Unknown Speaker 00:00 Hi. My name is Allah Maria in South Sudan vs. HD candidate that you need to log into seminary, I'm in the last 18 days more before I have to turn in my dissertation. It's a critical time because most of the time, I'm so tired right now that the last thing I want to do sit at that computer, and yet there's no choice, I still have to do it. I will earn my rice and beans working for church, Women United, which is an ecumenical women's organization. Very interesting organization, which started as a very radical women's movement really, right at the time of Pearl Harbor, as a matter of fact, they were meeting to organize, to get going when the attack of Pearl Harbor, and it's not seen as that radical right now, but has a long tradition of taking very strong positions on a variety of issues. I try to feel as comfortable as I can, they're not quite totally comfortable, but as as well as I can. And I was born and raised in Cuba, and I have lived outside of Cuba. Unfortunately, most of my adult life. Most of the time here, though not exclusively, I also have had the privilege of living in South America and who also grew up for a while spinning. Joy and I had a little conversation last night. And we thought that what we would try to do was deal with have a very kind of short presentation to get things rolling, and then hoping to have a dialogue on as much as possible. So what I would like to share with you is from my perspective as Hispanic woman, and from my perspective, also as a theologian, how do I see this fitting into what I call the politics of survival and liberation for us? Let me just make a couple of preliminaries. One of them is the whole issue of what to call ourselves. The whole issue of whether we call ourselves Hispanics are where we call ourselves Latinos is extremely complex, complicated divided. The more radical terminology seems to be Latina, for those of us who are Caribbean's that from the Caribbean, that is not a very a term that is very familiar. We don't always talk about the Caribbean as Latin America. So it's not a term we're very much at home with. On the other hand, Hispanic is the term in a way invented by the US government to cover all of us under one same blanket, we never speak about ourselves as among ourselves, we identified ourselves by countries of origin. So I would always have a queue and I wouldn't say to another Hispanic, I'm a Hispanic. So that's, that's not the terminology we use. But I have opted to go ahead and keep using Hispanic, because working in church related affairs a lot, that is the term that is used mostly by the community epixel community that relates to church. So I have chosen in my work to continue to use that word for the time being anyway and see where it takes us with that. The AI, let me just talk a little bit about how do I understand and how do I see theology in its place, and its contribution to the whole central issue for us, which is why I use the binomial survival, liberation. And I'm trying to share that with Unknown Speaker 04:08 you having as one of our dialogue partners, Latin American liberation theology, we deal a lot with the whole issue of we talk about doing theology instead of writing theology or studying theology. And one of the things in which we have started with the understandings of Latin America liberation theology, but now differ from them is that as Mukherjee steps, theologians that we call ourselves we do not see theology as a second moment in Latin American Integration theology. They say that theology is the reflection on the experience of people. In the light of the gospel, that's kind of the word that's kind of the definition they use for us. We We do not see theology as a second moment we see theology itself as a deliberative practice. That's that's the way that we identify it. And let me unpack this a little bit. And that's that, that serves me as kind of my organizing principle. For us, you have to understand that we come from a culture that still is not a secular rice culture. So religion is very central to the culture. And religion is in many ways, the soul of the culture, it's the motivating factor many times in our struggles for survival, liberation. You don't, for example, the title that this little session was given spirituality, that's a tone foreign kind of understanding among grassroots with Hispanic women. We don't talk about a SPD dwelling that like if you could compartmentalize yourself, you know, the women aren't concerned about survival and liberation, and they're not going to talk about spirituality is something different, it's all intrinsically part of their day to day living. So keeping that in mind, and for us, this dealing with theology has to do very much theology of deliberative practice with this survival integration. And there's three, three things that we can say we mean by that this is not exhaustive, but at least three big subdivisions of what we mean by first of all, first of all, the issue of survival liberation is seeing if you want as the unfolding of a historical project, where are we going? What what is the contribution that we are making to a better world to society? How do we as a marginalized school, as a minority group, if you want to form words that society at large uses, what do we see that is different from our perspective to what the dominant society sees? How can we offer a corrective voice to what the society sees as the future as a historical project or switch societies walking, and because of the centrality of religion in our culture, for us, that whole process of historic historical project is very much hand in hand with the kind of understanding from religious terminology called salvation history, they're not different things, you can't be saved, unless you also participate, and are very active in bringing about a historical project in which everybody it's adjust within, which would be the creation of a justice society in which everybody can become fully who they are intended to be. So that's one of the things that when we talk about immigration, we're talking about the second aspect of that is, from the religious perspective a little bit when we talk about eschatology about the fact of that wonderful thing that is going to be somewhere at the end. And how do you keep the tension between what will be and with what is so that you don't say you don't become kind of, you know, this hope freaks, I call them people who are all yet don't worry, we're going to be save everything, it's going to be a ride, that you keep yourself grounded in the socio economic and cultural religious reality, but at the same time, that that doesn't so much control and dominate you that you cannot look ahead, that you cannot look to other possibilities. So that tension between those two things, is also part of what we mean when we talk about the duration. And then finally, if you want to talk about it at the personal level, Unknown Speaker 08:43 for us in the Hispanic community, person is always someone in relationship to to the community, to someone else to your family. We don't use the word individual for us has kind of a negative connotation of a majority of understanding. So when we talk about liberation in a personal way, yes, it has to be each of us. But each of us in relation to the community, we say that one of the one of the mistakes or one of the wrong ways that we can go into struggle for liberation is to think that you can do it alone or isolated from the community. If you if you do that last leader, individual we talk about the your individual way out, that is not liberation. So you know, it's kind of what what the speaker was just saying, if a couple of people make it to academia that doesn't reflect in the community at large, it has not brought any change to the community. So that might be the advancement of an individual but not at all, the concept of liberation. If any of this is very boring or totally of what you didn't expect. Stop me and we can talk about something else. Melt The inference here, so I'm going to make one chair up to now. The second part that is a very, very important for us in this whole understanding of what we do about theology on why we do it and how we do it. It's the whole issue of praxis, and I want to say a little bit about how we understand that word. Praxis for us has to do with our way of defining it as reflexive action. Again, the whole digital, the the way that Marxism introduced, praxis, uses practice and so forth, we have taken that and then looking at our own need in real configuration, what we have come to understand it is not as seeing it as reflection on action, but insisting on the odd split the ability of reflection and action, using using the work of grant shear, the Italian Marxist to very much culture into account, what we're trying to do is to insist that everybody is an intellectual, that you are not just see, one of the things we're expanding women is that we are called upon to participate in things which we don't decide. We're