try to walk to a spot where maybe I could get Vinny off one day they were having a really good conversation Vinny wanted to go outside it's not that we understood Vinny at that point at all we just knew that he wanted to go outside because he tried to follow George to the door so we sat down and just talked to Vinny me George and Vinny just sat and talked and for a while you could see that George was suddenly able to pet Vinny Vinny was coming around Vinny was acting like this and Vinny was just acting all cute with him and we were shocked because usually we hadn't really had him long enough to sit down and take the time to like work on their bonding and it was amazing like George hadn't been able to pet his head before or anything so I was excited well George starts asking him questions and telling him you know I really love you Vinny and I want you to know that and I hope you feel loved and all of this nonsense and it's going on for about 10 minutes and Vinny is very loving and then George goes but you can't go outside and Vinny just latched onto his chin and made a hole like really big hole would not let go and the thing is there was nothing that changed in those 10 minutes except George told Vinny no and Vinny felt it and Vinny was like oh hell no you're not gonna be telling me no and that was it like George was freaked out because this bird yeah did the crow land right there we gotta see what George looks like with his face shaved because he is all sorts of messed up between Leo and Vinny that's when we realized Vinny understands a lot and it was really trippy and then we started paying attention to what we said around him now I always believe that birds understand what you're saying especially if they've been in your house for a very long time and remember birds are very very emotional beings they pick up your emotions they understand your feelings and they tend to absorb them and kind of repeat them back to you in a way that's why cockatoos get very excited when people get excited when people get loud and some birds like that and some birds that gives them anxiety but at that point we just realized that Vinny without even a change in without even a change in tone or anything he just was like nobody tells me no and that was a pretty bad bite I mean that bird just latched on so that's why that's number two number one worst bite of all time now I can't say that this is officially worse than all of the bites because I mean George biting my tongue was pretty bad but this one is fresh okay this just happened and it's probably the worst bite I've ever gotten in recent times especially the way it happened because there's a lot of things about this that just oh oh my god it was by Rocky and it was recently and it was very very unexpected it would have been expected except for the fact that he lunged at me so let me go back you guys know I have an outdoor aviary and a lot of you asked me how do I get my birds outside well a lot of them I just take them out there and put them out there like Jersey she's not flighted um Leo he hasn't really exhibited much flight behavior so sometimes I just kind of like take him out there and hold his foot but my really flighted birds that really like could just get nervous at any moment I take them out there safely in a carry-on so what I do with Vinny is I put him in his carry on he doesn't mind he likes it he gets in there and I take him outside and then I hide the carry on because Rocky loves carry-ons okay Rocky loves dog crates and all of those things because he wants to like do his foraging slash nesting behavior in there so when Rocky first came to us she gave us a dog crate with him and he loved his dog crate of course he chewed it all up so I eventually threw it away and I didn't really want him to get all into you know nesting behavior but we had come such a long way with Rocky and it didn't seem to really affect his actual behavior needless to say he didn't have a crate for a long time since I've been carrying Vinny out in the crate he has been chasing it down like whenever he sees it he walks up to it so that's why I always hide it because obviously it's this little crate he's gonna chew it to pieces so I hide it and by the way since I have gotten Rocky a little carrier and I'll explain why in that video so you can go watch it and see I'll put the link below but you'll just see how he loves his carrier and my reasons for actually giving him one again but basically what happened was I was carrying this carrier that he's obsessed with and Vinny wasn't it's not even his carrier Vinny was so cute in the carrier that when I saw George George was right next to Rocky I stopped while I was carrying it I didn't know Rocky was behind me if I would have known Rocky was behind me would have been a whole different ball game it's just like I wasn't aware I was just trying to get from point A to point B I'm carrying Vinny is all locked up and George goes who's in there and I go it's little Vinny look at me trapped a little gang still like it's a joke I'm gonna take him outside and he's gonna play with all his stuff and behind me was Rocky like I guess I walked in front of Rocky and George was here George is looking at me and suddenly I feel Rocky bite me okay I'm gonna show you the scar because it's fresh do you guys see it right here and I have a very tiny wrist okay and he bit me and I'm holding the carrier I didn't drop it at all because like Vinny's my priority and I just only you guys know not only was I wearing this but you guys remember I went to surprise Tina my fan and now friend I always consider you guys my friends especially after I meet you guys she had given me this red robe and I was wearing that on top for his bite to go through all that he basically jumped on the carrier bit me and I stayed very still even though I felt like he was literally crunching my bone I stayed very still because if you move you alarm them more and then they'll be aggressive back and then on top of that you could hurt yourself a lot more you could rip your skin so I don't know why under this kind of pressure I'm so good at that but I just stayed still and then I remember feeling him bite another spot and that was because it took George a minute to understand what was happening because usually I know how this story sounds but usually I'm the one with most of the control over Rocky like I know what he wants he listens to me he lets me transport him he lets me pick him up obviously George loves on him the most and that's like the way their bond is and George can do anything but like in terms of discipline Rocky is really good with me so it was kind of shocking and took both of us a minute to understand what was happening until George basically got him off I didn't drop Vinny but this is just so fresh in my head because like it just happened and because my wrist is so tiny you couldn't even tell how swollen it was because just looked like a normal wrist it was really swollen and hurt