So, in honor of Indigenous Peoples Day, which is today, you know, the committee and I, we reached out to a phenomenal, dynamic speaker who is actually one of my professors at Oregon State University and taught me so much about not just the LGBTQIA community, but Indigenous people as well. Dr. Coley Driscoe, who is a non-citizen, Cherokee-to-spirit and queer writer, activist, and performer, also of African, Iris, Lenape, Osage, Ascent. They are the author of Walking with Ghost poems and the co-editor of Sovereign Erotics, a collection of two-spirit literature and queer Indigenous studies, critical intervention theory, politics and literature all out of the University of Arizona. Their book, Osage Stories, Cherokee, Queer, and Two-Spirit Memory out of the University of Arizona was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in 2017. They are the director of graduate studies and queer studies curriculum organizer in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Oregon State University. Using poetry, history, and personal stories, this talk will address how telling our stories Indigenous and the LGBTQIA plus peoples can contribute to social transformation, resistance, healing, and imagining of the decolonized future. Can you all join me in a warm welcome of Dr. Coley Driscoe? Hi, everyone. My name is Coley and I want to thank the Muckleshoot Nation, the Duwamish Nation, the Puyallup Nation for allowing us to be on their land and waters today. I also want to say thank you to Dominique, Multicultural Affairs, the LGBTQIA Task Force, and everyone here for bringing me to Highline. It's truly an honor and really humbling and I want to ask forgiveness from the elders who are here today if I should misstep in following any protocols and thank you for your work and wisdom and get some water. I speak Cherokee like a three-year-old about because like most Cherokees I didn't grow up speaking Cherokee and I'm in the process of relearning our language so for any speakers who might be in the audience, I'm grateful to my Cherokee language teacher, Bo Taylor and any mistakes are my own. I weave baskets, mostly I weave the double wall baskets that are closely associated with Cherokees in Oklahoma but I also weave our old southeastern style of double woven river cane baskets and coiled baskets. I'm not an expert weaver and still have a lot to learn how to gather materials for weaving, how to process cane, how to weave other styles of baskets that are now part of Cherokee weaving traditions. I share this because weaving deeply informs my theorizing about Cherokee two-spirit and queer memories and histories and has become my guiding metaphor for thinking about the ways in which Cherokee two-spirit and queer people are reimagining our pasts and futures through a practice of restoring in the present. By restoring I mean retelling and reimagining stories that restores and continues our cultural memories. Chicana scholar KCC Cobos theorizes embodied storying, the ways in which Chicanas continue indigenous identities through embodied practices and writes that embodied storying quote requires interrogating ways that history and the archive have acted upon indigenous bodies and looking for ways that this can be countered by retelling stories. Miami scholar Malia Powell begins her writing quote this is a story reminding us that theory and scholarship are always stories about how the world works and are part of a much more complicated accumulation of stories end quote. Powell and other women of color feminists refuse the separation between theory, poetry, art and other forms of expression. My work is also an accumulation of stories and a reimagining of those stories through scholarship, poetry, performance, beating and weaving in hopes to recreate new stories for Cherokee two-spirit people and larger indigenous queer movements and communities are re-storying. And so my talk today weaves back and forth between scholarship and theory and history and poetry and performance and intentionally disrupts colonial categories of how we do this work. There are several ways to describe two-spirit people in Cherokee and I think it's important to say that the speakers who have taught us this want to make clear that these are descriptions and not categories. But their diversity reflects the limits of any umbrella term in English. So some of those words are ashkayusti udanti, here she feels like a man, agayust udanti, here she feels like a woman, nudale agaya udante di different-spirited woman, nudale ashkaya udante di different-spirited man, shkigi that way, uligi shti degi flirt, tali quoti dantan, here she has two hearts, udselida special, nudale udanto, or nudale udante di a different-hearted spirit, achowine, third as in gender, asegi udanto, or asegi udanti, or asegi udante di, which means a strange heart and spirit. And it is this final term that I would like to look to as a way to think through a critique of colonial heteropatriarchy and to begin to reimagine histories of Cherokee gender and sexuality. So asegi udanto refers specifically to people who fall either outside of men's and women's roles or who mix men's and women's roles. Asegi, which means strange, is used by some Cherokees as a term similar to queer, and it provides a means by which to rethink through Cherokee history in order to listen to those stories rendered strange by colonial heteropatriarchy. Asegi stories are the other stories, the strange and queer stories that are told in the absent presence of two-spirit and same gender-loving people in both archival and embodied memories. They are the stories Cherokee two-spirit people tell each other in order to revise cultural memories. They are the stories hidden between the basket walls. And it is through the retelling and a reimagining of these asegi stories that we can work together to place gender and sexuality at the center of radical decolonial work. Beating the sash. I'm beating a ceremonial sash. This double-needle applique beadwork with white beads on blue wool and trimmed with red silk ribbon. Our Cherokee southeastern style of beadwork is currently under revival thanks to the work of Martha Berry, Cherokee Nation, who is pivotal to this movement. A friend of mine, an Osage two-spirit, taught me double-needle applique so I could bead a pair of moccasin bands for walking with our sisters, a project to commemorate missing and murdered indigenous women. After I learned the technique, I ordered Martha Berry's patterns and I'm slowly trying to teach myself to make everything I can. I've completed a few small projects. The vamps, a Koopa square for a friend's wedding, and two small purses. The few other pieces I've made were gifts, but the sash is for me. The sash is much larger and much slower processed for me as a beginning beater than I imagined. It's detailed handwork that uses more than one beading technique and hand sewing that takes my novice hands and pained body a long time to complete. As I bead the white spirals against the blue wool, I remember J. P. Johnson, Natchez Cherokee says, I believe the revival of any lost art tradition is vital to understanding who we were as a people in the same way that speaking the language gives us a blueprint for real Cherokee thought. We should, as an entire people, be trying to revive everything. As we shed our colonized minds, bodies, and spirits, we may, just as some of the prophecies say, get it all back." I'm beading a story. These spirals are ancient patterns, but the memories are new. They're a revival, something we're getting back. I hope to bead more for the people I love and for myself, moccasins, bandolier bags, there's a lot to tell. I won't be done anytime soon. I grew up in Western Colorado in a tourist town built on land stolen from mute people. My mother's Cherokee Irish Lenape Lumbee in black. My father was Osage in Irish, but thought of himself as Irish and had little connection to his Osage history. There were a few other native people in my hometown, but there was no sense of a native community. It was a very white community, and though there were people of color, the town's relationship with race was and is troubling. My native community was my family, mostly my mother, who carried the stories and histories of our family with her. It was through her that I understood pieces of our family history and who I was and am as a Cherokee person. I don't remember not knowing I was Cherokee.  