qualified to be present in actions, but not at the decision making level, our capacity to conceptualize so our insistence on looking at ourselves, as organic intellectuals, as people, in our own doing, are also reflecting and also have the intellectual ability to conceptualize to decide that for us is extremely important. So when we talk about the creation, of the origins, of praxis, that's also something that is very. You look at kind of those three things I've said, you get to see that for us, the doing of theology becomes a subversive activity, it becomes not so much something for the sake of academia or for the sake of institutional church. But it becomes for the sake of the church as the people or for the people as the church. It's much more connected to what we call in our culture, popular religiosity. And popular unpopular in our sense, translating back from the Spanish doesn't mean watered down, or less thought through, it simply means for good, that means belonging to be being off the grassroots. And that that is when we talk about popular religiosity for us. Basically, what has happened is that in Latin America, over 90% of the people there relate to the Roman Catholic Church. You're not very actively relation, we have our own way every day. But when you call, talk to the wives of what church to go, watch or to belong to their site, Roman Catholic, here in the United States, most of the statistic that we have is about 80% of Hispanic still relate to the Catholic Church doesn't mean that we all go to the Catholic Church, by the way, Unknown Speaker 13:44 to Pentecostal churches to different denomination first and the nomination churches but if you ask them what you are those like the Roman Catholic, just because Roman Catholicism is so much an integral part of our culture, but what what, what has happened is that there has been just a tremendous abandonment by these churches, not only Roman Catholics, but also those that are and what why must keep the character of faith alive is popular religiosity is the way that the people have understood the faith the way they have practiced it, which is many times not necessarily connected to the institutional ways of practicing your faith in your religion. So, when you look at popular religiosity, which is very central, in our in our theology, because it is central in the life of what we are trying to stress the fact that you can only be you have to consider the size of Christianity to other strands of religious traditions that are extremely important. And that is the African religions stress and the Amerindian American Indian stress in the Caribbean, almost exclusively, the African It's dry, which can mean of course with with the whole issue of slavery was very strong, very strong. I come from Cuba and the, the African that you know what your Aruba religions from the Yoruba tribes that gold trap is very aggressively popular with PTSD among Cubans, Puerto Ricans. Now, when you talk more about the southwest of the United States, and you talk about Mexicans, then there what is present is under Indian kind of religious strength coming from aspect religions, especially the Aztec undermine your religions. So now, more and more migration also from South America, some of the understandings of the ego are also very progressive, that has to do a lot more with the ego got he was much more I think, god that is caring God, the lack the Earth is the God of the Arctic religion, having conquered other religions in that area was more like understanding of divinity, and so forth. That that is very key for us, because the institutional churches have not wanted Unknown Speaker 16:17 to deal with that. Unknown Speaker 16:19 And we see that as the churches joined on who the dominant culture in society to keep all the religious trends that affect the culture away from or do not take any closer integration. One last point, I can spot for all of you excellent, is the whole issue of the eye, I work, especially in the field of moral theology, or social ethics. And one of the big concerns that, that we have, along those lines is seeing our theology or our social ethics, not so much as talking about the development abroad character, which is usually the kind of language that is used to that field as the enhancement of moral agents. That's one of the real big products in our communities, is that the attempt to control Hispanics to control the Hispanic women to control the Hispanic males, by the churches telling them what they need to say what they need to do, by ignoring the very strong sense of religion within the culture, instead of using religion to enhance the moral agency, so we can be agents of our own history, still very much trying to pacify us and act upon us and using religion. To calm us down, so they can act upon us. So we are working in the theology field saying no, we are doing this in order to enhance oral agency in order to make people understand that they are responsible for who they are, what they become for what they think, and helping them within the end of the day. To define what are the values, what are the norms, that we want to observe that we want that we really treasure, and that we want to be the basis for who we are. But that's, that's so much work in general that we're trying to meet for the Unknown Speaker 18:50 first time on a separate thing. And also, just think, back to ancestors, my ancestors, African ancestors, for them to be here. 60 people spoke this morning into order. And thanks to you for being here. And now what I ask you to take two minutes and write them down because I have these questions. And I want to explore these things after I'm going to talk to you for about two minutes. But how is spirit or spirituality in your life allows you to make a transformation or made shifts and the three things that I've been looking at one from yourself a woman as a victim, to a woman, as a survivor, to a woman as a healer, as an activist, as someone with a vision of what she's fighting for her family and community and through all that in one spirit, spirits relationship to power in your life. Shut up the rest of you. Thank you. And before we go around and share all that I just want to share my background is looking for signs when I got into seminary was it easy for a short time I hated it. So I left early. And I get good salaries term the unchurched. I mean a believer in spirituality with believer in God and people with certain institutions, I could not function well, as institutions, I had to leave. But I was organizing, and I was in Africa at one point, and the need, and this is why I like so much Hayes's presentation this morning, is that the material conditions have always got to be there, or consciousness. And other you point out to that to the economic, political, cultural. It's almost like a five, the groups that have existed on our consciousness, but also on our physical sales. But along with those material condition of that kind of spirit that can break through whatever the given constraints are. And so within Africa, organizing with people whose politics I respect him very much, but we're discussions of the spirit, consciously acknowledging that we do have spirituality, that it needs to be developed just as we develop our political selves. That discussion never happened. So I sort of sought the seminaries, kind of not just a refuge, but a training ground for that. And my experience, other people have different experiences. But my experience is that Unknown Speaker 22:46 what I'm doing now I'm teaching at a university now in Miami University in Oxford, and the Midwest is claim country. So it's reality, the Klan marches to Oxford. And I've been working with the students. And it's interesting because of women's students are meeting this. And they don't consciously talk about their politics, or their spirituality, but the way they lead their lives, it just shows it, and the most conscious women leadership or aka around people, with the African American Women's sorority, but they have provided the point of leadership around the clan, with the entire university population of 16,000. And a student population, African American is only 300. But these women are key. And it's almost like what you can learn from them about spirit and what you learn from them about politics. And that's where my head is right now. I mean, it's partly here in this room. But it's also out in Miami, university out in Oxford, where 1819 2021 year old women are dealing with the Klan, and some very real serious ways that just didn't react. And that's why he asked me to think about how you saw the shift from victim to survivor to a huge like a war, a woman who's just full in being a very conscious about what she wants to share around power and liberation. And I was in this meeting with a student who I know this isn't going to be the bulk of my task, but they have a lot of power these women, and it's a coalition of gay and lesbian women, it's African American women, and it's Jewish women. And