so much that I slept for a good long time that night because that's what I do when I get in pain I just like sleep but again George tried to put ice on it and I was like no I'm fine and then we did put some ice on it and then I still went about my regular day because I don't know I just handle these things well it was kind of uh frightening a little bit shocking obviously a mistake on my part because I'd walked by with this specific carrier like specific specific one it's like he doesn't even see it often but he gets very possessive over it over the years like he just loves it he's never even gotten to come near this carrier in terms of like being in it he won't fit in it it doesn't even open like you can go in it it doesn't look like a tent or a nest it's just a closed box that he just loves the look of it because it looks like his old carrier that he had which he's very territorial bird because he's been locked in his cage for so long you know you always got to be on guard with birds you always got to know like who's around you how close to have the bird in proximity to you if someone else that they hate is going to be nearby there's a lot of things to know that's why I am making or have made I don't know by the time this video comes out but I have a video of all of the reasons that a bird may bite you and your reasons of why birds may bite so don't forget to check that out for those of you who love my vini gang shirt link is below you could totally order this it's the softest most fitted most beautiful shirt in the world and if you're afraid I don't have your size um I do do special orders so just hit me up in an email you'll see it on my site oh baby you're down here you're so cute oh yes you're so so cute I love you guys so much if you want to support my channel check out my patreon it will help me produce more videos for you and get more out in a timely manner I love patreon I'm having such a good time because I love to just like engage with those of you who are there and if you have questions about biting please go on parrot station it's my facebook group where people can help you answer I get so many emails from you guys and all I do is feel guilty when I can't answer them but it's hard because it's like I don't have a picture I don't have info about your bird I don't know who's around in the house it really takes a consultation for me to be able to really truly answer your questions and I always feel bad because I get so many emails and I can't physically answer them all like I just can't I don't want you guys to think that I ignored you or answered someone else I just would love if you guys would go on parrot station there's a lot of people that can answer you right away I love you guys so so much thank you for being a part of my sniffer family and for those of you who are hashtag flighters we love you so much and jersey wants to say bye right jersey yay don't forget to let me know your worst bite ever I'll be reading it in the comments or your favorite part of the video I love you guys so much bye


The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has spoken further on its statement that polls will not hold in 240 polling units across 28 states. Director of Security, INEC, Labari-Under said as voters refused to migrate to the units, the commission has no choice than to leave out the units during elections until people are ready to vote from the units. He, however, said the polling units are not being delisted. It will be a waste of time for INEC to send men and materials to that place. It will be a waste of resources. So because people are not there to vote, INEC will not send people there. For now, if after these elections people are ready to migrate there or to move there, we'll send people to be there. They are not delisting the polling units. They are still part of the access to voting that INEC created 25 years after the last exercise was done. So we cannot undo what we have done. We'll keep it until people are ready to go there to vote. And one of the reasons why people are going there is because of incessant insecurity. Nobody wants to lose his life, our life, because he wants to go and vote. And so that's the reason we are giving. We can't force people to go there. But even after speaking now, and we have people who are going there because INEC is also the persuading people, holding stakeholders conferences and meetings to see if people will be willing and ready to go there to vote. Once that is done, we'll get people informed and we'll go there to vote. Except that with 11 days to the election, it will be very difficult to get people to vote in the presidential election. Perhaps if people make up their mind to go there for the gubernatorial and out of assembly elections, in the 28 states where gubernatorial elections will take place and FCT, I mean in the 28 states, we will do that. Speaking on plus TVs to breakfast, and do I show that INEC will not disenfranchise Nigerians? INEC is not. I will not disenfranchise Nigerians who come out to vote. Like the German side, the only reason why a man cannot vote, the process has been met easy. The only reason why you cannot vote is if you vote your face at home. Because we now have two criterias, either the biometrics or the facial. So if you forgot your face at home, then you cannot vote. If the biometric doesn't work, then your face will be there. And once you are credited, identified as having the INEC permanent voters card, of course we'll be given a ballot about to go and vote. So I might not disenfranchise, I have no intention of disenfranchising people because it is not our character to do that.


Welcome everyone. Thank you everyone for joining us. I am Dr. Michelle Villagran, San Jose State University Diversity Committee chair, and we welcome you to our next webinar in our 2020 diversity webinar series for our San Jose State University faculty, staff, students, alumni, and San Jose State University affiliates. This is our sixth webinar within our eight part series, and it is the second one for fall 2020. All of our presenters are sharing content around diverse topics which align with the goals of inclusive excellence, diversity, equity, and inclusion around topics relevant to the iSchool. You'll be able to find a full list of our upcoming sessions, topics, our presenters, and even the recordings of past presentations on our website. We also have them available as podcasts and on our YouTube page as a diversity playlist so you can see all of the diversity series in a playlist. So with that, let me introduce our speaker for today. Today's session is Beyond Platitudes, making EDI actionable. I want to welcome Mamosa Shah. Mamosa Shah is with the Skokie Public Library in Illinois, and she is an adult program coordinator. So with that, Mamosa, I'm going to turn it over to you. Good afternoon, or I should say good morning to you on the West Coast. Many thanks to the San Jose State University iSchool and to Dr. Villagran for