While growing up, I had the stories my mother told me about our family history, about her experiences as a mixed blood Cherokee child in rural southeastern Colorado with brief periods in both San Francisco and Vallejo, California. My mother's stories helped me know who I am. But even as these stories root me in who I am as a multiracial, diasporic, non-citizen Cherokee person, there were and are gaps in the stories I needed and need. When I began the process of coming out as queer and trans and learned about the organizing of Indigenous Two-Spirit people, I wanted stories about Cherokee Two-Spirit people, these stories that weren't there, not at least in writing I could find and not in stories my mother told me. This led me to ask, where are the stories of Cherokee Two-Spirit folks? And in the absence of any answer I went looking. I'm beating a story. To help bring Cherokee Two-Spirit LGBTQ stories to the center, one of my current projects is what Della Pollock calls an oral history performance, which she defines as, quote, performance that takes their impetus from formal or informal oral history interviews when oral history is understood as the recreation of storied experience for the primary purpose of gaining social historical perspective, end quote. My project is based on oral histories with Two-Spirit LGBTQ people of Cherokee descent, and I also perform a solo version of this performance, but the solo version is an in-progress study to try and imagine an ensemble performance in the future. Through the process of oral history performance, stories sink deep into my bones. Recording oral histories with other Cherokee Two-Spirit LGBTQ people helps restore a sense of community for me. It helps create new memories for the future of who we are and who we might become. As I transcribe these stories, the voices of those I talk with stick to me. It's like trying to learn an old stomp dance song. I play the recordings over and over as I transcribe and the voices sink in. This lends itself to performance. I can hear the voices of the people I talk with, try to honor who they are as I retell their stories. These stories are always the tellers, but through the process of the interview, transcription, memorization, and performance, they become part of me too. I'm beading a story. I also tell stories through reading baskets, finger woven sashes, and beadwork. For me, these aren't really separate projects. They're a way to tell stories, both old and new. Cherokee writer Thomas King writes, the truth about stories is that's all we are. Oral history performance is another way to tell stories. Each story is a bead stitched together with the thread of memory. I'm beading a story. It's a story I need to hear and missing fragments of cultural memories of who we are as Cherokee Two Spirit LGBTQ people. It's a story to help us remember. As I listen to and tell the stories of other Cherokee Two Spirit LGBTQ people against the bright background of our histories, I remember. There is a lot to tell. I won't be done anytime soon. The queer lady of Kodafacheke and other Asegi roots. Mulberry plantation, Camden, South Carolina, October 2014. I stand on the edge of an overlook at a river that moves slowly below us. Don't get too close to the edge. The woman who is the inheritor of the plantation tells me the ground there is eroding. What stories are in this eroding ground? What memories does the river hold? I remember the enslavement of generations of African and indigenous peoples, the moment when the people of Kodafacheke looked down and across this river to see DeSoto's army waiting on the other side. The major disruptions to indigenous life after DeSoto's armies left smallpox, swine, and the spaces of stolen bodies in its wake. As the woman shows me the plantation ground, she points out the Kataba path that once ran through this land base. She tells me of how she used to find artifacts as a child playing on these grounds. I'm excited to see river canes still growing on the edge of the woods as we drive across the grounds and she stops her truck so I can take a picture. I wonder what patterns were woven into mats and baskets here. Imagine this place before colonization, genocide, and chattel slavery. Colonists found river came throughout the southeast a barrier to plantations and farming and tried to eradicate it. They didn't understand that the complex rhizomatic systems of roots held the land together. I am here because the mulberry plantation is thought to be the site of Kota Facheke. The city written about by DeSoto's chroniclers that was governed by a woman called the Lady of Kota Facheke. It was not a Cherokee city, but the moment of DeSoto's army invading this area and the Lady of Kota Facheke's resistance while traveling as a prisoner through Cherokee territory and her escape from DeSoto along with enslaved Italino and North African slaves opens up an assay-gee re-reading of history that helps us understand the relationship between colonialism and hetero-patriarchy, particularly for southeastern indigenous people, and recognize larger mappings of colonial hetero-patriarchy and hetero-patriarchal desire onto indigenous bodies and lands. Colonial invasion and exploitation of indigenous territories work through the gendering and sexualization of indigenous bodies and lands in order to place both indigenous people and land bases into colonial legibility in order to facilitate European expansion, settlement, and claim of resources, including human bodies.  They can be traced all the way to the Columbus invasions and even earlier. There are many places we can start this story, but in this telling it begins with the interactions between DeSoto and his army and the Lady of Kota Facheke, who has rendered in colonial counts as queer, not because of contemporary understandings of gender and sexuality, but because her status as a female leader who resisted European Christendoms, gendered and sexual norms, positions her as strange, troublesome, and chaotic in colonial accounts. It begins on the ground of what is now the Mulberry Plantation near Camden, South Carolina, where a queer story begins as the Lady of Kota Facheke saw DeSoto's army waiting for her on the other side of the river, on the edge of memory where my feet back away from the eroding cliff, where river canes still grows despite attempts by colonists, plantation owners, and farmers to eradicate it. This is an Asegi story. There are other paths, other stories, old trade routes that have nothing to do with European invasion. Robert Warrior reminds us, quote, trade routes have existed in the Americas since the first pathways linking people emerged in a time that no one can remember. Those pathways become trails and the networks of trails that crisscrossed the single land mass that is the Americas, end quote. As I sit with these stories, maps are always present. Maps of our lands, maps through our lands, charting and documenting of resources, routes to enable trade and settlement. Not all invaders created literal maps but instead described travels and interactions with indigenous peoples that were later used to make maps. Gender and sexuality and colonial desires for their regulation are constant present in these descriptions, mapping colonial desires onto indigenous bodies. What the maps don't show is our bodies. Our memory as Cherokee people, as two spirit people, as indigenous LGBTQ people is often limited by the exact colonial structures that dictate knowledge about our past. What if we looked at our past in ways that examine how all of our genders and sexualities as Cherokee people were queered by colonial powers to tell new stories, Asegi stories that rethink our cultural memories. Within this network of roots, incursions into our bodies, attempted eradication of our lives and nations, our bodies survived. Though there are even words for two spirit people that are remembered in any language as a miracle. Asegi Udanti, Nudile Udanti. But Kofatacheke and other native people, as well as the slave called Gomez, and other Africans enslaved by De Soto, found ways to negotiate, resist and subvert De Soto. In fact, they all ran away instead of being captured.  Remembering Kofatacheke is inhabiting an Asegi space and offers us a vision of Asegi identities as chaotic, not to indigenous worlds using communities, but to settler power. As Cherokee and other indigenous two spirit people engage a process of remembering, continuing and reimagining our histories, the lady of Kofatacheke is significant, not only because her interactions with De Soto can be seen as one of the origin stories about the ways colonial heteropatriarchy was used in the original invasions of indigenous nations, but also because the lady of Kofatacheke subverted colonial desires, formed alliances with others wanting to escape and returned home. An Asegi returned to home is not limited to a return to Cherokee homelands, but also to a homecoming to who we are as human beings, regardless of our presence in the colonial archives. Liz Leah, a participant in the oral history project I was mentioning earlier, asserts that we must inhabit our identities in the present, refusing the idea that Cherokee two spirit people need to have evidence of past existence. This is Liz Leah, but really at some point it has got to stop sharing about what we don't love about how we're being treated and start being the people we are, taking on those roles, and so for me that was learning how to play river cane flute, it was fishing, it was helping Earl fix his ultralight plane, it was out being with the guys doing the cars, that sort of stuff, and just being who we are. And at that point we'll start, I feel certain that our mythology will start reemerging because none of this stuff is ever lost. We were never lost. While heteropatriarchal colonization attempts to claim land and bodies, Asegi bodies remain unruly. We trick colonial powers, we escape, we survive, we recreate, and we remember who we are. We come home. Amid all of these bodies of our dead are also the bodies of our living, our bodies, the bodies of those who survived in order to bring us here alive.  Map of the Americas. I wish when we touch, we could transcend history in double helixes of dark and light on wings we build ourselves, but this land grows volcanic with a smoldering hum of bones, all that's left of men who watched their beloveds torn apart by rifles, grandmothers singing back lost families, children who didn't live long enough to cradle a lover, arms around waist, lifts gently skimming nape, legs twine together like a river cane basket. Sometimes I look at you and choke back sobs knowing you were here because so many of my people are not. Look. My curled and asleep becomes a map of the Americas. My hair spread upon the pillow a landscape of ice. My chest to the plains and hills of this land. My spine the continental divide. My heart drums the rhythm of returning buffalo herds. Do you notice the deserts and green mountains on my belly's topography or the way my hips rise like ancient pyramids, my legs wrapped with the Amazon, the Pampas, the vast roads of the Incas. Here are rainforests, highlands, stolen breath trapped deep in mine shafts and my feet that reach to touch Antarctica. When your hands travel across my hemispheres, know these lands have been invaded before, and though I may quiver from your touch, there is still a war. It is not without fear and memories of wash and blood that I allow you to slip between my borders, rest in the warm valleys of my sovereign body, offer you feasts and psalms, dress you in a cloak of peacock feathers and stars. These gifts could be misconstrued as worship, honor mistaken for surrender. When you taste my lips, think of maize, venison, perfect wild strawberries.  