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(dramatic music) - [Woman] Welcome everyone
to the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series. (applause) - Welcome to this presentation
of the Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker
Series, featuring artist Philippa P.B. Hughes. I'm Jim Leija, Deputy Director for Public
Experience and Learning at the University of
Michigan Museum of Art. This presentation was created
in partnership with the museum as part of our Vote 2020 Program, and the University of Michigan Democracy and Debate Theme semester. Philippa Hughes describes
herself as a social sculptor and creative strategist who
produces art fueled projects that spark humanizing and
authentic conversations across political, social
and cultural divides. She's an evangelist for the dismantling of the polarization industrial complex, one conversation at a time. Philippa has designed
and produced hundreds of creative activations since 2007, for curious folks to engage
with art and one another in unconventional and meaningful ways. She leads Curiosity Connects Us, a partner in looking for America. A national series, inviting
politically diverse guests to break bread and talk to each
other face to face using art as a starting point for
relationship building conversations. I first met Philippa at a
Looking for America dinner at the Detroit Historical Society for over 100 politically
diverse Michiganders. Among them were an indigenous
woman who spoke proudly of her tribes religious practices. A young Republican politician,
who spoke about his passion for public education and
a Chaldean American woman who reflected on her family's
deep roots in Metro Detroit. That dinner was a revelation,
a reminder of the empathy and collaboration that's
possible when we let down our defenses and seek community, instead of combat across
the political divide. In advance of her presentation, Philippa led two conversations with University of
Michigan students via Zoom. I wanna thank the
students who participated, including those from U of
M's We Listen organization and the Museum of Arts
student engagement council. And now I hope you enjoy
Philippa's presentation, dismantling the polarization
industrial complex. - My name is Philippa Hughes
and I used to be a lawyer, my area of specialty,
investment advisor regulation. I wore sensible shoes and pantyhose, and I billed my life away
in six minute increments. I spent a lot of time trying
to figure out best practices for exciting things like
soft dollars, wrap fees and trade allocations. I was bored, I was really bored. I yearn for something inspiring
and creative in my life. I attended lots of theater,
dance and music performances and looked at a lot of art, but what I really wanted was
an opportunity to participate in the creative process. I didn't necessarily want to be an artist. I wanted to actively engage with creative and likeminded people in
fun and meaningful ways, because I knew that whenever
I had the chance to hang out with artists and arts enthusiasts, I always ended up having the
most amazing conversations that would inspire amazing
thoughts and ideas. And most importantly, that
would spur me on to action. Oh, hi, this is the real Philippa here. Kind of hard to explain what you just saw. That was my friend Jeffrey
Cuddlin, my friend, who is an artist here in DC and he spent the summer impersonating me. I used to have super
blonde hair back then, and he decided that he
wanted to make a commentary on the DC art world or on
the art world in general, and how so many people were
more interested in the scene and the party and less
interested in the actual art. And so he decided to use
me as sort of the example of where the art world had gone wrong. I think the reason why
he did this was because when I first moved to DC,
I was actually a lawyer, as I mentioned earlier. And I just was really interested in art and I really wanted to
be part of the art scene, it was partially, you
know, I was really bored. And so I would just start
going to art events, every, you know, every weekend, at one point I would go to
art events almost every night. And I started to really
engage with all the people I was meeting and I'd start
inviting them over to my house and having salons like, you know, I thought of myself as a
modern day Gertrude Stein, where I would bring the artists together and we would drink wine
and have lofty thoughts. And, but you know, it
kind of worked, I mean, it just kept getting bigger and bigger. And at one point I
decided, well, you know, maybe we can have like an art party. And so I found a raw retail space. It was actually right at the
end of the block where I lived and we turned it into an
art space and filled it with video art, performance art, we had a bar and it was amazing. Hundreds of people came. I created events of all
different sizes and styles. Sometimes I would invite
people over to have discussions with artists and like small intimate salon style discussions. I started working with museums, museums were starting
to get more interested in bringing new audiences
into their spaces and younger audiences. And so I worked with
a couple local museums to create huge events that
attracted that kind of audience. I continue to find raw