inviting me to speak with you. My name is Mamosa Shah, and I'm a library worker, and I currently reside just north of Chicago, Illinois. As the adult program coordinator at Skokie Public Library, I develop, manage, and evaluate public events for adults in our community. And starting in late August, I also began coursework towards a master's degree in library and information sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign iSchool. So full disclosure, I am learning and growing alongside all of you as well. Since mid-March, the library reduced and then later reintroduced services in response to the outbreak of COVID-19. And so the nature of my work has changed. I continue to collaborate with wonderful colleagues virtually as we create online experiences to learn, connect, and support each other during this challenging time. So I just wanted to take a few minutes to acknowledge the land that we are upon and the forced removal of Indigenous groups. I currently reside upon land that at one time was and may be occupied by the following Indigenous groups, the Kikapui, the Peoria, the Potawatomi, the Miami, the Oceti Sakawan. Chicago is of course home to a large urban Indian population. And there are organizations that are Native run and led that I should acknowledge here, such as the American Indian Center of Chicago and the Center for Native and Indigenous Research, which is housed at Northwestern University. Of course, what I mentioned earlier does not get to the full extent of forced removal. And indeed many of the folks I've mentioned here are flourishing self-governing people in Oklahoma and the Plain States today. I recognize the unique privileges I personally enjoy due to colonialism. And note that my presence here is partly due to the removal of these groups. And I cite this acknowledgement of land and forced removal because in this presentation and throughout my work, I'm trying to recognize both past and present people. So I just wanted to take one moment to acknowledge to that the map is incomplete. It's crowdsourced and broadly researched. Such maps are just a starting point. And the source I'm using to identify this is really in the process of trying to inspire us to ask questions and to think about how we can connect more directly with local Indigenous organizations and elders. Some questions I'd like to address and keep in mind as well are, what am I or my organization doing today beyond this acknowledgement to understand Indigenous issues in my region? What can I do to further learn about and incorporate an understanding of the ongoing violence and trauma that lies at the heart of colonialism? And if Native voices, experiences, and perspectives are not represented among our organization's board or staff, let's consider why not. So today, we will be discussing parts of my particular institution's story. I will discuss how to create an equity, diversity, and inclusion committee. And drafting a committee charge statement, developing and setting goals based on organization-wide feedback, as well as ways to strategize how to continue learning on equity, diversity, and inclusion topics. You'll notice that I don't specifically mention accessibility here, although the library has an accessibility specialist on staff. It is indeed critical to think of how to integrate accessibility as well as EDI issues across departments so that we're not consistently siloed. And it is interesting to me that we have not yet renamed our committee to incorporate accessibility in the acronym, but we continue to keep abreast of that and understand how to be better about it. So thank you. So a few words about who I am.  For this presentation, I will be using visual descriptions for any slides so that I can be more accessible to those reviewing the presentation on a device without video capabilities or anyone experiencing low vision. I am a first-generation immigrant settler of South Asian descent. I am an able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual woman from a middle class and uppercast background. My pronouns are she, her, and hers. And it's important for me to do this, to share with you who I am because I would like to identify the position from which I speak. My position indicates certain power that I hold, and part of the work is acknowledging how this power can contribute to pressure that I knowingly or unconsciously benefit from. The reason I am so invested and believe in doing this work is because I believe in working towards equitable, just, and inclusive spaces. It aligns with my personal values of justice and transformation. And in order to continue being this effective co-conspirator, I certainly need to recognize my privilege and reflect upon the ways I may or may not use that privilege. So who are we? The Skokie Public Library was built in the 1950s, this building, and debuted in 1960. This image that you see on the slide is of the library's east side, and it features mid-century architecture with some additions that were made in the 1970s and 1990s. The building is currently undergoing a major renovation, so the interior of the building is in the process of being made more accessible and responsive to community needs. Who are we and where we sit within this ecosystem of institutions working on diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion? Here's a few initial facts about our organization. We serve a suburb of 65,000 residents. We have a staff of approximately 160, many of whom are part-timers. We, according to the most recent Census Bureau statistics, have an immediate service population where 41% of those residing are foreign-born. And nearly 79 different languages are spoken throughout our community. We also continue to partner with organizations like the YWCA, our various school districts, and a national professional development organization known as SEED, to help develop and nurture community leaders in their understanding and their support of and strategizing around equity work. Public libraries like ours are vital for the cultivation of learning, curiosity, and growth for all ages, for people of all backgrounds. But how can these spaces be equitable and accessible when they haven't been historically? So what do we mean by equity and inclusion? Our strategic plan articulates that we are working on behalf of an inclusive community. It's one in which people actively seek to better understand themselves and others. Equity is a state for quality of being impartial or fair, and it's a recognition that in the North American context there are distinct socio-historical reasons for why injustice, specifically against black and indigenous persons, continues to exist today. This image shows people of different ages and backgrounds. They're exchanging markers and drawing at tables as part of a public event. In the background, there's a woman using her mobile phone to take a photo of a man with his drawing. I selected this image because the definitions I talked about just