Honor this. I walk out of genocide to touch you. For the boarding school survivors, panicked footsteps of memory run toward you, something forbidden is walled up in that church. The heavy muslin curtains a monologue of endless silence. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those whose fingers permeate our dreams. What is buried behind the school, whose red fingerprints lay under the fresh white paint? Loving Day, the epigraph reads, Everyone get out of pulse and keep running. Facebook posts from Pulse, Orlando, June 12, 2016. To staunch the bleeding, sharp and hidden as a man, write a poem with intent and precision. Try to imagine to turn dancing into bodies, bodies, write guns into outlines while stories play dead in the walls. Barricade police tape at South Orange and West Esther. I wanted to write a poem, but stuffed a handkerchief into my name and the bullet hole in his back instead. I wanted to write a poem, but the letters huddled together for three hours in a bathroom stall and bleed out. I know the sharp, sharp pop stopped turning this poem in the dark right now, sparks from a barrel. Words creep to shell casings, clot my blood, steal onto our televisions, whisper across our screens. I hear wounded knee, Spanish names, mass shootings in U.S. history, indigenous and black, and how much can our hearts carry? I'm tired of writing poems to our dead, but cannot withstand their tugs on my skirt, hungry little lullabies. Paper doesn't want held, but I need our dead. I need our living. I need someone to carry them. Charlottesville. One. Orbital elements, astrological units, rotational axis, the moon sweeps the sky clear of light in Charlottesville. Two. I don't know the kelvins of the sun, but I do know that fire burns hot and dangerous in Charlottesville. Whitemans scream blood and soil as they stomp skulls into monokin land.  I'm grateful for his lie, but I am one of the merciless Indian savages, Octoroon, Walter A. Plecker's Mixed Blood Nightmare, Thomas Jefferson's racial equation and amalgamation and abomination.  Dear governor, thank you for your lie from Charlottesville. Three. Corona, valley of the moon, bands of moving light, crickets chirp under the umbral shadows as flower petals fall at the intersection of water and forth where Heather Hayer was run down in Charlottesville. Four. Oh, Sally Hemmings. Let me see you a lullaby to help you survive Monticello. Let me sing you a song that carries you to Polaris. I will sing only celestial words, only sun and a moon and star and beautiful, only pegasus and cassiopeia, big dipper and little dipper. I will sing the back cloth of distant pins of light we watch facing north on an August night. I will sing the strawberries from your mother's garden warned by gravitational pull of planets. I will sing about the solar eclipse, the axis of the earth, rivers of light, Sally. I will sing nothing, I swear, of Charlottesville. The great American, thank you. The great American eclipse. Don't look away. The giant toad is coming to swallow the sun. Call him Pepe, call him Trump. A monster is here to rearrange the sky. Your eclipse glasses will not protect you.  You must memorize the constellations of a nuclear winter. Remember the names of stars, the ghoul, the bear, the wing of the flank, the snake, the hare, the tail of the goat. The great frog is coming. He has placed himself in Capricorn. He has placed himself in Scorpio. He names himself the lancer, the giant, the crown of the forehead, the dragon, the lion, the sword of the slaughter. He is vengeful. He is hideous. He is covered in sores. He dreams of a conquest of sky. He hungers for a new sun to etch us all to shadow. His followers clear the way, parade with tiki torches and swastikas. They usher him in, chant, the club, the crook, the nose of the bull, the claw, the sting, the tip of the arrow. It is happening again. Don't look away this time. The giant toad wants to swallow the sun. A great shadow is coming. Come out of your homes. Dust the street off your jeans. Bang pots and pans. Howl, shriek, weep. Make every noise imaginable to drive him away. Now, there is no more time. The moon's shadow, in the moon's shadow, the outworks of our hearts gleam with the light of ancestor stars. There, in the dark, find each other. Hold it tight. Bring your rattles and drums. As hard, seeing aloud, ascend like Pleiades, circle into a new constellation. Now, hurry. The great toad is coming. We are in the path of totality. We are in the path of totality. Rise like a flock of stars. Stomp dance. Two-spirit gathering. A giveaway poem, especially for Michael St. Clair. 1952 to 2012. After the Indian drag queens and kings shake their booties to Adele and Lady Gaga, chairs are spirited away to clear the floor for stomp dance. Silver milk cans and brown-yellow turtle shells are strapped to strong legs, even without the sacred fire. We spiral counterclockwise, tied as a snake to rebalance the earth. We carry our ancestors with us, our bodies' baskets that hold water. I want my sweetheart with me to see these songs water my resistance. I want his voice singing behind me. I want him to see me shake doxy used under my blue and white skirt. My heels soar from hitting concrete instead of earth. I want my sister and mom to see these other southeastern two-spirits, and my nieces and nephews hear folks talk our language like wildfire as it rose through the Ozarks. I want Colin here to joke me through aches. Sure, each year I shell out too much money to drive to Oklahoma, but it's the only time I can shake shells or hear Laura in her rainbow finger-woven sash remind us that the world began with water and earth, or J.C. show us we have a place around the fire. I drove nine hours from Texas to get here. My muscles shake with exhaustion and pain, but I dance every dance. Imagine our spirits as splints of light lock together. The Milky Way is a white path we follow to carry earth back to our mother mounds, and when we dance, stories are unearthed. We didn't know we lost. In the gravel parking lot, I talk with Mary Lou about the hot shell of grief we carry after our loved ones die and how we both find our spirits in love after loss. Ustitewa says those howls in the dark hills are mountain lions. Water and salt pour from my forehead as wade teaches me to lead a song and shake at the same time. I'm clumsy and dizzy, but the dancers are patient as smoldering fire as I struggle to balance, shake, and sing. There is fire in our hearts, so I try to ignore the voice in my head saying, what on earth are you doing and listen to wade in my right ear, not let my voice shake as I try to lead songs I've only ever sing in response while setting the rhythm for shell shakers. Some say we can't do these things, but I remember the story of Water Spider and how she carried that hot coal on her back anyway. I know the spirits of Susan and Grandmother Frida watch. This is the work of our two spirit people to sing, to shake, to listen, to remember the world needs our fire if any human is to survive. We hold oceans and springs in the water of our bodies. We are part of a story that does not end with the destruction of the earth, but instead where everything returns to us through turtle shells and songs. When we dance, manifest destiny shakes. We are the spirit of water and earth. We are the emergence of fire and turtle shells. We are the ones the world can no longer shake. A ceremony for reclaiming language. Our homelands remember us. They raise themselves up to mend our tongues, remove fingers of conquistadors and governors from bruised necks. As you enter into this ceremony, breathe phrases like copal smoke.  Wear words around your throat a gift of turquoise and gold.  