they're also submitted, but out of the 5045. So I'm sitting here and I'm just watching them speak about their lives. And part of it is to speak bitterly session about the victimization, about the assaults physically assaulted. So they were, of course, spiritually and psychologically, but they shift from that after the, you know, the acknowledgement of the pain to an identification of what the opposition is, and then the development strategy, and that's going on in a lot of different spaces that I just wanted to share my recent encounter with that, I want to talk about three things very quickly. So Spirit space and struggle, and spirit. For me, having been in seminary having taught ethics at a local New York Theological Seminary, what other had pointed to earlier that there really is no break between the secular and the sacred, even though this culture of dualism is the norm. And then you have the opposite. And I liked a lot when he was talking about it, we'll talk about the choice of different, but it's like, how can we be in this world, very cold, very centered, given the way in which this culture wants to shake reality wants to shake hands. And that's into fragmentation. And I think that's the word that we were using, and traditional African Cup molecules. And also a number of traditional religions, outdated, Native American religions, as well bring this, they distill all this reality into one unified being, and you participate in it as a living person. And what I've been noticing lately lately in terms of acro centricity, that's a word that's used a lot in academic circles. He was talking about African American states. But also, if you look at that New York Times article on hearing those kids love to talk about the concept of Afro centricity, which is, which states that there's a philosophical, theological, spiritual way of being that is very African. And it's very centered, if you see some of the transformations in the churches now the Catholic Church. And not to say that, I mean, there are contradictions in everything. And when we go around, we can talk about the contradictions, all our lives, but Imani Temple, which is in DC, with Reverend Stalin's, that the Catholic Church with an afro centric content. There's also the shrine of the Black Madonna, which Reverend Cleese has started with, I think it's done in Detroit in parts. And Atlanta as well. And that's a very spiritually powerful movement, where you don't deny being African. And you don't even deny the category of race, which means a spoke somewhat to this morning, but where you're centered in it, and it's a center meant that based in power, there to move in from Spirit to a discussion of space. I believe that we not only carry the spirit, or the spirits with them, based on our consciousness of having looked up, I've started by thinking beings, because really, the ancestors are what kept me alive and survive, and also get me through seminary, he kept me out of seminary. Unknown Speaker 27:46 But that society has a spirit to, and that it's not only the positive spirit that endures, but it's also evil that endures. And you know, so often, there's not a serious discussion of people. I mean, I don't know if it's this liberal culture or evil doesn't really exist, there's only excesses, like, you know, that you get too carried away. And you get when you get too carried away, and you get the lynching and you set pockets, but those are just like aberration. But you don't talk about the spirit of a culture of a society as being fundamentally corrupt. You know, it's fundamentally to see. And, you know, the only power that we bring into this space is a space that is structured by me, people were very clear. That's why I want to start off talking about victimization. We're very clear about the racism, the heterosexism and sexism, classism, you know, in the ANSYS workday in April 22, this destruction of nature that is so much the norm in this society. And so when you walk in with your spirit, and you're socializing this, I mean, how would we internalize this family that goes on and it's almost like schizophrenia, when you try to break out what you really thinner, and you do have this covering, you know, support, not only from your family, not only from your material, physical relationships, but also from your spiritual relationship, which within, you know, African religion, also, I think, Christianity as well transcend time, that whole notion of that your ancestors who preceded you, and your children who come leaving, not your biological, but your children were coming later, that there's this whole connectedness. So the time just spreads out like that, and that as we act today, it has a ripple effect. This space so that I'm concerned about in terms of the violence, it seems to be a space in which warfare is the norm. Okay. And it's almost like your proximity to war zones. And for those people who actually live under the daily fire, they're very, very candid about the extent of the violence in this society. And for those of us who have relative amounts of privilege I know at the university, that faculty members and administrators, African American, sometimes we've been more complacent than the students about the Klan, and a cleaner coming with the skinheads. So they have different levels of violence. And sometimes because of our money or education or status, and whatever we get over, I know that the privilege of of whiteness and white culture, you know, distance you the privilege of money distance you the privilege of heterosexuality distances you from the actual state in intensity of violent assaults that go on on all different levels. But the two minutes I want to talk about violence engineered by the state, I don't use the word government anymore. I'm looking at hearings in the state, and I was glad to hear what you're talking about master narrative. She was referring it Unknown Speaker 30:53 in my understanding of the different markets, interpretations of reality, and the ways in which governments function, I'm what was called a military brat when I was growing up. My father was a career only because when he tried to leave after being drafted, he didn't quit, only to find a job as a cook. So when back in, but didn't have the military in mind, he was in Korea, the invasion of Dominican Republic, Vietnam War twice. And so growing up in our household, we were very clear that the state had a certain perspective in relationship to violence, and that it organized people in the business may not be your notion of domestic policy or foreign policy. But if you punch in a due date, it has this effect in shaping not only your identity, but also how you behave and how you function. The particular government that were the government, they were functioning within now has one parent who gets the word gets thrown out a lot. But sometimes people look at domestic Pupcake foreign policies, when I see them coming from one set of policies, one organized paradigm, domestic policy does not contradict foreign policy in this country, I deal with any country either, and that racism and sexism or just the rock of the domestic policies that structured it historically and structured in this nation, and that warfare is just it that is like the you that's grand view that you start from. And so if you look at domestic wars, if you looked at the COINTELPRO, and I noticed that there was a war just recently released during the Civil War with the incarcerated for 19 years illegally, Black Panther, and they finally admitted that they had suppressed evidence in this trial. But the degree of COINTELPRO through the assassination that happened in late 60s and 70s, is very well defined as this notion of state and what the legitimate actions have stayed off. But if you looked at the police, and I think we need to talk about the police more, in terms of the function, all organized groups, that by their definition, organized violence. And the police do that the military do that the state guard the National Guard do that, that we as women, that we as people who are conscious about our spirituality and our politics, that we look more closely at violence, and the sources of violence, organized violence in society. And that the way in which the police and the military, the National Guard, treat poor people, people of color in this country is very much in line with your treatment of so called third world people throughout the world. That basically, all the warfare of the future will be against the so called Third World, the papers already out of that you can get them from Heritage Foundation. When the think tank guys came together, Kissinger and others said it this was recorded correctly, Berlin Wall, it's not going to be east west anymore, because that's not even wonderful. But you could invade Canada. I mean, you could, you know, have death squads operating Guatemala, you could find the government in North Salvador, you could fund have a CIA trained South African security police, you could help destabilize