WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.510 align:middle line:90% 00:00:01.510 --> 00:00:03.090 align:middle line:84% [SPEAKING MOJAVE] Gracias por venir. 00:00:03.090 --> 00:00:07.900 align:middle line:90% 00:00:07.900 --> 00:00:09.510 align:middle line:90% It's my luck to be here tonight. 00:00:09.510 --> 00:00:13.050 align:middle line:90% 00:00:13.050 --> 00:00:15.540 align:middle line:84% Yeah, I mean, there are a million people to thank, 00:00:15.540 --> 00:00:22.380 align:middle line:84% Grace, mil gracias for that very generous introduction-- 00:00:22.380 --> 00:00:26.610 align:middle line:84% the Ford Foundation, Agatha Gund of all people 00:00:26.610 --> 00:00:30.720 align:middle line:84% who decided to sell a work of art hanging in her house that 00:00:30.720 --> 00:00:33.270 align:middle line:90% suddenly opened up this money. 00:00:33.270 --> 00:00:38.560 align:middle line:84% It's an incredible system we're all a part of. 00:00:38.560 --> 00:00:41.940 align:middle line:84% And to suddenly realize what our roles in those systems are, 00:00:41.940 --> 00:00:45.060 align:middle line:84% and how the systems function, and can 00:00:45.060 --> 00:00:48.000 align:middle line:84% we possibly function within those systems-- 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:49.470 align:middle line:84% if the things we were trying to do 00:00:49.470 --> 00:00:52.530 align:middle line:84% can actually happen within some of the institutions 00:00:52.530 --> 00:00:54.420 align:middle line:84% we're trying to accomplish them in 00:00:54.420 --> 00:00:58.560 align:middle line:84% is a big question I have right now in my own work, 00:00:58.560 --> 00:01:01.155 align:middle line:84% and in my own family, and in my own life. 00:01:01.155 --> 00:01:04.140 align:middle line:90% 00:01:04.140 --> 00:01:07.290 align:middle line:84% Gracias also to the poet Elizabeth Alexander, who 00:01:07.290 --> 00:01:12.390 align:middle line:84% has been an incredible selfless person, putting 00:01:12.390 --> 00:01:16.740 align:middle line:84% in a lot of work that has taken her away from her own work 00:01:16.740 --> 00:01:18.719 align:middle line:84% to make some of these things happen. 00:01:18.719 --> 00:01:19.386 align:middle line:90% [MIC DISTORTION] 00:01:19.386 --> 00:01:19.886 align:middle line:90% Sorry. 00:01:19.886 --> 00:01:21.142 align:middle line:90% I have a screw in my knee. 00:01:21.142 --> 00:01:22.850 align:middle line:84% So I wasn't sure if that's what that was. 00:01:22.850 --> 00:01:23.960 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:01:23.960 --> 00:01:28.430 align:middle line:84% Also to Tyler for just being a place 00:01:28.430 --> 00:01:32.150 align:middle line:84% where someone like Dwayne Betts could bring this, 00:01:32.150 --> 00:01:36.950 align:middle line:84% where we can all exist in our fullnesses side 00:01:36.950 --> 00:01:40.470 align:middle line:90% by side with one another. 00:01:40.470 --> 00:01:43.100 align:middle line:84% It's it was so interesting-- gracias Nadia 00:01:43.100 --> 00:01:52.200 align:middle line:84% for coming up here and reminding us the power of story. 00:01:52.200 --> 00:01:56.060 align:middle line:84% It's incredible, I think, to think about the ways 00:01:56.060 --> 00:01:58.780 align:middle line:90% that you were talking about-- 00:01:58.780 --> 00:02:02.540 align:middle line:84% where is the-- who was up here with Nadia? 00:02:02.540 --> 00:02:04.160 align:middle line:90% [INAUDIBLE] 00:02:04.160 --> 00:02:05.090 align:middle line:90% Oh, yeah. 00:02:05.090 --> 00:02:07.500 align:middle line:90% Gracias. 00:02:07.500 --> 00:02:11.000 align:middle line:84% It was crazy to say detention centers were geographically 00:02:11.000 --> 00:02:13.220 align:middle line:84% hard to get to, like reservations. 00:02:13.220 --> 00:02:15.320 align:middle line:90% [LAUGHTER] 00:02:15.320 --> 00:02:19.280 align:middle line:84% This is the same-- this is the system America began itself 00:02:19.280 --> 00:02:24.290 align:middle line:84% with, and it has fulfilled its prophecy or its experiment. 00:02:24.290 --> 00:02:27.110 align:middle line:84% In a way, we are as fully American 00:02:27.110 --> 00:02:30.870 align:middle line:90% as we have ever been right now. 00:02:30.870 --> 00:02:32.915 align:middle line:84% So that's something I think a lot about. 00:02:32.915 --> 00:02:35.780 align:middle line:90% 00:02:35.780 --> 00:02:36.500 align:middle line:90% Yeah. 00:02:36.500 --> 00:02:39.500 align:middle line:84% And the power of poetry, again, like I've said this before, 00:02:39.500 --> 00:02:42.890 align:middle line:84% and I mean, I'm saying this in choir with many other people. 