As you enter this ceremony, say a prayer, offer tobacco. Remember each morning we enter into spinning light of a galaxy that loves us. Hidden words will sprout in your dreams like maize opening into the rich brown soil of Anahuac. As you enter into this ceremony, mourn for what was stolen. Smuggle your tongue across their imaginary border and laugh. Let this language suture your heart. Each word whispers a story through your lips. Weaves a basket that carries a mending world. So I know that there's some class shifting that might have to happen. It might be a good time for that. I have one more story I want to share. Which is part of the oral history performance. It will be a few minutes of that. And then we can talk and have questions and stuff. But... Oh, yes, thank you. Thank you. All right. So this last bit that I want to share is from the larger oral history project with Cherokee Queer and Two-Spirit folks. Just an excerpt from one interview. And this is an interview with Corey Tabor, who is a Cherokee and Muscogee and Osage Two-Spirit activist and fabulous person. So this is Corey. My brother Chad and I were born and raised in Tulsa. Our parents were also born and raised in Tulsa and our grandparents came from a few different places. Our dad's mom is Cherokee and Creek. She comes from down by Muscogee. And his dad was Y and also comes from that same area. Our mom's mom is Cherokee and Musage. She's a mixed race individual. And she comes from Arkansas, western Arkansas. And her dad was Y and comes from Tulsa. So we've got family from a few different places, but all within maybe a two-hour drive from Tulsa. Regionally, I guess you could say it's all about the same. Our parents had us when they were pretty young and so they worked, you know? And we spent all our time with these old ladies. And it was kind of by default and kind of by tradition. That's pretty standard. That's an old tradition. It's how it used to be. The whole rest of the family would take care of these kids. That would be the elders and other community members. And that's just the natural way for us to live. Our family is not extremely traditional, like most Cherokee families, especially those living in cities by relocation or force or choice or whatever. And so while we did not grow up speaking Cherokee as a first language or did not necessarily grow up spending every weekend at the stomp dance, we grew up with a lot of traditional understandings and traditional knowledge and life ways that I think maybe other people don't, especially when they're not close to their elders like that. And so most of our waking hours until we were seven or eight was spent around all these old Indian ladies. And that's how we came to identify as Cherokee people. That was our primary identification. We grew up knowing we were Cherokee.  It was you, our Cherokee person. And that's who you are. You're not just part Cherokee. You either are or you're not. And I think that's a pretty common perspective here in Oklahoma. In traditional communities that have limited exposure to gay people or two-spirited people, you can still get ostracized by your own people. And that's unfortunate and we've experienced that to a lesser degree than society in general, but it's still there to varying degrees of assimilation into non-Indian culture by our own people.  I think those personal experiences provide you with a desire to make those changes. And so I can definitely say in my case the personal experiences were so frustrating that I wanted to subvert it somehow. And so I do that just by being here and exemplifying the ideas that I was taught to exemplify the best I can, fixing some of those old hurts, those old wounds, those old rifts that still exist for whatever reason, especially in smaller communities, people tend to perpetuate. It just happens, you know? And sometimes it happens for no reason at all. People are just doing it and they don't even know why. It's because they didn't stop to think or because so and so told them that's how it is. I've seen that happen so many times in so many different ways that it's frustrating and I don't know. For whatever reason I feel compelled to take it upon myself to be like, no, that is enough. It stops here. And I think it starts as a personal journey and I think it ends with a sense of obligation or continues with that. It becomes bigger than yourself. And certainly you have to feel it deeply to begin there. I haven't experienced a great difference between Cherokee and Creek communities and what I've learned from my experiences of all those people is that there wasn't necessarily a place of reverence for two spirited people necessarily. I mean there could have been, you know, all of our people teach different things but it was told to us that's not how you're characterized. What's important is how you help out your family and how you take care of your people, whether it be your community, your family, your tribe, whatever circumstance. How you treat the people around you and what you do to give back. That essentially defines you as a person and not who you choose as a partner. And also I've heard our medicine people say that everybody deserves a place of the fire. There's room for everybody at the fire and the fire is how we pray and how we commune and we don't waste people and that's not a good enough reason to throw somebody away. And so that's kind of been my experience. It's more of a non-issue than a point of reverence, just a non-issue altogether. I want future generations to know that regardless of what they hear from outsiders of any kind that we tried, we tried and tried as best we could to preserve what's left and regain what was lost for them because it's theirs. It's their legacy and we want them to have that because we find solace in that and we find ourselves in that and they won't find themselves in something else. That's where they'll find who they are. We love you. We love all of those of you who come after us or Bussanar asks us to try to make y'all happy. No, I mean that from the bottom of my heart. I say it jokingly but I mean every bit of it. We want this kind of thing to be here long after we're gone. But that's the thing though. You have to have that kind of foresight. You have to be able to look that far in the future and know because if you can see that far into the past you can see that far into the future. If you look at how our people used to live you know what was important to them. You can tell. And I mean that's what we try to keep going that feeling, that good feeling, you know. And the age of flat screen TVs and four-year-olds with cell phones it's hard to keep it real, you know. It is so hard. But things like this, places like this are very convenient and very easy places for you to get a little glimpse of that, you know and a little taste of that. Just to remind you of who you come from because once we leave like Chad says we're satellites and we go out into the world and we share all of this with white people, green people and everybody else and it's not meant to be divisive. Two-spirit people and our two-spirit movement is not an act of divisiveness. It's an act of faith and it's an act of love and hope and continuity and preservation of nothing but, you know. What you're hearing right now is our grandmas. This is our grandmas talking.  This was taught to us and this comes from two generations behind us and two generations behind that. And so that's what's so special about it is somebody our age can sit here and tell you things that people who have been dead for 150 years can tell you. It's the same message. We want love to be our legacy. Oh, I just can't wait till they see my pictures when we're all dressed up and I think that's going to be great because they'll see all these drag pictures and they'll be like, oh, that must have been a traditional Chickasaw dress. No, girl. We need to drag back then. They... No, but I think it will be great. One of my hope for future generations that our message is received and the feeling and sentiment with which it was intended, I fear that things will be lost in translation and I just hope that there's little bits and pieces and bigger bits and bigger pieces that we have for them to work from and operate from in order to build a life that holds true to our values, regardless of what it looks like because that's what really makes us who we are is our values, the way we walk through this world. And I think if we can do something to make other people or encourage other people or inspire them to do the same thing and live the same way, then we've done what we're here to do. Well, you know what? I want to say this, too. We have a lot of gay relatives. There's a lot. A lot.   And I want you to believe that. I want you to know that from us. Just in case you didn't hear it anywhere else, you heard it here. I mean that from the bottom of my heart that's what our medicine people taught us. You guys aren't something new. I mean some kind of spectacle we've never seen. They treat us as if it's a non-issue. Like I said, they treat us as if it's nothing out of the ordinary because it isn't to us. And I want to make sure that gets in there. Decolonization is an act of imagining. I envision a world in which all indigenous queer and trans folks speak our languages where we all practice our life ways and teach those life ways to our children on our own lands where the land is not poison, where our lives as humans aren't constantly at risk. I envision a world in which we have our places returned to the center of our communities, one in which the colonial powers of the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand no longer exist and indigenous people have created other forms of governance outside of settler states. A world where our red black selves are celebrated and understood as part of our survival, where women's leadership is centralized and respected, where sexual violence is unheard of, where in North America we no longer have to fight to bring attention to missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people, where our erotic lives are simply part of the larger reflection of who we are. Yes, I want it all back. Our lives, our languages, our lands, our songs, our plants, our children, our memories, our ancestors, our bodies, all of it. I want us all to remember who we are. Two-spirit people and other indigenous people we're calling queer and trans carry memories for our people. We must remake our past, honor who we are in the present, and imagine the radical and gorgeous possibilities of our future. Our work is to rebalance an unbalanced world. If we are to survive as humans, we must. I'm quite certain that this part, the part of that rebalancing is to dare to love ourselves and one another through our stories, told through scholarship, through poetry, through performance, through song, through art. We must tell our stories and imagine our stories in order to link arms together with others to carry us out of the colonial present and into a decolonized future. Our stories can reweave the world. Wado, thank you.