Southern Africa. And that the racialization of identity it takes to put it out in this country permits the act of violence. To briefly cause the amount of discussion of space looking at the statement go to the last part on struggle. I would say that. As women, the effects of the so called Low Intensity conflict on the lives of women were rape is now part of the political training and interrogation, whatever destabilization but also that this militancy comes like can also be engineered by IMF policies by the World Bank. The fact now is that Africa and Latin America are poor and In the Caribbean now than they were 20 years ago, because they save 20 plus billion dollars annually to the US, North America and Western Europe because of this, this debt system that's going on, that these structures can even though they seem to have tentacles that go so far, they do have a central base. And then if you look at the state more closely, and if organization of volunteers perpetuation of institutionalized that, that's one way of coming about it in terms of struggling. Now then the last section on struggle. It's almost like, for me, what it is we bring in our daily lives and keep continuing, particularly when we're under siege, and as I mentioned, there's degrees and intensity of, of how we're living in the ways in which were surviving. Unknown Speaker 35:57 This space that were weren't happening at this moment, but there are, they're struggling in terms of both on an intellectual theoretical level, which Hazel did so well, this morning. And also in terms of political practice, theory, in practice, which gets us to the practice that I want to talk about Patricia Hill Collins, she's an African American social theorist, and she's been doing work on the social construction of black feminist thought. And she's talking about our licensed African American women. And what Maya Angelou said recently, when she was at Miami is that our lives are very rich and very powerful, as are the lives of many other women. But that all women can learn from from looking at our lives, which we can also learn from looking at the lives of indigenous native American women, from poor women from working class women, and then life. And not to objectify lives or having like a treatment on your child in terms of a commodity that you can see on the syllabus, or in a curriculum, but how we spend for the lives of women and struggle, kind of opens the parameters of what's possible. But with Collins is wide, and she's talking about four basic things that you call this basic African woman is epistemology, a way of knowing and being in the world. And one that you have to have concrete experience is a criteria of meaning that sometimes there's this reverence for tat, you know, which is important because we see ourselves as scholars and students, you go back and forth to do your both have time, but then we trust the experiences in our lives, we give them more credit than academia gives them credit. And then the second thing is that dialogue in a setting, you know, these places this is true, if there's this discussion going on, so I will start with you into that discussion. You know, we get into it, but then the dialogue becomes the basis for evaluation. In June, Jordan had an article on political ethics, she was there's no passive voice construction possible in Black English, where the eye or the reason doing is very much a real part of reality. The third thing is ethics. That even they have Texas intellectual experience that obviously without hearing, and that there's an ethic built on that makes it all superfluous. And then it's fun. Once you get the ethic of personal accountability, I'm worthy. The eye is very much in practice. That was the intellectual construct the political, the things that I had been looking at, I felt also 14 one is acknowledging that we have a historical tradition of liberation, which again, brings us back to our ancestors, elevator, Fannie Lou Hamer, Harriet Tubman, that there are just a host of women who preceded us. It's interesting that the women started organizing my next plan. After we organized the women's Film Festival in Oxford, one of the poems was on how to do well. So really began her work in the anti lynching campaign, what her parents died when she was 16. She took over the family that she became Unknown Speaker 39:24 very, Unknown Speaker 39:27 very much of spiritual political force in the community, not only affecting the lives of African people, but also white southerners in Tennessee, but at 20. I think it was 20 to 22 because of the lynchings and her writing as a jury, she encouraged the African population to migrate West and 1000s left, which seriously damaged economy, which was dependent on African stores controlled by whites and so forth. But to the students that were only 12 are watching the store. It was an ancestor. And then of course, you know, what are you going to do with your own mental health and survival? And that's when they're organizing to play. So I think recognizing our legacies important. The second thing is this practice where revolutionary again, I'm glad you brought that word up. The word revolutionaries hardly ever use, or maybe why? I don't hear it. So maybe where you are, is used more commonly, but even the definition, what, what does it mean to you have a revolutionary way of life, it's almost like how ritual becomes part of your daily reality, but also acts resistance in ways in which you are not, you know, we all have to set limits, right. But in ways in which you feel that you do have the freedom to remove that you are changing the burden shift, shifting, expanding things, pushing out the borders. So how revolutionary acts become a way of life. The third is the analysis of opposition, which is the counter revolution. I think that people need to study more closely. What a fascist nation. I mean, there are things happening in Eastern Europe, they're very interesting, but also, the neo Nazi Party is out again, but particularly in a country that's based on genocidal acts. You know, if you think that this country has escaped that spirit, you know, for that reason for being even though it's so called X number of decades or centuries since the last formal, organized onslaught of violence, which I totally disagree with, it's a different form. But that the whole notion of what Fascism is to get back to definitions and analysis of what counter revolutionary wars are, because they're not just foreign force, but also domestic. And then the fun thing is, these everyday acts of resistance Unknown Speaker 41:58 would also Unknown Speaker 42:00 entail and this is why I went through it open for discussion. I would argue, supporting armed struggle, it's usually never a discussion that happens. I'm looking for an appointment with the dentist. But I've, you know, I've been in spaces with, particularly women, in which the whole notion of supporting the ANC is just totally taboo, that liberation theologians who say, Well, I can't say, because I don't want this as a condition because depthwise don't come to my house. But still, you know, they would say, well, he or she's not doing liberation theology, they're doing something else. So I don't know where and when the organized spirituality juice line, that said that people were trying to survive serious material, physical violence, and who choose options we may not agree with her understand. But where we drew that line said, that was out of the realm of living from spiritual discussion. And the article I'm trying to punch came in at the moment. It was in yesterday's times. Article, it was on Milwaukee, African American community in Milwaukee. Well, they were just some of the article, it was a discussion of reviving African American historically wouldn't happen around the Panthers. And it was a discussion where the African American community were one of the council members elected to public council that said, the African American community organized, whatever was necessary so that we don't basically have sectors of our community starving to death or dying from high infant mortality rate. And, you know, I think that's an important thing to discuss, whatever, wherever we come down on it, but there's an important thing to discuss what it means to support the integration and all the tests don't know if you want to share with you wrote down? I think it's exciting Unknown Speaker 44:38 that the work that has been done around with the systems and, you know, Unknown Speaker 44:49 it really hit home when you talk Unknown Speaker 44:50 about the historical perspective in terms of presence lack of mental health. And there's a real concern that what is what is happening around this very optimistic. And the idea is that they are outrageous. Some of you can't do Unknown Speaker 45:16 this this low level, this low level intelligence intensive low intensity conflict, Unknown Speaker 45:28 I can see it and the work it does in terms of disabling, stabilizing us in terms Unknown Speaker 45:36 