a few seconds ago don't really get to the heart of what inclusion and equity are about. It's about being seen, about being heard, it's about being able to take the tools and tell your own story on your own terms. So with that, I just wanted to ask briefly what accessibility, equity, and inclusion oversight do you have at your workplace? Do you have any task forces or committees? And feel free to add them to the chat box. So in response to your question, we have a DI Council at the college where I work. I'm working on creating a community of practice for EDI. I will also be forming a committee too. Thank you so much for doing that, Dr. Villagran. So going back to that, I love that there are so many efforts and different kinds of efforts being made at organizations. The kinds of efforts that make sense within the parameters of each organization's staffing, budget, and their particular communities in which they reside and work with. Those are things that are also, will also have a major impact on whether or not and how you determine to orchestrate and work towards equity and inclusion and accessibility in your particular spaces. So moving on, what is an EDI committee? So EDI in our lexicon here is abbreviate form for equity diversity inclusion. I've mentioned before, and I'll say it again, that it can and should work closely with accessibility, which is missing in our institutional acronym, but is referenced and consulted often in our work. In this particular image, there is a man who is actually our library's director, Richard Kong, and a woman holding up sides at State Stokey welcomes everyone and be nice to each other, treat others equally. And they are doing this demonstration while standing in front of the library, which documents the library's participation in a community wide anti racism effort with our local by WCA chapter. So forming an EDI committee. In this image, you will see a group of people of different ages, races, ethnicities, walking through the doors of an auditorium at the library, following a US citizenship ceremony. Stokey's immediate and surrounding service areas are comprised of people from all walks of life and all abilities. And as library workers, it is both our honor and our responsibility to understand and address their experiences. So what led to the formation of our committee? It started at the library in fall 2015 where staff from different departments convened to discuss and respond to macro and micro aggressions that they had either experienced from other patrons or staff. We agree that experiences of oppression due to racism and or other parts of identity do not belong in our community, let alone the library. Diversity and equity are fundamental values of librarianship, and that extends throughout our institution and how we work with our partners. So a little bit about cultural humility and why it matters and how an EDI committee can help steward the growth of it. In the book, Information Services to Diverse Populations, Developing Culturally Competent Library Professionals, Dr. Nicole Cook writes, librarians need to work toward eradicating the culture of silence that exists in many diverse communities, ensuring that all library users have positive and transformative library experiences for their patrons. So cultural humility is an integral part of this because it starts with an earnest look at yourself, how to put those values in practice and recognize how those values engage with others around you. As libraries, we have a responsibility to provide opportunities for learning and support and connection and space. And that learning, however, would be incomplete unless it encompassed a depth and variety of perspectives. This past spring brought a bounty of pink dogward and loom as seen in this image. Similarly, cultural humility asks us to consider the beauty and realness of us all from different perspectives and to recognize how oppression can suppress that beauty. So how do we do it? How do we form a committee? So I should start by saying that the committee started in late 2015, but in the four and a half years since, we still continue to deal with and work out how we actually engage. Certainly getting to be a committee can take anywhere from a few months to a year. Even then, one has to count for staff turnover, funding, and of course, the building of trust between staff. We are still learning how to engage with each other to plot new challenges and respond to our staff and community at large. All of this has been complicated by the pandemic in which many of us continue to work remotely and in circumstances that are incredibly uncertain, not to mention the many other situations that are happening for us throughout the country. The image I selected for this slide, there's a group of young people of different races and ethnicities sitting with two staff members, and one of the young people is talking. This particular conversation took place during a series we hosted called Together at the Table, where community members could drop in throughout the day to engage in conversation with fellow patrons or staff around a series of prompts. What does trust look like in practice? It's documents that are edited in real time. It's consensus building. It's admitting, owning up to, and improving upon mistakes. It sometimes means going against or bending policy to meet circumstances that are our reality today. It's checking on and reckoning with our personal biases.  It's holding space for pain. It's boosting the words of colleagues who don't get to sit at that table the same way as you. It's making sure that meetings operate on a knowledge goes story stayed modality. A note about trainings. We embarked on a series of trainings, and it should be understood before those trainings begin that they should be budgeted for and compensated accordingly, not only for the trainer, but also anyone attending the training. We should keep in mind that gathering and sustaining momentum for such an enterprise also demands unique emotional labor, especially for those of black people, indigenous people, and persons of color at predominantly white institutions. So doing the work. This image shows a woman looking at a display of books while a male staff member stands next to her. This was part of a public event in which we shared resources and select items from our collection on indigenous land treaties. Through the process of facilitating this event, we realized there is just so much for us to continue learning, especially with regards to indigeneity. Similarly, after a few fitful starts and challenges, the committee began staff training. I want to start by acknowledging that we made mistakes rather than start with a committee charge. We actually jumped in to professional development opportunities. We had this desire to create a shared vocabulary around what we met institutionally about equity and inclusion. And this shared vocabulary couldn't exist unless we were beginning to read, share, and