spaces all over the city, to organize and produce
these large scale events that would showcase the artists of DC. And it was really fun. And it was really a way, not only to show what DC could offer in terms of the art scene, but also to give people a real opportunity to experience what DC
could offer, you know, DC has kind of a rightful
reputation at some level of being kind of a square
staid kind of city, of khaki pants and white shirts. And in fact, there is
a rich art scene here that people never really
paid attention to, or didn't really even know about. Even people who lived here
didn't even know about it. So part of my goal was
not only to give artists the opportunity to showcase their work, but to give people the opportunity to see what DC was really like and to connect with each other. Now I'm telling you this in part, because it really laid the
foundation for all the work that I do currently, which
I wanna tell you about in a second. But at the time I didn't
really understand what it was I was trying to do. I had this sort of gut instinct that art could connect people to each other. And that if given the
space and the opportunity, art could be sort of the subversive way to actually bring people into
relationship with one another, to actually give them the
opportunity to talk to each other. I knew that, but I couldn't
quite make the leap, you know, intellectually from these
sort of art parties, to the actual connection,
that came much later. It took a lot of experimenting. A lot of living up to
living, trying to live, keep doing it, even in
the face of criticism, critiques like the kind that
Jeffrey Cuddlin was offering, which I completely respected and it actually helped me to do better, to actually improve the experiments that I was trying on people. So I really appreciated those critiques and those opportunities
to really try new things. That very same summer, an
artists named Agnes Bolt did a project in my apartment. That was probably a defining moment for me as an artist, she actually created an
experience in my living space, in which she built a giant plastic bubble and lived in this bubble
in my space for a week. And we interacted with each other, according to a set of
rules that she laid out. Some of the rules were things like I had to give her a good
morning kiss every morning, to greet the day. Another rule was, you know, I had to cook her two
vegetarian meals a day. I really like meat, so that one was actually quite difficult for me to adhere to. By the end of that week, we weren't even speaking to each other. In fact, during the
week, we got into a fight that resulted in her
actually exiting the bubble and going onto the street and wondering if she would even have a place to stay for the rest of the week. I took her back in, of course, and we dealt with each other
through the end of the week and we've never spoken
to each other since, that was in 2011, May of 2011. And I learned so much
from that experience. And I see that as a moment when everything kind of started to become more clear to me about how we use art as a way
to interact with each other, the set of rules that she established, the creation of the space
for our interaction, the importance of the relationship and the interaction between us. That became the most important piece, part of the art piece. Otherwise it would have
just been a giant bubble in the middle of my living room, with this woman living inside of it. If we had not had those interactions, the art piece would be
not have been completed. And so that's where I started
thinking about my inspirations for how to move forward
with my art practice. I'm really inspired by an
artist named Joseph Voice, who said that the whole act of living is my creative process. And so I started thinking about the art as being our entire environment. And I started to see my home as a studio where I would experiment
and try new things. And then I started seeing
the whole world as my studio, and all the people in it
as participants in my art. And so once I started
having that view of art, beyond things that just hang
on the wall or, you know, sit on the floor, which I love, I love to collect art, I love going to see art
and experiencing art, but once I started to see art as something beyond the things, the
objects that hang on the wall, I started to see how art could
be actually a powerful force for real transformation in our lives, when people could actually
participate in the art and when the art space became
the art piece into itself. And so I slowly started
developing this idea for myself of being a social sculptor. Well, I have to say that I
did just steal that phrase from Joseph Voice, but, you know, I started thinking of
myself as a social sculptor, as a person who sculpts space
in which social interaction can take place, but it's
not enough for me to just, you know, have people
talking to each other and just building the
relationship that's core and very critical to the art practice, but also those relationships
and those conversations must lead toward changing
our society for the better, like that's the most important
piece of this art practice, is it doesn't matter
unless we actually have the intention to make
the world a better place. So fast forward to November,
2016, right after the election, like all of my friends