of allowing us to kind of just step over or not. Unknown Speaker 45:46 But if we get desensitized by this low level of discipline disempowered, but then to, to have a group of women Unknown Speaker 46:00 realize that you know, Unknown Speaker 46:06 it might have been okay, for some, you know, that's it. I don't, Unknown Speaker 46:12 I don't. But the idea is that Unknown Speaker 46:15 this is encroaching, closing. Personally, remember? Unknown Speaker 46:26 And basically, that's what we were trying to do is for us to Unknown Speaker 46:30 recognize, how are we immediately now in the present? Unknown Speaker 46:35 And very often, you know, it erupts with the first crowd, you know, where it's just still call it Unknown Speaker 46:53 the national bathroom. Unknown Speaker 46:55 And it was near city branches hold small, so corporate, or personal issues in our lives? What are we going to do? Unknown Speaker 47:08 I mean, that is a daily decision, Unknown Speaker 47:22 calling for the Spirit Unknown Speaker 47:24 took recognizing spirits, which are really Unknown Speaker 47:31 just another question and camouflaged especially. Unknown Speaker 47:39 That would be my question, or my comments on the whole issue of how Unknown Speaker 47:51 it seems to be that, at least in my culture, religion has been used in many ways. Church to use church, religion has been used as a quieting forces there was a revolutionary, which is what I think probably religiosity we have been extremely because of, we have been extremely polite about it. And as an outsider, to the black community, I feel the same way that you know, there's not the black community has not taken to task B, on revolutionary times over black churches when it comes to the issue of women. And many, many, maybe I'm not, maybe I'm wrong about that. But it seems to me that your position, Jocelyn, as you can do is be our church. I mean, I totally understand and agree with, but how do we want my will says about organized religion is that it's a powerful, influential aspect of society. And that's why in spite of over pay, I want to keep at it. And how do we keep adding, and like you say, at the same time, keep our sanity, which is not easy, at least in my culture. Unknown Speaker 49:26 I mean, I still am in church, but I'm going to the AME Church, and I get a lot of comments. And you know, also they need to be in community in the community that has spiritual cracks. And I don't even want to get into critique on the Christian church. And there's a lot of beauty and strength in that, particularly in the black church, and there's a lot of contradiction. But I also remember like, prophesied deliverance, Cornel West We'll take a look at that. But he gets to this last section. And he talks about and this is the one. I mean, I don't want to limit this discussion to Christianity, because I don't think Christianity is it. I mean, they're all the other religious traditions that are living in full. But and I guess this particular go to those other religions too, there's something about drawing lines about and now, you know, that sometimes what happens inside of church and I'm the pastor of Bethel AME Church is very much committed to community, but he talks about the resistance inside the church about engaging in political activism, you know, and also engaged in social analysis, as well political and political. And when I was working at the UN church center, I mean, I would say the dominant church and design a church, that is shrinking membership, right. And there's a rise in the Mormon church. They were clear about their politics, but they were not revolutionary. There was management politics, you know, why wouldn't it be adequate liberal privilege way? Money church, it's not going to be revolutionary politics. But if you're going to be there, and if you're going to be in these other religious institutions, that how's that? You know, that tell me about your spirit and your presence, your intellectual, your spiritual and physical presence, kind of like it's like a spark or something? And I don't know the answers to that does, they're just think they're running. Thank you for Unknown Speaker 51:44 bringing up I am. And I don't, I don't often when across people, groups such as this, you have. I was one of those people who's excuse me, finally, retirement, living. For 13 years more specifically, Spain, much of my mother's family comes from. And I think one friend of mine with similar experience described us as children of empire, because we have a leg in each culture and yet the role of the Spirit in my life took place very much around my parents church, I was going to school Spaniards, I was in all respects, but a few. And this was around the time that Franco was alive when just before he died. This was a time when the church itself was very much divided in the hierarchy, which still stood very much within these classes as an ability was the overstay and others who wish to remain what was that was, and then there were the parish churches, and these were totally and if there is even discuss the matter of armed resistance, they actually gave shelter to activists, they supported the local workers. And that into a lot of trouble, the same goes to things such as supporting streets and streets in my neighborhood. So that was variously the tradition, yes, Unknown Speaker 53:29 that is the spirituality of Unknown Speaker 53:32 the spiritual place that helped me through their dysfunctional family. And yet, when I moved here into this foreign country, I found my vision of spirit and I found my definition of what it was a spiritual person, very changing. I found that challenged, the only constant is my relationship as you describe the church with your deity, whoever he or she may be so very fuzzy on that. And it is still I would say, one of the major constants in my life that enables me to be in the woods. Yet, I cannot find this in today's Catholic Church in America. Unknown Speaker 54:24 Second thing that I found back home was the base community communities in the organization that might give meaning and again, Unknown Speaker 54:34 spirit. But here's kind of like a holding pattern. I'm not sure if they really understand or relate to what I'm saying. It's sort of like, in one place. There was something to work for something, some objective, something that found together. And here it's like it's the law, not only a 123 extents the American apply to Catholic churches but also many Hispanic churches. And Unknown Speaker 55:05 it's it's almost Unknown Speaker 55:05 as legalistic, we have these little coded things. And you're supposed to do all these little things and do all these little things here as a Catholic. And there's very little discussion of person in relation to the spirit in relationship. So that's where I am. Unknown Speaker 55:34 Interested in the church idea, because I really grew up sort of unchurched. I grew up in a church, and just didn't do any work for two years, and then two years. Unknown Speaker 55:56 Calling to seminary, Unknown Speaker 55:57 and my experience, has some sort of intention, pretty much intentions. But I really liked your Unknown Speaker 56:14 description of the spirit, and it's united, Unknown Speaker 56:17 participate in, because I'm always that's just how I've always thought of it. But I also take spirituality out, I think spirituality is expressed Unknown Speaker 56:32 many different ways, many different types of theater. I can get their spiritual Unknown Speaker 56:41 express in the shares or whenever and wherever it is. And I think that that is very important to have a sense of power that can't really be articulated, but that feels strong and writes, passion, and movement towards justice, spirituality and college. And I think if we unchurched ourselves, people just naturally will cling on to institutions, in the society. And morning, I woke up and the first thing I heard on the news was the trial a candidate name and killed his wife, John. And the explanation that the institution is someone to give on to when they lose religion is psychiatry, psychology. And the explanation for this is, is that the tension with his wife's the fact that she couldn't raise his children. Unknown Speaker 57:50 And that he was raised implicitly by his mother, to not ask for any help. And this is the reason why he lost his sanity. And this is the reason why he feels this way. And that's an explanation that is righteous. And I think as we go away for avoiding Unknown Speaker 58:16 spirituality, it's just going to get worse Unknown Speaker 58:27 the needs to decline Unknown Speaker 58:38 it comes to credit. But what kind are types of spirituality? Because there's just so much out there. And I really like I mean, the project, like put me over the coals. That last retreat, I just had to come to terms with things about myself, because I was always politically organizing out there in the community, I was never dealing with my own inbound. Unknown Speaker 59:12 Stuff like that. Unknown Speaker 