learn in union. Parts and labor. This is a rather unfoddering but important image of pipelines that were gathered on a neighborhood block. It was part of a much needed stormwater drain project. This project likely required a lot of planning, digging, maintenance, parceling out of different tasks for different groups of people and contractors. I use this image in this example of the many parts of labor that aren't acknowledged but definitely part of what we have done at our institution. What does that mean work for us? We actually engaged with a consultant who had extensive experience in our community on developing equity diversity inclusion initiatives at the high schools. We also understand though that something like this is not always within everyone's budget. So if you do decide to commit to equity diversity inclusion training and support, make a commitment early on that there is institutional buy-in. And when there isn't institutional buy-in, try to think about ways that we can extend beyond the institution to start framing and recognizing the importance of having such work being done at our institution period. With the consultant's assistance, we developed a set of community agreements for discussions. Such agreements were used for our first committee meetings as well as for staff trainings. Committee meetings happened on a monthly basis at the time. We continue to incorporate ways to gather, review and evaluate staff feedback. Aside from periodic mandatory staff trainings, we continue to provide bimonthly opportunities to discuss different terms such as anti-racism or ableism. We use articles, videos, podcasts and other resources to help us get a grounding for the activities that take place within the space of our conversation. These discussions evolved from having a consultant to designate a staff from the EDI committee facilitate instead. And more recently, we have expanded upon that to try to incorporate others within our organization who are just as eager and excited to get involved with our equity work, but are not necessarily on the committee itself. Committee members were drawn from a variety of departments across the library, and oftentimes they were selected to join because of their unique positionality, whether as a part-time worker or depending on the audience or the nature of the work that involved perhaps collection development. So those are some of the ways in which different people joined the committee. And of course, in this time of COVID, we realized that it is even more important to continue engaging in ongoing discussions regarding equity, inclusion and accessibility. We attempt to do this via paid, scheduled small group discussions using Zoom. So a few lessons. This particular image showcases a steel-squan sculpture. It sits in a shallow pond of water in one of the library's central courtyards. Light often glimmers off of the sculpture, glass walls surrounded. It acts as a locus of contemplation for both patrons and staff. And just to give you a little bit of insight into my position, I have not been working actively at my library's building for nearly six months. So even looking at this image, I feel a tingle that, oh, there it is. There is this space that we have at the library where people can come together. Oftentimes, we will see patrons congregating along the side of this courtyard behind the glass, playing games of chess, reading, or just waiting. And it's such a lovely experience. And unfortunately, we're not able to do the same right now. One of the things we've learned along the way, though, is that any staff training needs to involve content warnings and a more nuanced approach to how we standardize them.  Some activities that are asked of people during trainings may be harmful because they reveal identities that someone doesn't feel comfortable sharing at work. And it puts them on display and therefore unsafe and retraumatized. When working with a consultant, we recommend continuing to monitor what such training looks like and to continue incorporating valuable staff feedback from previous training to ensure that the learning is prioritized for all staff, not just those who happen to be white. Being purposeful about our training is key. So in this image, we see a young girl laying out a white t-shirt and preparing it for a tie-dying workshop that took place in one of our courtyards adjacent to the library's youth services department. Sunlight streams in from the west and highlights her face while she concentrates. In the summer of 2018, the EDI committee realized it needed to hit a reset button. We found out that EDI can mean a lot of different things for our staff despite the developing of a shared vocabulary. We also recognized how it affects the ways that we reach out to our community and work in synchronicity with them. EDI work in practice means reflecting upon our position of power as institutions and how that may impact accessibility. We determined that we needed to A, cite our core beliefs, B, designate what exactly the committee would continue focusing upon, and C, determine what the structure, roles, and makeup of the committee would be. In this image, we see a stack of gray metal canoes that are lying upside down in the bright sun. In retrospect, it might seem odd that a charged statement wasn't developed by the committee earlier, but it was in the process of doing the work that we realized that there needed to be a return to what we stand for. Following both committee-wide and small group brainstorming, we decided to acknowledge the existence of structural, institutional, and individual interpersonal racism and bias, specifically articulating it in a charged statement, to identify and clearly state who such oppression affects, to tie the work of collective liberation with that of the library's vision and mission, to require library staff to take personal responsibility for increasing their awareness of and engaging in anti-racism education. And of course, to practice a calling culture, we say call in, and we mean that of all staff as peers, because we need to understand that we can't do this work unless we are similarly approaching these issues with accountability and loving kindness. In this image, we see that that same tie-dying experiment from two slides ago is at the drying stage. There's colorful t-shirts that are ready to be hung dry along a string, hung to one side of the courtyard. Several young people are admiring their work. A staff member helps them hang their t-shirts. And similarly, I see a parallel between the ways that this group of young people have made these beautiful t-shirts and the ways that staff are being asked to really reflect on things that they're doing. Everyone is doing beautiful hard work day in and day out at the library. And we want to honor where they're at, but we also want to honor how staff can step back and take stock of their words. We wrote the committee charge and its core beliefs to be actionable by defining