Right now we're taking you behind enemy lines presented by Microsoft Teams. Mike Keith and Amy Wells, proud to be joined by Vic Carucci of the Buffalo News and SiriusXM NFL Radio. I wanna start off asking about some of the bills off season additions. Guys like Stefan Diggs and Josh Norman, how have they impacted their respective positions so far in 2020? Yeah, Amy, they've made a huge impact. Let's start with Stefan Diggs. He leads the NFL in receiving yards and that's exactly the kind of guy the bills were looking to get a top NFL receiver, a true number one, which they did not have last year with John Brown and Cole Beasley. Solid additions last year, but both probably fell into that number two category. Josh Norman didn't play his first game until Sunday. He gets in last week after Levi Wallace suffers an injury and makes a huge play, makes a big turnover on a day when the defense was doing a lot of bending. They needed that spark that that turnover caused that he forced that fumble, recovered the fumble, and just showed his veteran presence. So I think you're gonna see more of him. And then Mario Addison and some of the other additions, I would say he is the right guy for what they need, but they need more in the way of a pass rush. If you had to identify one area that would be a concern for a 4-0 team, it's that they're probably not getting enough pressure on the quarterback. Has running back Devin Singletary impressed you in year two, Vic? Yeah, Mike, he has. I think he's learning more about running with better vision, running with a greater feel for what he needs to do at that second level and even the third level. It would help probably to have another consistent back playing for them. Well, Zach Moss was hurt, had that toe injury, the rookie. And I think the vision they have, and it's a good one, Moss the power guy, Singletary the speed guy. Josh Allen has had a strong start to the 2020 season. What differences have you noticed in him in his third year? Josh Allen has taken his game to an incredibly high level. It starts with the fact that, of course, he has more weaponry with the addition of digs that has helped open things up for the whole receiving core. But it goes beyond that, his poise, his accuracy, his feel for throwing the football. Running is a big component of his game. Some would argue maybe too much, but you haven't seen as much of it more recently than you did in the first game against the Jets. And it's a real threat, because he can motor for his six foot five frame. But he's also, I think, mastering the accuracy on the long ball. Vic Carucci from the Buffalo News and Sirius XM NFL Radio, thank you so much for your time. My pleasure.


All right, welcome back. It's still the breakfast ballot 2023 special right here on plus TV Africa. I'm still here. My name is Kofi Bartels alongside message book. We're still here as well. And we have been very interesting conversations about the election 2023 election and of course the unfolding events. Counting is still ongoing. Some states have been completed in terms of the results being returned to the National Collegian Center. Some states are still on and the remainder votes are expected today. And I'm sure that by the end of today, we should know who the next president of the federal Republic of Nigeria is. And we would like to also introduce our next guest to talk about, you know, the alleged inconsistencies in the number of voting votes and allegations of overvoting in a key state and also to talk about generally, some of the complaints regarding the general election. We have a studio guest in studio. Like to say a very good morning. I think he's really on zoom from the beautiful Asian country of Singapore. But he is here with us in the studio this morning. Dr. Moshala Deji is a political scientist. Dr. Deji, good morning to you. Good morning. It's good to have you back here. I'm sure you came because of the elections. And I would like to take your thought and compare it to what's happened around the world. Places that you've observed. Still with us via zoom, we have the coordinator of the people's advocate, the civil society organization, the fights for the rights of people. He was also an election observer with the transition monitoring group. Courage in Syri Movoo Esquire, legal practitioner. Courage, just to confirm you're still there with us. Thank you, Kofi. I'm still here. Okay. Fantastic. Dr. Moshala Deji, your thoughts, your observation as a returnee on what transpired on Saturday? Well, I think the Saturday election against questions, our ability to do things right. There's an improvement from the past election, because in 2011, 2015 and 2019, INEC, for one reason or the other, postponed the election. Many citizens were kind of like apprehensive that maybe that is going to occur again. INEC got that right by not postponing the election. Everything was kind of going smoothly, especially in the metropolis and the constituencies of the leading candidate. We can see in Adamawa, in Lagos, the constituencies close to that of the leading presidential candidate, the process started early. But that is not the case across the country. Now, the election, as it went, there is an improvement within the introduction of BIVAS. So I would say that INEC started well. But at the middle of the game, things began to go wrong. And most especially failure to upload the result as promised by INEC for citizens to be seeing the result real time. That has reduced confidence in the process itself. So I think that INEC started well. But at the middle of the game, things went wrong and it's not ending gloriously for INEC. But can the electoral empire really be blamed in all of what's happening, especially if you look at some of the challenges with technology, network failure, network challenges, can the electoral empire be blamed? It's beyond them if the network is not working and results cannot be uploaded to the portal. And their fail-saves, the regulations and guidelines for the call-out of election, allows them to result to using the copies of the result sheets and the forms which contain the voting tally. Well, I think it has more to do with the will of women to make things work. Technology, you can't speak to someone automatically on your phone. You have to take it. You have to dial a number or even if you're going to use a voice prompt or something. Now, if human beings do not want to make it work, it won't work. That's what I see in this case because even if there are some technical issues or the other, those technical issues could be fixed within a short period of time. This is an election whereby, unlike what we've seen in Nigeria before, that the major candidate will be from the ethnic tripods on which Nigeria stands. In such a situation, transparency is important. This is an election that involves, largely, the youth that the youth are passionate about. So, based on that, you have to be 100 percent transparent as much as you can. But if you are saying, oh, technology and all that, then I think the system, just like our phone, if there's no good internet network on my phone, if I send the WhatsApp message to you, over time it will still deliver. So, I blame it more on the will of human beings to do what is right rather than on the technology itself, even if you bring the best technology. Even if you bring a super human being, if they don't want it to work, it won't work. That's the problem. It's an institutional thing. It's a system thing in the sense that those that profit from it, for example, politics is very lucrative here. And why would a politician not go all out to make sure that he or she wins? He has everything to gain out of his wins. Nigeria is a power-driven society. So, technology or anything that's bound to be compromised, except if the umpire himself is willing and committed to make his work, there should be like other substitute engineers, for example, in the sense that if you don't put all your heads in one basket, knowing that this is a crucial election. So, for me, I think INEC has not, has not, has not done the right thing. Not because it is not capable to, but because INEC is not willing to. That is how I see it. Because now we have spent over $300 billion for this election. And my pain is that at the end of the day, this process, building of ballot boards, killing at the polling union, counting of votes, transmission of results manually, at the end of the day, what we will have will be in some form of duty-crazy. The election would, from what we are saying, will eventually be decided by 15 people, 15 judges, subjecting the will of 200 million people to 15 people in a system whereby, when they raid the home of the judges, they fund the Mongols' amount of it. If you want to know how efficient a particular sector of a country is, look at the educational system. The educational system is in, is in Komato's, look at the health system, look at every other sector. If those sectors are in a terrible state, don't expect that the judicial system will be one, you know, super place. No. So in that kind of system, you're not subject, the will of 200 million people to a judiciary that is alleged as corrupt. Okay. So we had the next question as to whether the country's internet infrastructure is capable, does the capacity to transmit the data? Because there was also a report that said we necessarily didn't need the beavers in terms of accreditation, so the network was not necessary. Well, you know, the challenge right here is as to transmission of results. And at the time where there are several reports and evidence to that fact, even, you know, on social media as to thugs truncating the process, harassing polling unit agents as to don't upload the results. But there were several, you know, conversation as to not having, you know, the necessary internet infrastructure to upload these results. So the question is, do you think that we knew that we were, we had a lacuna in this, you know, in this era of internet infrastructure? And if we didn't know or we knew, do you think that we probably could have addressed it? Were we too very confident that we had what it takes to transmit? What exactly are we dealing with? Is it that people did not allow the polling agents to transmit this result or was just that the network automatically didn't respond? I think the people from all walks of life, people at INEC, people at the polling unit, people, the thugs that didn't want the election to be transmitted electronically are working for some people who want power. So if those thugs are well-oriented, if they know the essence of having good people in governance, definitely they