59:13 But see, the What worries me is, again, the split between the internal and the external, because everyone is hoping like some in some way they call it the post Christian movement, which I have so many students. But these claims that are being made, I'm looking right now, when it's fictional, Andrews medicine woman or there's no like that, but their claims being made by people who are physically non Indians. That now they're Indian, you know, or did your African indo European and there's this search because there is a spiritual crisis in this country. There's a search for spirituality but it's almost addicting internally out but it's completely severed from the material position. So I don't know how you can be African or Indian. I just want the power of the internal power and that deal with the genocidal warfare, you know, and it almost there again, and I don't want to reduce it to a personal psychological reason I grew up in a military family, it's like looking somewhere. But that there just, there's a certain thing about this culture that if what I find really troubling is the lack of an informed political consciousness that's guided by a spirituality that is very loving, centered, and very clear that I don't, I don't, I guess I don't see that in a lot of places. And I have a hard time keeping it to myself, even like in political struggle, how hatred doesn't become my basic energy. So there are a lot of things. And kind of rightly so. But how, you know, love still, it's part of you. But I don't want you know, when people started talking about spirit, and then they don't have a political now. And I'm, I'm struggling. I mean, no one's saying it's bad. But it's, it's just words. And I don't know where to where reality, concrete material reality comes in. Unknown Speaker 1:01:26 That's, that's the problem. I said at the beginning, that's the real primer that I have been talking about spirituality, because no matter how long you say, well, it's not what I need. That still wasn't boring to me. In society at large, it's more simple the reality of the situation at hand. And I think most of the time, in my experience in the way circles where spirituality is for you in word, the what happens is what what the speaker was saying before that there's no analysis of the power issue. So what I think what it does is disconnect, it, just foment individualism that is interesting to the society. Because the spirit is between me and God, Unknown Speaker 1:02:13 and it has Unknown Speaker 1:02:15 very little relationship to community, your community survived the humanity of struggle. I was interested with what the Finnish armed struggle was in the liberation theology, which started that. Initial formulations, when they put it that way, was back in America, the in 1969, there was a big struggle, and we won. So the quote, when that time came to light, the very day in Colombia would not be take armed, rebellion armed guerrilla movement is specific. So because what what we saw was that there was an ongoing, institutionalized violence. And that's what needs to be. That other kind of armed struggles are really a reaction against institutionalized violence, which everybody seems to agree it's fine. But it's only when the opposition to the status quo that's violent, that then they want to disagree with our struggle. So but before for me, the only issue of how do we how can we have one piece and how is our analysis of one piece without regaining that there are different aspects in that you can always talk about one of them integrated, that you might need to do some analysis separately, something very key. What scares me most is that I come from the community came because it is solely to African religions and other Indian religions, or this sense of unity is very much part of the culture and and in this country, that that gets very much trash. There's this the trend or secularization and door splitting, and say, Well, this is for the private sector. This is this happens that is happening today. One last thing, which I think we need to do is a woman that years ago who influenced me very much an activist and there was monitoring to it. And Margie always said, do not make maintenance or she institutions are not your goal at all. So your institutions is not to keep your ecological seminary going or Barnard College or even this conference for your institution is called liberation, salvation, whatever you want to call that radical end in which We all can become fully intended to be. And for me, that's a real challenge because you tend to find your own niche and get very comfortable, which again, I think is what was being said earlier this morning. And what that article I think, in the New York Times magazine that she was referring to this was kind of saying about the way women's black African American studies have been brought up and the participation in American scholars. So that to keep the goal in mind, but also not not as a goal that there needs to be united, it becomes part of the strategy. You will not just guided by what we're trying to achieve, but that that is part of how we strategize. So you know how I'm excited to keep saying that in a place where the African American community so many policy university you work yet, yet they are motivated. They have no obviously not political savvy to be able to effectively organize the Climate Unknown Speaker 1:06:09 Coalition to the communities to play cheaper cinema. Indiana is the whole that's all clan country, particularly with the foreclosure. And this is interesting YouTube, who is organizing? The cleaning, for what progressive white people and I know, there are some I need, we need to think more about this. What progressive white people organizing for white people who are told you lost your farm, the clan is throwing farm party. There's Baby clean. I mean, there's just this hope we will guide you we have the spiritual for that spirit, and exist. And we have a vision. Okay, so obviously, we're not going to go out in depth, not our function. So then my question is, you know, well, who's doing it? And obviously, again, I'm looking for my dad, my boyfriend. Yeah, I think there's more people one thing when you're talking, I was in Panama on November. And then when I came back, and somebody called me into the morning, and I turned to him, and I was just completely amazed at Peter, and completely redoing history in reality, just like that, and electricity glowing. And this and this lack of information that Catherine, I mean, the Pentagon with the wings, or whatever invasion has happened, and you went for weeks, and you couldn't get a bottle of Panamanian Catholic and then when you did, it was like 200. And yeah, and other people said they, you know, they use this stuff bomber. Now the same thing I said, Well, we only drank kale. But you know, they're playing that there were 1000s their claims they were Masquerade. Their claims you will never get by the campus like you won't ever get a fight camp. How many dead in El Salvador, and then the new war, or the drug wars, and he goes into new Ward, and then the new villain are African and Latino men, even though pride which is apparently the research says that 75% of caregivers are white. But when you turn on the TV, these are business who's pushing the dailies, Napa ca Christic Institute already documented Unknown Speaker 1:08:34 what was going on with the CIA, John Bolton, everybody in the Methodist Women church will unite and part of that gathering information. But now you have this new religious crusade going on to the purity of a nation. And you have who are the people who are collecting the nation that are easily identifiable. They live in certain neighborhoods, and the only solution is not your solution, which has four I think it was close to billion over 70% of that is from memory sharing. There's practically no money for me. And if there is my rehab, we will go to December. So everything else is just this is the art of Unknown Speaker 1:09:12 the tourism. What was happening and you're watching so anyway, I mean, all those things are kinda like pregnant I Unknown Speaker 1:09:31 might be being here is sort of strange for me, in a way because I don't think in terms of spirituality. And you know, I find it interesting. You said when you said that, you don't talk about spirituality because it's not a separate thing. And I grew up in my early childhood in a non religious household, although I think in some ways it must have been household which Values Ethics very high because I've grown up to be a very ethical person, always I think, and I, you know, I struggle with those issues. And I think that, you know, of course, if I sort of pull back and try to unload the bad connotations I have about things like spirituality, the word spirituality, of course, I'm a very spiritual person, that that is somehow a motivator for what I do in the world, and how I try to bring my life into a way that conforms to the things that I believe should happen, and