some primary focus areas. There will be parts of the committee dedicated to inclusion, how to create a sense of welcoming and belonging for staff and more broadly for a community. Training, people on the committee who could develop and facilitate ongoing EDI resources and training for staff in addition to our learning and training manager. Consultation where committee members could play a role in how we assess our services and how we made assist with the development of a library policy. Communication being transparent about what we learn and working with other libraries to create a community of practice in our region and throughout the profession with regards to EDI. Both worth and intentions are only a small piece of this work. Here we see a close up of a person's hand, poised and ready to draw on a page with markers and pens surrounding their workspace. We're continuing to convene ongoing conversations with staff. We've been talking about accountability for what we say versus what we ultimately do. We recognize our collective role in sustaining systems of oppression. Cross talk is just one way we intend to bridge the gaps between us and our varied experiences. We gather such cross talk with anonymous feedback forms where staff can share their comments about ongoing work procedures. Meanwhile, we're also the process of seeking assistance from a consultant to guide future work on how to create systems of accountability particularly with regards to situations that involve discrimination or harassment. Staff feedback also guides decision making as we think about our work, whether that's through inclusive collection development and advisory services, broadening the so-called pipeline of talent, rewriting job descriptions so they're less dependent on credentials, selecting diverse authors and or speakers to invite for public programming, and using universal design to make our spaces more accessible in addition to so many other initiatives. This image here was taken during a Civic Lab, which is a periodic pop-up exhibit and programming model in which we offer information, thought-provoking activities that support dialogue and engagement on issues affecting our community. For this particular pop-up, we asked patrons to consider what activism looks like in the wake of protests at Standing Rock Indian Reservation. During those protests, it was a process in which people were uprising against a pipeline that had been proposed to cut through land on the reservation. With regards to Civic Lab and other public program models, we can certainly look at and measure outcomes. But when it comes to inclusion, sure, we can say it could be out-kind base, but it's an ongoing practice and it requires collaboration and consultation. Yes, we can say we want a sense of belonging for staff and for community members when they come into the building, but it's not enough to just stop at that because we have to constantly check back in and recognize that it's just, it's a practice, it's a process. The EDA work is certainly, similarly, not done alone or in isolation. I'm going to pause here for a moment. I would love to hear from you in the chat what happens when you hear the word ally, what you think about, and to share your thoughts in the chat with us. And Mamosa, I will read them as they are posted for you. Great. Thank you so much. You're welcome. So some comments that have come in. Someone who stands by you and stands up for you when you need it. Someone who is, quote, doing the work, unquote. Action, continual commitment rather than an identity. Allyship is a process, not a static designation. Active support. Okay. Thank you so much for just indicating all those things. I know that the word ally has taken on a different case in 2020. So for the purposes of this conversation today, I am going to be using the word ally as a verb. What does allyship mean in practice? I'm referring in part to a 2017 article that was written by Wendy Ng, Cyrus Marcus Ware, and Alyssa Greenberg, in which they explore this concept in more depth. Their discussion focuses upon allyship in museums, but I see the same concept operating in libraries. Namely, how can we transform these spaces so that people from all backgrounds have agency and representation. Allyship centers the experiences of racialized and marginalized people in order to interrupt the status quo. Nurturing co-conspirators is key when it comes to allyship. Such nurturing takes place through yet another hotly contested term, empathy. But in order to cultivate strategies around allyship, one must first understand what it means to effectively respond to experiences via an empathetic lens. Certainly, there's the argument that, well, we are humans. We should all be subject to and understand and benefit from the same rights and privileges. And indeed, that is true, too. But I see empathy as a unique practice in that it encompasses contemplation, and that is very necessary for becoming a more effective co-conspirator. And before you move on, Mimosa, I want to read just a few of the other comments because several others came in, which I think are important to get on the recording. For one thing, Allie connotes someone continuously striving to stand with and support a group. Their work is never done. Someone always there to help and support, active support. Someone who is not directly affected by, oh, affected, but who steps up to support those who need assistance. Someone who examines their role in the system and works on self and group. And then a final comment, someone who listens effectively and believes others when they share their experiences so that they can provide adequate support. They ask how they can help and don't tell or make assumptions about what is needed. Thank you. Those are all wonderful. I especially love the last comment about listening and how to listen is a practice. And that is actually the last thing I'm going to say, I shouldn't say last, but next thing I'm going to say, which is listening and self-reflection. These practices can be improved upon over time at the library and especially while so many staff continue to work remotely or with hybrid work schedules where we come and see what another may be in passing. We've seen a thriving practice of smaller reading groups that are within departments or on teams where staff take it upon themselves to research resources and discuss their learning and community via shared documents and weekly calls. An example is some staff members have taken chapters of a book called Teaching for Black Lives and used that to have weekly conversations around particular topics related to the chapters and to reflect upon how the knowledge that is shared within those chapters as well as the conversations could influence their work at the library. Allergy shift also requires an ability to be at ease with or be willing to learn different pedagogical or facilitation strategies that strive to be anti-oppressive. Creating small nodes of practice