won't do it. They would think that maybe this person's character is contributing to making me a thug, you know. So I think it is a human thing. Then the beaver system, I think it uses what I can call a soft technology in the sense that it should have been done if you are producing a beaver system for a developing country where the internet is strong, I would assume that the beavers will be able to work with 2G network, 3G network, not 5G high-speed internet. Okay. So this question of beavers and of course the role of the judiciary, I would like to bring in a courage and serial removal before we introduce our next guest who has joined us via Zoom Courage. The he has raised a point to talk about technology and all that, but he has also talked about the judiciary. I would like you to talk about both of them. Starting with technology, I'm always going to ask, I'm always going to ask if you use beavers, okay. I have my phone here, device. If you use beavers, everybody use the beavers through a credit and to validate the voters to look at who is eligible and who is not eligible, okay. Highly successful, I think we can say more than 90% success rate. On the same day, after the voting was concluded, they are having problems taking the results to the portal, which is just to snap it, snap, snap. Just take a picture and send it. And I mean, you can even take the device and if the dealing wasn't uploaded, you can look at it. I'm sure it's like a tablet. Okay, let's go to the gallery and see what was snapped. The record should still be there. And I'm sure it can still be uploaded. So what do you say to that? Because I think it's, for me, it's just a flimsy excuse, really. Even if it takes 48 hours, which it's been taking. So that's number one, number two. And the alternative of going to the court now for cases like akiti, we're seeing where there are complaints. Just prepare your petition for the tribunal stage and then head there instead of making all these noise like the normal is making. Just speak to those two things, please. Thank you. First of all, you were talking about us providing you real evidence. And I know that very soon you joined your collection and, you know, join us in the legal profession. I know that's been very soon. Clearly, you know, you know, something that is called circumstantial evidence and circumstantial evidence is also admissible in law. Now, if we are told you that we were on ground and we saw officials of government, we saw talks working for the government. We saw presiding officers dancing to the tune of government and not declaring results. You know, that, of course, is, you know, evidence that we have. And even if it is, okay, these evidence are circumstantial. They feel admissible and to a whole extent, both a long way to prove the assertions that we are making that, you know, there is that, you know, disruption of the electoral process and there is that collusion to subvert the will of the people. Also said in some polling units, we had polling units where the folks in there mandated that they must vote for the governor's candidates. And that erupted crisis in Borneo, our seven in Riverside. And again, in circumstances like that, expect INEC to either cancel such units or call for election, but that was not done. So when we are making these allegations, we are making them based on the circumstances on ground so that you don't throw away everything I've said this morning. So that's on the one hand. On another hand, the beefers, you and I know that just the way we have our phone, even if I'm not a technological expert, but there are some things a reasonable man will know. If I snap from E-8 and whether offline or online, I'm not going to do that. If I send this over a period of time, it will be delivered. So I don't think beefers is such a weak machine that if E-8 is not pushed out, it won't get to the subversion. So there's that suspicion that something is fishy or something is wrong. And INEC must come and explain to the people because you have told the people and you've written it in your guidelines that this is how the election should go. You've raised the expectations of the people and we come to the ballot and what we have is something different. It's worrisome and we have to question INEC as failed laws. I agree with your guest in the studio because sovereignty belongs to the people but given the scenario of failure, failure of INEC, we may have to resort to the courtroom for a few persons. It will now be like an electoral college where a few persons, justices will now decide the fate of Nigerians one way or another instead of the popular will of the people to prevail just because of the failure of INEC. And we must emphasize that billions of taxpayers' money have been spent to get these things right. Did they not get it right in Plattu? Courage. They can't fight in Oshun. So we have this scenario in this election. So let's get back to the studio now. Courage. I mean we still have Deji here. So we would come to Deji now. We have a friend of Deji on Zoom as well. We're definitely with him in no time. Advocacy manager of Malala from Nigeria. But just quickly before we connect with Femi right here, Deji you're here. Now one of the issues, the reason why the beavers were introduced, which I think is a factor that is responsible for the voter turnout and the engagement of Nigerians, the introduction of the beavers via the electoral act and the fact that you have the IRF where this result will be transmitted electronically. So I want you to speak to the issue because there's been a lot of consensus that raised us to the results not being uploaded up until now. The results were supposed to be uploaded at the polling unit. And the reason for this, the reason why we have this technology introduced was to take care of the integrity of our electoral process transparently because we feel that for every other time you have the manual process is docked toward. The result sheet is manipulated. People, if you have real time as it's going on and everyone is watching, they are seeing you uploaded, there's no time for all of that. So I want you to speak to this particular issue because it feels like there's a lot of consensus saying we're not uploading the results up until now, we can't see the results. And the results were supposed to be, we're supposed to be talking about the results uploaded two days after the elections or almost getting to three days? I pray we don't go back to an era whereby if you want to send a message to me on WhatsApp now, it has to travel for like two, five days. I pray we don't go back to that era. Then another thing is if we are to use, if the percentage of people that were not able to successfully upload it via Vivaas is shorter than the percentage that successfully uploaded it, that's not sabotage. But what we have now, it's an intentional sabotage against the system. And I think there should be serious consequence for actions. If what I made promised was technology first, then manually. But what we have now is technology right off just manually. This is not what I made promised. The credibility of the process. Election is a big deal. Election in any third world or developing country is a serious issue. In any state or government whereby it will play the winner system where citizens look up to government for the basics. Where the institution is not so strong. The person you have in power matters a lot. So for anybody to think they can sabotage the system and go scot-free. For example, the woman whose picture has gone viral that was bloodied. What has happened to the person, to those people that attacked the woman till today? Nothing. You see series of manipulation of the result. What has happened to the people that made that happen? Nothing. So tell me now what we discourage people from the system, from not doing the same thing when the government election is being held. You are failed to upload the result as promised. Nobody has been brought to book. At the end of the day, this is what we're still going to have during the government election. And this transmits to the effectiveness in office. Because if you know that only if you get to the office credibly, that is when you can win re-election. Definitely you will go on out to perform. And honestly, the president has tried. He's not a super human being. He cannot be everywhere. He has tried as he gets all this vote buying. But Nigerian politicians are very smart. As we are covering it from one angle, they are coming up with another form of, my party's on the other, from another angle. So this issue of not using the beaver system is not something that we should tolerate at all. We saw it in the case where the result were uploaded real time. So I want a system whereby after the election, we will have less litigation. The judiciary are not super human beings. Then this thing itself is affecting the judicial system instead because from now that the election has ended to almost a year. You'll be having election cases or the other at the court. What happened to people that have family dispute, land dispute, charge custody, different kind of issues. So the political space has flooded the judicial space. And by so do you can't get justice where you have real issues, non-political issues. How long do we want to do that? If this is the kind of system that we want, that if you conduct under the elections at the presidential, legislative and state assembly, if, let's say it is 100, if we have a system whereby 95% or 90% will be resolved by the court. Let us save ourselves money and stress. Take the CV of these people. Take you to the court. Look at them. Invite them for an interview. Who is most qualified? Because I don't know if you have some people. Let me bring it from the day we go. Sorry for keeping you waiting. It's really a heated one. What are your thoughts on what our guests have been saying so far? Well, thank you very much. And it's a pleasure to join the show. I think that I see failure on many levels. First, I must acknowledge and I agree with all the panellists who have said that INEC terribly overpromised and grossly under-delivered in this election. And I think that it's a great opportunity for people to get to the stage and grossly under-delivered in this election. Nobody forced INEC to promise us that beavers would upload results from polling units onto a portal and that whole Nigerians will be able to access that portal and see. And for all Nigerians that promises for INEC to say we are going to be transparent with this electoral process and we are going to raise the bar beyond what we have seen in previous elections. And they