happen some places and don't happen others. You know, I guess I could see it as a as a means of keeping yourself from going crazy and keeping, keeping myself from, you know, getting totally caught up in, in the hatred motive, as she said, that, that kind of energy, destroy you, as well as the things that in fact, you would like to preserve. So I don't, I don't often think in that word, maybe a lot of the terms. But that, you know, the, the evolving of consciousness, you know, I have certain awareness of certain stages of that for me, and then, you know, at a certain point, I realized that the place where I was working with totally unethical for me to be in, you know, and that the reason why I was there was because I was afraid I was not going to get the job, that it was my first job. And I was really worried about not being able to support myself economically. But that once I could see that I could allow that. The realities of what that was that was supporting a military economy and what that meant to the people that I lived with, next to around, cared about what that meant to all of us. And to me, because I knew, in some sense, I was feeding myself with it, but I was also hurting myself with it, that I had to leave. And you know, so different realizations over time have made me made real concrete changes in my life, because I realized that those things had concrete changes on the larger world, my more intimate roles, and on my personal Unknown Speaker 1:12:36 survival. Unknown Speaker 1:12:39 And it, you know, I'm still, of course, going through different struggles. And I and I think a lot about Unknown Speaker 1:12:47 issues of Unknown Speaker 1:12:52 violence and armed struggle, and I'm not, you know, not by any means. I know, you know, that some of the efforts I make have to do with the material realities, I practice tax resistance, which I don't think is very prevalent in this country, which I find shocking, you know, and in fact, I think that, my sense is that what extent there is that activism is in different religious communities. But my, from what I can see, I just don't see it, it's almost invisible. And so I feel actually very surprised that this is not a bigger thing. And that it is because the money directly fuels, the weapons and the weapon economy and the wars. So there's that. Oh, so, you know, on the one hand, I'm trying to withdraw some of my real resources and redirect as real resources into peace and into more justice alternatives. On the other hand, I think about well, under what circumstances would I be fighting back in this? I guess you're saying is about it is, it's alright for a cop to carry a gun. It's not okay for a girl to carry a gun or for me, you know, as a woman fighting back to carry a gun. And so but I guess that through my struggles with like, consciousness, am I trying to make the world I would like, make myself closer to that in my present, real world. That I mean, I have seen people change. I've seen myself change and I'm really wary about using words like evil because I think they, of course, very often get used against the people that I care about. I mean, I just, there's certain kinds of things that I can get reflected back to easily so I really, I think a lot of that. I also use that word in my own thinking sometimes. So it's a real issue. And I mean, I, I believe in personal self defense, I believe that out on the street, if a guy tries to right me that I'm going to fight back and I will kill him. But, you know, I'm still struggling with what that means larger. And what that means to my spiritual existence. You know, if I made that decision, where's my spirit gonna line up? Unknown Speaker 1:15:39 Can you talk about even what you do with this person? That would never want you to be evil? But can you talk about evil in which they were instituted? Like, I don't think that should have particularly what they do, you know, given the amount of time. But is there a way to say that institution, you know, certain institutions or use the word you know, synonymous and that may cease? Similarly, Unknown Speaker 1:16:21 I think there's structural Unknown Speaker 1:16:29 racism classes. Unknown Speaker 1:16:31 Yep. I guess he was so emotionally loaded for me and doesn't when I looked at it closely, it fades away in terms of how do I define that? And, you know, corruptness, I think I mean, I think that's a really interesting, look at what that means. And I think structural sort of intractability, and, you know, I mean, I, I'm not saying that I will never, ever use that word, but I have, by no means come to an understanding in myself. What that means. And I know that it's used in the world is very scary, because, of course, evil is most often used by the fundamentalist right to talk about people like us. You know, and I don't I don't want Unknown Speaker 1:17:14 to just flip it bad either. And I don't want to argue about semantics, either. I mean, can we agree that, you know, some of the by the jump by the UN, insurgents in developing countries? So this is a Unknown Speaker 1:17:35 this is evil, it's corrupt, and it's dizzy? I mean, can we agree on those? Unknown Speaker 1:17:40 I don't want to say no clock before Unknown Speaker 1:17:42 we can all agree on everything. You know, that. Unknown Speaker 1:17:47 Just see, I have a question about the word corrupt. Corrupt, to me implies that it was good that was changed, or that is, is you're able to change it back. And I'm struggling. Yeah, I'm not sure. I'm wondering where evil is real life force. That doesn't matter. But it's happening, all that's happening. And why Unknown Speaker 1:18:18 don't we can do right. And if that is the point, Unknown Speaker 1:18:20 because too, right. I think that if we need to, to know what to do we need to have this tech strategy. We we need to know what we're dealing with? And are we dealing with a good that has gotten robbed? Are we dealing with a horse just playing needs Armed Forces again? Unknown Speaker 1:18:34 What are we good at? Well, I think Unknown Speaker 1:18:38 I think to a certain extent, evil is like, like obscenity is one Supreme Court Justice defined it is. If I recall exactly how to set it, he said, I can't describe it, but I know what it is. And then you respond to that. And I think that when we see something like the John was the thing, and I believe quite honestly, in my heart that this is evil. And when we see certain church officials or other persons punching down on women because of birth control, because of how many children they have, or how future they have or how they wish to live or not to learn from their sexual orientation, I believe that that is evil. And yet that is closed as a society, certain things that we would see we perceive as evil are cloaked as advices. uses in the court system of uses very directly. I think one of the best one of the best responses of the plan that to the plan that I saw was many years ago in Austin, Texas when I was in college, where they tried the previous year where they marched through town lines every single year. There's been a number of injured people. Then a bunch of people started thinking, Unknown Speaker 1:20:08 what would happen to be able to rally and nobody came? Unknown Speaker 1:20:13 And nobody came. And that was it. We're big men here. And that was one way of doing evil out of our community. So I think, you know, we finding what pleases us it's a slippery slope Unknown Speaker 1:20:38 as this obscenity, you can see it, you can react to it. But how you define standards nobody has said the word. community, I think, is a big part of Unknown Speaker 1:20:58 the response has to be we think it's going to power with the spiritual care just this morning on NPR to Kenya, extremely worst. Very, very organized into corporate makes. So successful competition of dementia, they'll never, never have done the damage. And one of them's the one keeps them on. She said, the trust really. Don't ever try to judge anybody. It wasn't a long struggle. Back here, you Unknown Speaker 1:22:01 know what I like to say, let's try to do it in a peaceful way. But she was she was excited about the fact of trust, trusted, that they never, they never seem to think that I might take for them. The reality. She showed me all the books was just, it's just like, and then another one we talked about. Before story was the husband. One day, which we really need to study and to be able to earn a living was really either for that house was uploaded. But she said, You think first and she said a long time ago, but she had no way of saying that. She went, she never went back. She became liberated from that horrible pressure. Just I think that the consciousness of being it doesn't endear other people, but now they're doing a co op to build themselves. Nice. Liberals as strong as the ones that building tiles for several months from the console every way. They're improving their life. But I think they're doing it. And you know, what gets me gets really upset. I've worked with