00:02:42.890 --> 00:02:47.810 align:middle line:84% The imagination is a place that cannot be surveilled. 00:02:47.810 --> 00:02:52.940 align:middle line:84% It's one of the places that they can't look into, and put 00:02:52.940 --> 00:02:56.160 align:middle line:90% on camera, and control. 00:02:56.160 --> 00:02:58.670 align:middle line:84% It's one of the reasons why we run our detention centers 00:02:58.670 --> 00:03:03.560 align:middle line:84% and our prison systems the way we do, in such structured ways, 00:03:03.560 --> 00:03:09.710 align:middle line:84% so that the imagination can be hampered in a lot of ways. 00:03:09.710 --> 00:03:14.540 align:middle line:84% I've been just writing toward this project. 00:03:14.540 --> 00:03:16.400 align:middle line:90% I have a sister who was-- 00:03:16.400 --> 00:03:19.940 align:middle line:90% who is recently out. 00:03:19.940 --> 00:03:21.530 align:middle line:84% It was very different in my family 00:03:21.530 --> 00:03:25.490 align:middle line:84% when I just had a brother who was in and out of prison. 00:03:25.490 --> 00:03:28.670 align:middle line:84% For some reason, that's one of the ways we treat our men. 00:03:28.670 --> 00:03:34.380 align:middle line:84% We hold them up to this idea of manliness and masculinity. 00:03:34.380 --> 00:03:37.400 align:middle line:84% And so my brother in some way it was much easier to think of him 00:03:37.400 --> 00:03:40.130 align:middle line:90% as being bad-- 00:03:40.130 --> 00:03:42.590 align:middle line:90% my bad brother. 00:03:42.590 --> 00:03:47.070 align:middle line:84% Whereas when my sister went in, it was very different. 00:03:47.070 --> 00:03:50.930 align:middle line:84% It's made me rethink so many different things. 00:03:50.930 --> 00:03:53.150 align:middle line:84% But so, I've just been kind of writing 00:03:53.150 --> 00:03:59.550 align:middle line:84% toward this, digging up things from Mojave history on through. 00:03:59.550 --> 00:04:01.940 align:middle line:84% And so what I'm reading you is very raw. 00:04:01.940 --> 00:04:04.280 align:middle line:90% I haven't done a lot of editing. 00:04:04.280 --> 00:04:07.490 align:middle line:84% I'm sharing it with you in this space 00:04:07.490 --> 00:04:09.620 align:middle line:84% and wondering what might become of it. 00:04:09.620 --> 00:04:12.740 align:middle line:84% And as I'm here, I'm also wondering 00:04:12.740 --> 00:04:16.519 align:middle line:84% what is the power of language in this space. 00:04:16.519 --> 00:04:20.120 align:middle line:84% I think the ask was the not that we just sit and hear 00:04:20.120 --> 00:04:23.630 align:middle line:84% language and poetry, but what will we do with it? 00:04:23.630 --> 00:04:27.150 align:middle line:84% I really do believe in the physicality of language. 00:04:27.150 --> 00:04:30.920 align:middle line:84% And it's in the action of language versus simply it 00:04:30.920 --> 00:04:33.980 align:middle line:90% being something static. 00:04:33.980 --> 00:04:38.720 align:middle line:84% And I do believe-- and it's not an idea 00:04:38.720 --> 00:04:41.660 align:middle line:84% I have articulated fully yet, but there's 00:04:41.660 --> 00:04:47.510 align:middle line:84% a way we can attack the law and logic of America at the top. 00:04:47.510 --> 00:04:51.440 align:middle line:84% Except it's a place I'm not necessarily 00:04:51.440 --> 00:04:56.480 align:middle line:84% sure how much of a dent we can make in that if we start there. 00:04:56.480 --> 00:05:00.770 align:middle line:84% Because again, America is only being itself. 00:05:00.770 --> 00:05:02.370 align:middle line:90% This is how America began. 00:05:02.370 --> 00:05:04.880 align:middle line:84% And so, something I'm thinking a lot about 00:05:04.880 --> 00:05:09.050 align:middle line:84% is how we build our bodies together in a different space. 00:05:09.050 --> 00:05:14.310 align:middle line:84% And one of those spaces is in detention centers, 00:05:14.310 --> 00:05:19.190 align:middle line:84% which are the new prison systems, which 00:05:19.190 --> 00:05:21.470 align:middle line:90% are the new reservations. 00:05:21.470 --> 00:05:25.110 align:middle line:84% And how do we build and get more people involved in these spaces 00:05:25.110 --> 00:05:29.750 align:middle line:84% so that suddenly we begin to remember the fact that we're 00:05:29.750 --> 00:05:30.440 align:middle line:90% alive. 00:05:30.440 --> 00:05:33.440 align:middle line:84% We remember our lives and the lives of other people 00:05:33.440 --> 00:05:36.190 align:middle line:84% while we're in these spaces together.