have run a pilot. We saw it, it didn't work perfectly, but Nigerians were excited at the prospect of having this done nationally. And I think that from any objective analysis of what we have seen on Saturday's election, it was shambolic in terms of the beavers system operating. And I think the failure is across many levels and I will try to analyse it. One is the fact that we are deploying largely co-members as ad hoc staff across the nation, over 176,000 polling units. Many of them are interacting with the tab for the first time. Many of them have not been taught with computers in their schools and so the learning calls for them to understand that machine is something that you must deal with. I have a number of polling units where friends who are technologically inclined had to step up to the co-members and say if this machine is not working, let's see and let's help you troubleshoot it. And they discovered that they were facing just very minor issues. The hub is not loading. They are short on the hub and it started and the issues are fixed. And so on some levels I feel that some of the issues are not deliberately sabotaged, but they have given very sophisticated gadgets to young people who are interacting with them for the first time outside of a training environment. That is one. And secondly, there was also deliberate attempt. We have seen different beavers' results uploaded that people have taken at the polling unit. People who are at the polling unit took pictures of the original result announced and then when they are seeing beavers on the platform of INEC, they are seeing all third results sheets. And I think that is an embarrassment to INEC. I personally feel INEC does not want us to see the beavers they have uploaded on their system because it will be an embarrassment to the nation and to INEC itself because that is a deliberate attempt to twat electoral process in many parts of Nigeria. Lagos have seen different examples and different parts of Nigeria and I don't think this was done by one political party. I think it was done by many political parties trying to influence electoral process one way or the other. And for this to happen at such a widespread level it shows that INEC is not prepared to run an election of this size and this manner and with the amounts that we have invested in this election. Thirdly, I think the importance of education now comes to play. If our people are not educated and as you can see many of the results that we now have evidence online are coming from our band centers. We need to therefore ensure that people in our rural areas are educated. They know how to defend their votes. They do not resort to violence when they feel that they have been disenfranchised but that they can collect evidence that will be useful to political parties and to actors in court in order to ensure that people who have been disenfranchised can claim their victory. We have been told to call this up in no time. We are just going to move away but I'd like to ask you for the point that you have raised. The issue of education and violence as it were, you say that people need to be able to understand that accept the results as it were and not be involved in violence but what's the ratio, what's the connection with Thergery because that's what we saw. We saw people coming out having guns and being very violent and you know doing all sorts of things, snatching the ballot boxes threatening people you know attacking them in different spots, in different spaces however you want to put it. So I'd like to know where the situation lies here. Is it not just really education or is it the fact that you know these persons have been recruited by these politicians for their own selfish gain? I mean it's not rocket science. When you have a country where we have one of the highest levels of out of school children in the world estimates, official estimate put it at about 10 million. People have said that estimate is even grossly underestimated out of school children in Nigeria is way higher than that but let's say 10 million people. You have a country where unemployment double digits over 20 percent and you have a country where poverty is double digits over 30 percent in a population of 200 million. What that means is that you have a pool of young people who have not been to school who do not have a job and who are debt poor. It means that if you give me probably 20 million today, I can mobilize an army because by offering people 1000 in fact today now that there's no Naira. If I offer people 1000 Naira cash, I can build a army of 2000 people and say go and destroy things. They are jobless they are not educated, they are poor. When you have such a sizable amount, if you look at estimated. I'm so sorry we have to go, I'm so sorry we have to go. I'm so sorry we have to pull the line. I'm sorry because of time we have to take our next program. But the importance of education can not be overemphasized. We look forward to having you on subscan programs on this station to talk about this. But I just like to put it to a Leonard guest to this morning this morning. And of course you look at section 135 sub 1 that provides that the guilt of an accused should be proved beyond reasonable doubt. That was said before. I'm not going to law school I don't need to go to law school. We cannot conduct a trial by media on the basis of what is called circumstantial evidence. Because I don't have the capability capacity as a judge to prove or to judge that matter. You have to take your circumstantial evidence to court. Now we here we have a media rules that require that before we are found guilt of slander or libel. We have to we have to, you know, we have checks and balances. So this is not a court. If you have your circumstantial evidence my brother take it to court and prove that yes we did what you said it is. Thank you very much we have to go. And that's the size of our package. Merci. Thank you so much gentlemen for being part of the show this morning. We do appreciate you. And of course we look forward to having you be part of the programming as we proceed. Hopefully we may not come back to the election studios. We might have the result. I mean if we have the result we hope so. If we do have the result today or later today then we would move on to subsequent programming. We have you you know to come through for us. Thank you once again Deji. Thank you Femi and thank you Courage. Alright we have to go. Thank you so much we will talk on the other side Courage. I appreciate the time. Good night.


All right, Sabra traders welcome on back here this Monday March 6th shortly after 2 30 p.m. Eastern time welcome on back here for our Afternoon meeting should be good to go across all ends here inside our live trading room great to see Grant Michael and all this Just joining us right now. I got the loud and clear from Mike So I know I'm good to go there great to see all this though Otherwise joining us on social media Facebook live LinkedIn Twitter or YouTube I'll say what it's been a bit of an interesting day all together Markets have been relatively flat the last hour or so but that doesn't stop us from making money, right? So the AI trade it's actually down on the day percentage wise pulling back now But let's talk about this trade at least to begin great to see Wendy and Brad so far as well Brad saying so far So so far so good love that so I mapped out my chart here this morning for the AI trade It was so volatile from the end of last week. How could I not this morning? Well, I was kind of actually under the weather this morning kind of self-diagnosing on Google No is fun to do right well that actually took my attention away from a lot of things outside of AI and one of the stocks I'm happy to say this one ended up treating myself alongside a bunch of us here pretty nicely now I will say though. I was focused on the UNCY stock more than this out the gate and with that I ended up seeing this kind of make the under and over from $27 right here, and I was too chicken to jump in I thought it was gonna pull back a little bit more Towards that lower green and just didn't fall far enough ended up breaking under and over from 27 from there ran Now from that point though as it ended up breaking above the opening print from today as well as yesterday As well as Friday's weekly close from the end of last week roughly around this 2848 2850 I wouldn't have expected such a clean pop. So it ended up running up really well Well, let me ask all of us here because actually we have class not this week But coming up, I think it's even in two weeks. We have the phase one class coming up on the 22nd So we got a little while to class little pop quiz for all this year while we're at it When a stock breaks above resistance and it runs off of it resistance should become support So it ended up holding as support heading into the late morning. I was calling it out here It led to a pretty sweet entry at the time But then ended up making a lower high felt a break higher up towards 30 and pulled back But it was a great trade for while it lasted now I ended up bailing out at that point though after ended up holding a higher low once again from here And I didn't know if it was gonna end up really popping making the higher high So I went in from 29 I ended up taking a very tiny loss as it pulled back and stopped me out But well from there if it's not gonna break any higher It's only one of the way it's gonna go so now at this stage AI I have no interest in it at this point, you know, if it was closer to the highs as a long I'd be interested in it It's hard to borrow on trade station if you can get shares to short. That's a different story But I just had this on the screen to begin. Let's go from top to bottom. Otherwise got a trio of stocks here up over a hundred percent BLPH damn I ended up missing out on this big time. It looks like I really had no focus on this trade Whatsoever today now, that's not to say that we didn't call it out I know that rich was all over this one from the leap morning himself I ended up taking a small break like I had said a little under the weather But with that in mind though ended up popping up pretty nicely retesting retesting off for and Led to the better run from there So broke back over for at this point ran up towards five now at this stage going into the close You know, it's so sideways moving. I do like that. It's closer towards the high still. It's hanging in there I'll put this on our list to begin But if it ends up tanking really lower from this point I might take it off But so far it makes the cut now stock that doesn't seem that will be making the cut