coops. And what gets me is that they do it. They're in Kenya, the blocks over here. That's because we have Unknown Speaker 1:23:35 the media showing us everyone wants to buy into the existing power structure. We bind to the Do Not Attempt alternatives. Unknown Speaker 1:23:49 I think that when I was using talking, I said about the store historic project. I think that as women, we have just kind of given up on having a historical project. I mean, what what is the future? But let's see the feminists that are here talking about it talking about hiding the sky. And by that, I mean it's not grounded at all in this socio political economic reality that it's a couple of them I respect very highly and they stimulate my imagination, but they don't take into consideration the reality that is when they talk about what the future is gonna look like. And, you know, as a country, the United States has defaulted on any kind of sense of what what what is our responsibility and where are we going forward? I mean, it was up to Congress. What is this moment about and my biggest concern, and you mentioned this joy is that this gloating of Peter Jennings today If the same glow tonight is going on about we want on what is happening? The whole dynamic that used to be, whereas now has shifted north south. So it's the United States now, as you said, the whole issue withdraw to Latin America and so forth. And the same thing with evolution. So my, my problem with discussions of evil and things like that, is that that is, that is the usual that white liberals follow because it distances itself from actual strategizing of what what is our responsibility in our own lives to see many times when church when united right now our program is to eradicate the root causes of poverty, not the huge thing. But the hard thing is to keep saying those words, you know, that the constituency begins to understand that what we're talking about we catch their own lives, will impact you know, how they see their lifestyles, the way they handle material goods, what they own, what they don't own. And we never want to talk about that. So we thought about fields. I mean, I know that I'm not denying that we need to talk about evil, I believe in evil. I believe that they are evil people. And I definitely on structural evil, as far as you know. But I just, I just feel that that track we have just gotten away from is to be much more realistic of where we go into what is what is our future? What, what do we want. One less thing, we try very much a never competition, but I still, we try not to talk about ourselves as marginalized, or to talk about ourselves as minority. We're not, because that is, well, even if we even if we were the mindset of that is this is the pie, and we want a piece of it. And we don't we want to radically change that. Well, we always say we don't want to belong to the old boys club, we want to do away with the old boys club. And I think that's the radical solution of revolutionary integrity. You know, I'm interested in talking about religion, or spirituality says that you talked about it, in view of that. And that is, Unknown Speaker 1:27:37 it seems to me kind of fetus, to allow the distance power strip structure, which, you know, to define our whether or not we minority that we're not, and you talk about looking at the reality of the economic and social situations, and it's not going to get any better. And it's also controlled by the existing society and how they tend to work. Okay. I think the Unknown Speaker 1:28:14 turning point episode two, yeah. So look Unknown Speaker 1:28:16 at your situation, because household. Now what we need to look at what the systems they can get, in terms of, you know, not destroying the old boy, eliminating the old boys power structure, forming our own systems connected on what, what will grow at the beginning. That is the beginning of the change. What can we do immediately into amongst ourselves, and we don't know how that's going to look in terms of the larger picture, we'll begin seeing immediate results in terms of how we relate to each other, Unknown Speaker 1:29:01 and relate to each other not be afraid that we relate to each other in the sense that they said Unknown Speaker 1:29:09 most people will start a cooperative just trying to teach the people how to do the work that they do. And no one ever had to tell him what to do. The one who was facilitated, I just looked at to it's such a wonderful blessing to be listened to treat human beings that the minute the person was listened to. And the other was listen to the pain to a solution. And we've not had any problems in running the business. And so the human side Unknown Speaker 1:29:38 well, then everybody else is Unknown Speaker 1:29:41 listening. perspective that is going to build on language, but that's what I'm always thinking about. So I think community is really important. I mean, I didn't stress on the community, and we all know we participate in different communities. So it's great to be actively calling Despite that the ethic of caring and dialogue, I mean, it's just part of, of how we deal if we treat each other as human beings. But again, the question that comes up in my mind, again, is, why we're building our communities and how we're loving our families, and our communities, our church and so on. What are we doing? About the opposition? Do you know what I'm saying? Because, see, the thing is, remember, there's a river that wonderful. He's an African American liberation. I don't know if he considers himself a theologian. But he writes that the most important thing for African American people around the Dred Scott decision, it wasn't the individual races that were right. And it was coming to consciousness that he said was most difficult thing for us to look for everybody is that you're not talking about isolated groups, or sexes, or murderers. You're talking about an organized entity that has a military and economic structure that has nailed the press for since Carter, right? When steakhouse has its own press, or something like that, so designated on media people, you want to cover the news, and you better do it in a way that's favorable to Bush or whoever's in office. So it's like, we're organizing, we're loving and building communities. And at the same time, we're looking at this thing, which is anti human, which isn't even human, I think it's a bureaucracy that isn't discounting and was responsible for it. So that's kind of like, you know, Unknown Speaker 1:31:38 it's Yeah, Unknown Speaker 1:31:39 I mean, you know, I agree with it, it's kind of overwhelming. Well, not to be overwhelmed by that, how do we incorporate that into all the other work that we're doing? And if you were doing it, Nielsen, how do we do Unknown Speaker 1:31:55 it now? I think the other thing that that I always get a little bit leery of is our thinking that the solution is to create parallel structures, because I think that in countries like Kenya, the situation is very different. And they're things like coops and so forth work. But when you have a highly in post industrial capitalist kind of system, you're talking about some other attempts. For example, I was fascinated by Ruth, no comment that she has didn't get to hike the taxes of those who were $100,000 was $42 more big deal. But anyway, that that's for me, that's a radical kind of thing. That we need to work with infrastructures many times because we have no other they are so encompassing, that how can you be outside them, but be very much not just along the lines of the way everything else is done? And somebody just because convention, Eugen is going to say one last thing that if I can, if I can ask you all to join in the school strategy. I am tired. I'm so picky with the way that the news, the three main networks, choose to cover or not cover what happens in Central America. So I sent him of course, I have a letterhead, you know, that I can use I sent him a scathing letter saying, you know, first, I want to know what is your criteria for choosing what you cover and I I am Associate General Director, which which is I haven't been women, which is true. And I know that that is why Sony never answered my first letter. I waited exactly 10 days and setting the second letter and said You haven't answered my letter and besides last night, you said a lie on television and here's what you said I need to stop. He said he was the first time that we got I was was folding electronics statuary. So you know, so that what he did was he called me on the phone. Now he called me and I was like, it was before our office open so I we can afford to learn and there was a message on the tape for automated testing. Yes, from Peter Jennings. They have said, I'm sorry, I never got your first letter said. So I just sent him another letter. I said, thank you very much for calling me You never answer my question. I want to know what is your criteria for what you choose? And the only way that we I mean media. News depends totally on that advertisement.