who are very liberal in this very liberal city,
we were pretty upset. Many of my friends became catatonic and paralyzed by the
result of the election. I, on the other hand, started inviting people over for dinner because that's what I do. I started inviting people
who voted for Donald Trump to come in and sit around my
dinner table and talk to me. I wanted to ask them questions. I wanted to hear what they had to say, unfiltered by the media
and by all the books and articles that I had read, up until that point to try to understand, I wanted to ask them my
own questions over dinner. I would make people dinner and
we would break bread together and just talk to each other. That became the basis
for Looking for America and for the work that I do now. (intense music) When I first started inviting
Trump voters over to my house for dinner to break bread, because that's how we can have better, one way we can have better conversations, I wanted to create a sense of delight. And so I decided on a menu of
red and blue foods, get it? And, you know, it's really
hard to make blue foods, by the way, I made something with blue cheese and it didn't really turn out blue, but conceptually it was blue. Anyway, I also made a blueberry
and cherry crisp for dinner, for dessert because red
and blue make purple when they mush together, get it, purple. (upbeat music) I am an extreme extrovert. I was having a really hard
time filming this presentation because it felt like I
was talking to nobody when I was just looking into a camera. So I invited my friend,
Claire Huschle over to have a conversation with me. She's one of the most
highly regarded people in the DC art world. She also just started
a consulting business called Scaffold that supports
artists, and best of all, she's a graduate of the
University of Michigan in art history. I'm pretty excited to have this
great conversation with her. We have become victims of the polarization industrial complex. There's profit to be made
from keeping us polarized and telling us that we are in tribes and we can not talk to these other people. And in fact, if you do, you
are a traitor to your tribe. We are being told this
message over and over. And we believe it. And in fact, couple of things, one is most people in
America are sick and tired of polarization, and we do
want to talk to each other. And my anecdotal experience is that when I have created space for
people to talk to each other, they want to do this because
we can't go on like this. And we know it at some level,
it's not even that deep. Like we know we can't go on like this. There's actually a
really good study called the hidden tribes that
says that 70% of Americans are the exhausted majority,
that they are exhausted by this idea of polarization. And that means that 30%
of Americans, you know, about 17% on the right
and about 13% on the left are the polarized people
who are actually polarized and who are very loud. And so their voices are very loud, and that's why we believe
that everybody is polarized, when it's actually just
a minority of people who are the ones who are
tweeting all the time and who are posting all the
articles on social media all the time. So there are polarized people, there's no question about that, but there is profit to
be made in polarization. Media profits from it, politicians profit from
it in the sense that they gain more power by
keeping us polarized. And so we need, I think that one of
the most radical things that we can be doing now is to show that we can actually talk to each other, despite what the powerful
forces are saying, they're trying to tell us
that we can't, no we can, and it's really hard to
go against what, you know, all these powerful forces
are telling us to do, but I think it's really radical for us to actually have a
conversation with somebody across the political divide. We must dismantle the
polarization industrial complex. - I don't really know
like how I feel about it. I'm really just trying to listen to everyone's perspectives on it, as it comes in and try and like, just know that I'm not
gonna be able to, like, it's not coming from
first person experience. So any like gut instinct
that I have probably isn't the first one to go with. - But those are just my thoughts. I welcome differing thoughts, and we could have a discussion about that. - And like, if you're going
to defend free speech, you have to defend it on both sides. - Right, no, exactly. - To be opening to listening
to people's experience other than your own. - So I really do see it from both sides. And it's interesting that we just, in this like little square conversation had two completely different
perspectives of 4th of July. - Sort of learning about the
other side and other cultures and other people will definitely sort of reduce that anger and aggressiveness. - I really try to create the
space to encourage conversation and to make it feel
delightful in some ways, because what I was trying
to go for is having people enter the space and feel
like they're somewhere else, Like there've been transported
into this other world where civil discourse is possible. No matter what they're telling
you outside in the real world that not to talk to each other, or you can't talk to each
other, in this space, you can talk to each other and here's how and we're gonna do it. We're gonna show them that