now at this stage I didn't realize this from this point the UNCY stack We were calling it out just before rich was calling out at the time I'll put a new line up there But it was about a 54,000 share iceberg order out there off of 134 and 130 was a key level as well from today And I was pretty shocked to see this make as good of a pop as it made at the time heading into the meeting But it felt even hit 150 they kind of just fell short of 150 Ended up lower high there and a big ugly drop. I think this thing even got halted on the way down Didn't it? I didn't even realize that Yeah, look at that got halted at 228 reopened up at 233 now That's like the third or fourth fourth halt on the day We ended up trading the stock really well from the from the morning session and it was right off that 130 level So ended up dropping back at first from the pre-market run Shook around a little bit So it ended up stopping the outbreak even and then as a curdle back above 134 here my entry on this was at 135 I guess you could say the cookie crumbled well on this to where it popped up very shortly after got halted on the way up But a bunch of us were in that trade with myself and then at that point I hope all of us got out, but otherwise I ended up getting out as it was off that 150 I know Phil did a bunch of us did as well But ended up drop dropping back down and that's where you could see where this is that where this Stock got halted to the downside 948 next candle or I'm sorry 949 next candle 954 So this right here is your five-minute down halt here so that's where you got to be careful history could repeat itself not just in the Potential buying that you'd want to see like I teach but otherwise what happens if it goes against you Unfortunately a big shake down. That's not nice to see at this time of the day So yeah, we're gonna pass on this trade now. It was fun while it lasted and Then finally out of the oh, I guess there's another one actually that just just joined the fray here We had a trio of stocks up over a hundred percent. I don't know what this is SFR We'll check that out next we got one more, but SESN is not looking good. It's a cheapy stock. It's not really Looking that great of a chart on this there we go while we're at it come on down SFR Ended up having a big pop just out of nowhere before we started this meeting. I don't think that we've called this one out even All right, let me check the news out on this trade. I didn't see the news out before on this thing SFR Worth Benzinga's got a reload here during the meeting, of course Let's see if we can get this up in the coming seconds Otherwise, well, you know that we don't really trade the news as much as we trade the liquidity So news out just for those interested SFR filed for a registering for resale by certain selling security holders up to 9.3 million shares of class a common stock so hey normally when there's some sort of common stock offering or whatnot There's typically a big drop-off interesting pop here with that news in mind But you know perhaps for as much as this thing got crushed from the end the last year here You know you can see on my weekly graph there I'll switch it to a daily, but I think took a huge hit, you know It could it could be a good short squeeze candidate and it's already a big right now So perhaps the question from this point is like when is it going to dump off? What points is this hit resistance and pull back, right? So be careful for this thing. It looks good right now, but don't let it head fake you and come back down Alright, what else we got here am am another stock that we're actually pretty familiar with this thing Looks like the perfect Fausto flag ended up topping off right around seven seven ish That made the big pop today. So, you know right now ended up running up as high as like near 12 Pulled back a little bit for right now, but we'll see if we could build a little support I don't mind slipping this just on our list here, too Kind of like the BLPH will be probably near the middle or near the bottom by at all You know if you can hold support here, then I'll be really interested But if this is the end of the road a lower high perhaps from the spike up Then I'd be able to look out there. I'd look for something else moving better BBIO well it's not moving better and that's for sure this thing is completely dead TRK a bit of a cheapy, but nice move right now Keep it in mind maybe for later come back to it if I need to nice to see if you're in earlier than perfect, but Keep it going otherwise. What else we got a cala if you're looking to Roll the dice go to the casino here this afternoon. This could be the stock for you But that's not what I'm here for so we're gonna see what else is out there in the interim Yeah, the S&P towards the low of the day right now It looks like it's pretty close to Friday's closing price as support, too So if it breaks that this thing could be really dropping off pretty steadily the markets all together All right, let's see if there's anything anything else looking good from the gainer side here right now That's snap chat, you know, I saw a couple of us call out snap earlier today I did not even look at it once and I just know it's such a slow moving stock So I'm sure it was a great call at the time from a couple of us here early, but you know nice move, but at this stage now It's just completely sideways. It's basically how I know snap to trade. So Yeah, not really my cup of tea here snap nice morning though if any news came out whatever, but yeah All right, let's hop over to the loser side though seeing if there's anything just as good if not better from this side of the Field's got a CRS down big it is shortable It's kind of just laying off support here at 650 But I like the fact it's making lower highs This stock is trading a little bit more volume of recent over the last 10 15 20 minutes You know some larger spikes of volume if that dies off and we don't see much more after that then You know, obviously it's not gonna make as good of a move, but it's already at support again off 650 It is shortable. So this is actually a pretty good short set up right now the retest the retest off 650 support. So Not a bad one for right now Yeah, Boyle Not really focused on that right now ESPR pass on this UIs it is easy to borrow my platform here and it is at the low of the day So that part I do like this stock, you know, but it just seems like rather slow So if I'm comparing one to the other if I'm comparing apples to oranges here, I Think this one's a little bit more worth the opportunity All right, we watchers ww is this we watchers. It is wow, they're a $3 stock now I mean, I guess they had to have been a $3 stock for a little while But sheesh we end up following them off their IPO and Man they got crushed Way for a nice short squeeze on this over time I'd imagine looking at that weekly chart from like mid 2018 all the way through I mean I'm just saying this extremely out loud from the hip, you know looking at that graph It looks very similar to the GameStop graph before that exploded. So don't hold your breath Trust me. It might be a long while from now. We watchers here, but looking at that graph eventually It's gonna squeeze in but whatever day that will be it's gonna make for a fun day trade. That's for sure Sgmo gonna pass on that. All right, folks. I think that's pretty much it I mean, albeit the markets kind of near the lows right now. They've been flat So if there's anything else that looks good type it in the chat board There's if there's anything else up down left right more than that 5% We watchers Earnings after the close this afternoon. Ooh, it's interesting to know. We'll trade them likely tomorrow morning, then I Got four stocks on our main list and I'll be really transparent with you I'm not like really too much of a fan of many of these the ACRS is the best setup on the way down as a short AMAM. All right, that's starting to build a little support. So I like that part of it Let's see if it can keep building this off 11 and the trend off the lows here going up Boy, we're gonna pass on for right now grand. Don't have a great need for it right now. That's okay. It's good to know that Welcome aboard Lois. Just joining us here today on YouTube. I appreciate the shout Lois All right, I gotta check Benzinga pro right now before we wrap up. I don't know if there's too much. I missed Eta oh Yeah Not really looking good there. I got the sym trade not much happening on that at all and then the BLPH It's already on our list, but yeah, it looks pretty flat. You want to start to see this bust to move pretty soon All right, then on the way down. Let me just check one one or two things on the way down actually check out save Speared Airlines this thing took a huge hit. So obviously fell off quite a bit earlier today rebroke below 1690 you'll see there 1685 perhaps even and led to a nice drop-off really good short here as well for save. I'll put this on our main list here, too I find a couple of good shorts right now. Let me take a look Way fair little expensive not even that expensive as much I mean this thing's all over the map in terms of price, but kind of more than our price range again Just a little thin volume on the book You know if you put if you have way fair on your side list, it could be something to keep an eye on Billy BIL I seem deal hard to borrow my platform this morning And then that brings me back to AI which again hard to borrow from me, too If it's easy to borrow then definitely put it on your personal main list. All right folks For all that though just otherwise for all of a sudden YouTube Facebook live LinkedIn Otherwise, we appreciate you sticking with us here each and every day each and every afternoon myself certainly If you have any other questions feel free to shoot me a quick email Josh at CT trading calm I always like to post my handle there at the end of these meetings Otherwise though if you wanted to just join us inside our live trading room Continue the audio commentary for this afternoon which will be on the mic from 3 to 4 p.m Otherwise for tomorrow or the remainder of this week go right down to the link on the green banner below the stream Right there to get yourself set up But for later for Grant for Dan Michael and all this just joining us otherwise Alan and Richard included Manuel as well I look forward chatting with you folks coming up. I'll be in the board up until 3 30 I'll be on a coaching call coming up with one of our students here So I'll be chatting away with you folks if you see something say something talk to you soon


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