is just one way to cultivate shared effort and responsibility. Accountability starts to spread across an organization the more we try to create these nodes of practice and it's further bolstered by our ongoing consideration of identities. I'm going to leave this question for you to all think about what strategies do you use to secure the support of co-conspirators at your institution? What does the so-called soft power allow for and what does it seem to just get frustrated by? So this is one of my favorite images and when I look at this image I feel sad that I wasn't actually able to attend this event because it was attending a conference for ALA. So what does all this equity work mean in the present moment that is characterized by multiple crises? In this image it was taken at a capoeira event in which two dancers dressed in white pants and red t-shirts are engaged in synchronized jumps while patrons observe in background. I love this photo because it reminds me of resilience and ingenuity. Capoeira was a dance created by enslaved persons in Brazil that combined self-defense, acrobatics, dance, joy, music, song, sadness, hope, and it continues to thrive in this very day. Since mid-March of this year a lot of our institutions have had to close and or modify their services entirely in response to COVID-19. The virus has disproportionately affected black, indigenous, and Latinx persons, leading to wide-scale food and housing insecurity as individuals are struck by illness and exacerbating the fundamental inequalities these individuals and these groups experienced prior to the pandemic. Ongoing climate change continues to lead to numerous catastrophes around the globe, floods, tornadoes, wildfires. Meanwhile, state-sanctioned killings of black people by various police forces across North America have led to a strong uprising and support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In such a context, what practices of resilience or sustainability could emerge now? Earlier this year in response to the killings of George Floyd, Ahmaud Albury, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and so many others by police forces, many cultural institutions issued statements in support of social justice. Such statements, they often rang hollow to a lot of BIPOC people who happened to work in these spaces. Those same people continue to endure rampant erasure, marginalization, low pay, and other forms of oppression based on their identities. In response, some of those BIPOC staff have released open letters expressing the mistreatment they've experienced using different social media platforms, sometimes citing themselves, sometimes choosing to remain anonymous. Heroically, many mutual aid funds have been created by staff in the face of layoffs and have prioritized paying funds to Black and or Indigenous people. The Museums, a site of social action or mass action collective, wrote a response to these statements with a corrective. They will be offering tools and support for institutions still reckoning with the oppressive spaces and practices that they continue to knowingly or unknowingly endorse. What mass action is proposing is an accountability matrix. And they write, this work is not about calling anyone out for the sake of it or public shaming. We consider each statement or lack of statement issued by a museum on the topic of racial justice as a public record, and as such it is an invitation for the public to engage in further dialogue on this topic. So, mistakes are made. Mistakes are made. How do we hold ourselves and our institutions accountable without burning out? Fostering a network of co-conspirators is key. Relying upon the concept of resilience alone won't help. It's through the nurturing of our colleagues in the struggle against oppression that we in turn strengthen our resolve while striving towards transformation. Here I cite a quote from Dr. Portia Moore, who wrote for the Inclusion Brog. She said, we cartographers for racial equity and inclusion in museums have been map making for quite some time. I love the work that I do, and yet I am tired of offering up my maps. Dr. Moore goes on to say that indeed it's at our institutions that will save us, we will save ourselves. And while I continue to speak on this topic on behalf of my institution, I want to emphasize this. In order to bring any equity roadmap to life, we need to garner support and understand from many different parts of our profession and beyond. The truth is, institutions will cater to a lot of different stakeholders, and in the process they will forget the healing that comes from building, charting and navigating and checking back a roadmap. We will have to remind them. So I want to pause here for some questions and to give you some questions to consider as well around shared values and principles. So I'm going to briefly and then we'll take some questions and then I wanted to read one last quote before we ended. So you can go ahead and place any questions you have in the chat. Please use an asterisk if you identify with BIPOC. And Mamosa, I'm actually going to go capture those four questions or five questions you had and see if I can place them in the chat from your slides. Absolutely. While individuals are thinking of their questions to ask you. And I'm placing them in the chat now this is just from the last slide there were at least like three questions. So that might get you thinking and questions or comments or additional questions you might have for for Mamosa. These are lovely questions. Thank you folks. I will come back one moment. And I'm happy to read them out loud if you'd like and then you can address them. Yes, that would be great. Thank you so much. I'm just waiting to see if a few more come in because we have I think four so far. Okay, so the first one I'm just going to go in order here. The first one. How do you balance getting quote institutional buy in and quote with pushing back against institutional inaction or slow action. Great question. When I think about institutional buy in. I think about having administrators on board willing to provide funding as well as a library board that is working in sync with your administrator. But of course, this is not always the case everywhere. So one of the things that I recommend is radiating within your department if that's possible or your team. And reckoning that your team is going to be the first place where you could effectively start to address and perhaps make some changes. Give time and specifically paid time for developing buy in another strategy that I would recommend is reaching out to other community partners and seeing where they may be at with regards to their equity work and trying to see how you could either listen to learn from or potentially collaborate when it comes to that. Wonderful. So here's another question. How do you do all the EDI work that is needed without putting all the work on employees from marginalized groups. That is a good