it's actually possible. - I'm just, I'm thinking it's a little bit like Rules of Performance, right? I mean, in like a
performance ritual, right. Once the stage is set, you know that you're supposed
to act in a certain way, right, so we know when
we go into a theater, the lights come down, we're quiet, maybe there's something
equivalent in your dinners, right. Where you go into this room and there's a, literally a set table, and we know that there's a certain ritual that we're supposed to go through, right. - Ritual, that's exactly, I
think that's the right word. And I think we are
creating a set of rituals that we're entering into. And some of them are very familiar to us. Like we all been at dinner with
strangers at a fancy place. So we all kind of have an idea
of how to act, but, you know, for the Looking for America dinners, we really formalize that ritual. So yes, ritual, thank you for saying that. - Well it doesn't even need to be fancy. - No, it doesn't. - There's something about
that collective gathering where you just, you know that
you stop, you pay attention, you focus in on the, there's
a presence that's required in an environment like that. - Yeah, that's right. It does, and it does not
have to be fancy at all. But I will say that I
have really insisted, 'cause as we started
developing the larger project, we had played around with
the ideas of potluck dinners or picnics or whatever. And I think that kind of stuff is awesome, but there was something important
to me about giving dinner to people and not making
them have to work, to come and have dinner. Because for me it was sort of
like, this is my gift to you. I'm gonna make you dinner, because I'm asking you to
do something kinda hard. So you just come and do the hard thing and I will take care
of like nourishing you. - Yeah.
- So it is, so I think that is part of my ritual too. It's like one food is so
important to this whole process. I mean the whole, one of the
whole basic fundamental ideas is breaking bread together. Like we have know that when
people break bread together, it brings them together in a different way than if you just yell at
each other on the internet. So the breaking bread is so important. So I put a lot of thought
into what the food would be. I think I mentioned earlier
in the very first dinners, I would make red and blue foods, which was really hard to do actually. But once we started having
these catered dinners, always chose, you know, comfort foods. Like I, you know, we would have, I think we had meatloaf at
one of the dinners actually, but more comfort foods, things that could be passed so that you would actually
have to talk to the person next to you to say, Oh, can you hand me that plate of potatoes? You know, or something like that. So I definitely thought
about what the food would be, and that reminds me, so I think the blueberry and cherry crisp has just about cooled off
enough for us to have some, so why don't I serve us? - I would love it.
- Awesome. (cheering) - Thank you, this is delicious. - You're welcome. - I'm glad that I'm
finally having the famous cherry and blueberry crumble. So how did you go from dinner
parties here at this table, to across town at a historic house museum, to multiple cities
across the United States? - Yeah, well at that dinner
at the historic museum, house museum, a guy named Dan
Wallace came to that dinner and Dan works at New American Economy. They do immigration research
and they would try to make the case for accepting
more immigrants because, essentially because, you know, they have a lot of contributions
to make to our country, especially economically. But one of the things that
social science tells us is that a lot of times
you throw data at people, it actually pushes them
more into their corners and it makes them be less likely to have their minds changed. And so this organization was
looking for different ways to tell stories using arts and culture. How do we tell the story of immigrants without just throwing data at people? And so they were already
kind of interested in this kind of storytelling and art. And so Dan and I just got together and we started talking and
we came up with this idea, Looking for America, where
we'd go around the country, curating art shows in cities
everywhere with local artists, and we would ask them, what does it mean to be an
American in your community? And then we organize these large dinners. 50, sometimes the largest
one was 88 people. So it was pretty big
and people would come, experience the art and the artist and then have conversations. So, you know, it was sorta
like what happened here, but sort of adapted to each city. - So I have a question
about the relationship between the art and the
conversations in these dinners. So is there a one-to-one relationship between the artwork that people are seeing and the conversations that
you want them to have? I'm trying to sort of
put myself in the room and imagine what it
would be like to transfer the conversation from an artwork
to politics or, you know, 'cause if it's about
sort of meeting people where they are and seeing
different perspectives, how does the art do that? I mean, do you start the conversation with asking people about what