question as well. And one that I struggle with the times because I do think that there will always be a level of performativity of our identities when we are working in predominantly white institutions. I think it is consistently checking back and reminding people with privileges, but specifically white people that they need to learn how to de center whiteness by also doing the work and giving space to those from marginalized groups to pause and move back to be in positions where they can be in decision making authority, but at the same time, note that in order for this work to be successful, they have to also undertake and reason and think deeply about their role in relation to developing policies or practices that are equitable, inclusive and accessible. Thank you. Here's another one. Are there or can there be statements not unlike land acknowledgement statements that address institutional racism systemic racism without taking away from land acknowledgments. That's a very important point. I, I don't quite have a full response to it because I also struggle with that question. And wonder how to incorporate a land acknowledgement and the force removal of indigenous persons without also taking away from the oppression and marginalation that people obviously feel because of their various identities. For example, if they're queer or if they are somebody who is differently abled or has an appearance that is not considered by dominant society be normative. I think that's one way can further explore. Let me go back. There's a whole bunch. I think I recorded at least six more here. So I'm just going to go now back to the list here. Next question. What advice do you have for creating an active and thriving EDI in an area where one may not be welcome. So to clarify an area meaning like the location of your institution or meaning that you have staff who are not welcoming of it. If you can clarify, clarify in the chat. The community. Yes, yes. Well, there's a couple of things to know here that diversity comes in many forms. And a reminder that when we as library staff library workers of all levels, make the commitment to start learning about and working towards more equitable practices policy that we are actively benefiting the entire community to it. And if it does not seem that way that we, for example, talk about whiteness mentioned it tried to de-center it that is in fact a very primary role that I think librarianship should strive towards. So yes, it is a hard place to be in if you are in a community that doesn't accept it. But I also think that it's hard to simply say that all members of community feel that way or that diversity is understood to be one way. It could be that there is just a misunderstanding of the ways in which diversity is experienced, the ways in which we encompass so many identities. Thank you, Mimosa. The next two questions I'm going to put together because they, they I think go together. First one, when you start started your EDI committee, did you select members or did you send out a call for interested people? And the second part is how large is your EDI committee? So I was actually not on the committee when it first started. I believe that they were members who were selected by administration and or others who had been expressly involved with the creation of the committee. Previously, the committee strived to have at least one person from each department. But then we recognize that was it necessarily going to happen always and that that number actually that we put out there about 12 was arbitrary. There are many others who could make our community work stronger. So currently we have 20 members on the committee, including our executive director, our safety supervisor and our learning and training manager and human resources manager. But then there are people from other parts of the organization that are part time staff, as well as staff who do more clerical work. So I think we are trying to strive for a diversity in terms of the types of work we do at the library. Thank you, Mamosa. We have four more questions, but I do see we have five minutes left and I know you had a closing and then do you want to share your contact information? Yes, I do. And I'm happy to continue answering folks' questions via email or if there is time after the webinar. So thank you. Going back to the slide, I just have one more thing to share really. So this is a part of a quote from the poet Ros Gay and specifically from his book of essays called The Book of Delights. We can't begin our journey, let alone follow any roadmap unless we foster joy. He writes, It astonishes me sometimes, no often, how every person I get to know, everyone, regardless of everything, by which I mean everything, lives with some profound personal sorrow. Brother addicted, mother murdered, dad died in surgery, rejected by their family, cancer came back, evicted, fetus not okay, everyone, regardless always of everything. Not to mention the existential sorrow we all might be afflicted with, which is that we and what we love will soon be annihilated, which sounds more dramatic than it might. Let me just say dead. Is this sorrow of which our impending being no more might be the foundation, the great wilderness. Is sorrow the true wild? And if it is, and if we join them, your wild to mine, what's that? For joining to is a kind of annihilation. What if we joined our sorrows, I'm saying, I'm saying, what if that is joy. So I just want to thank you all for spending time with me today to talk about this and engage with me. I also want to thank the following individuals for their feedback. Adrian Lally Hills, Andrea Ledesma, Kate Livingston, Lee when Michy Ewan, Irwin and Nikhil Treveni. Thank you so much Mimosa. I have captured those four questions that were not addressed, and I will make sure to email them to you. And if those pan or those attendees want to also email you directly, they can but I'll make sure to send those to you. And if you can just respond to them. And then we'll add them on our website. Of course, removing any of the anonymous removing any identifiers, so we can have those answered. I'm really appreciative to you for your time. And I took several notes and one of the real key takeaways I kept hearing is accountability. So really looking at gathering that feedback on what not just what we're saying but actually what we're doing and also looking at those actions which is the doing and then strategies that we're actually using to make an impact or to actually identify with that what we're doing piece and how it ties into whether it's the committee the goals the objectives, the statements. So thank you again and you're getting a lot of thank yous in the chat. This will be posted within two weeks on our website. And I really appreciate everybody's attendance. So thank you again Mimosa and to all of our attendees. We appreciate you and hope to see you at our next webinar series on diversity topics. Thank you. Thank you everyone.