they think of the artwork or? - Another awesome question, Claire. There's kind of a two part
answer to that question. The first part is that, you know, one of the theories of change that I've been kind of playing around with is the connection between
creating a sense of awe and wonder in people. And when you create a sense
of awe and wonder in a person, that inspires more curiosity, and when people are more curious, they feel more connected
to their fellow man, they feel more connected
to the fabric of humanity. And so a starting point for
curating art for this project is how do we use the art
to provoke a sense of awe and wonder in people so that
they will be more curious. So it doesn't necessarily
matter, you know, we're not trying to
connect the specific art, the content of the specific
art to the conversation. It's more about invoking
kind of a feeling of like, Oh, like I want people to
go, whoa, Oh, that's so cool. Like if somebody says,
whoa, or that's so cool, then I know that I've
sparked a little sense of, just even if it's just a
teeny, the teeniest bit of awe, because that's all we want
is just a little spark to get from there to be more
curious about each other. So that's part one of the answer. But part two is, you know, we've tried to experiment
with different ways of using actual art in the conversations. So for example, we hosted several University of Michigan students
to talk about politics, but before we got into the
politics, we showed them art. In fact an amazing guy
who is the deputy director at the University of Michigan
art museum, Jim Leahy, he developed this really
cool deck of cards that I think he calls
them the dialogue deck and the cards actually have images of art that's in the museum's collection. And so each card has questions on the back that are like little
prompts about the image. It's really great. The questions are really thoughtful and they really connect
well to the images. So one of the images, we used one of the cards
for one of the conversations that we had with the students, and I'm telling you like, okay, I'm gonna make a little
confession, before we just, when we decided to do the
conversations with students, I was a little bit intimidated. Like I have done probably a
couple 100 conversations now at this point across the country
with all kinds of people. No worries whatsoever, but I'd never done
conversations with college kids. And something about that
just intimidated me. - So interesting. - I know, but anyways,
so gather the students, we did it on Zoom of course,
and they were amazing, like they were saying, you know, picking up things about this art and the things that they were saying. - That makes me so. - Honestly.
- I'm os proud as a Michigan alum. - I was blown away.
- I love that. - So insightful, so thoughtful. It was amazing. So, you know, I dunno it was, I mean, in part, I think the art
piece was really powerful, but they saw things in
there that I was like, Whoa, did not see that. So that was really cool. We actually did two conversations. The other conversation, one of the students offered to read a poem that she had written, and
that was really powerful too. And it really provoked
a lot of conversation. So those are a couple of
different examples of how we have tried to use
art forms to, you know, actually in the conversation
to sort of get people talking to each other. - I do think sort of the
idea of this bath comes along with this image of like purity
and almost like cleanliness. Like the first thought I had was like, sort of like washing away sins of America and like liberty renewed
sort of gave me this image of like a fresh start, which I think given that it
was made in the '80s and '90s, it was pretty interesting. I'm just, like my head's going to Reagan. People sort of consider him
like restarting of conservatism or like modern conservatism. So yeah, I think the '80s were like definitely
characterized by reshaping what it means to be American. And this is sort of a representation of a new cleaner version almost. - It's called We are human. And this is talking about
like my LatinX community. So it's called, we are human. Okay, so Latin X blood
runs through our veins. Over time, the seeds
planted by our ancestors grew into roots, which
grew into a generation unyielding in the midst
of a political earthquake. From the beginning of time, we were born into a world
of systemic injustices, systemic injustices racism
and the cruelty of people who believe that we are less than. Through this, we garner
this shield of resilience passed on by our ancestors who told us we were destined to succeed. There was no other way
if we wish to survive. However, I'm here to say
we're worthy of respect, worthy of resources and worthy of say. Not because of our bountiful successes, but because we are humans, humans whose hands pick the food you eat. Humans who pay their dues and taxes. Humans who provide for
their family and others, humans who share the
same hopes and dreams, live And in the flesh, humans. - I assume that there's
some sort of ground rules that you have, right? That you've developed now over time, 'cause now you're no longer
at a small table like this, where you can sort of
monitor the conversation, right now you've got 50 people, 80 people, what are the ground rules? How do you set them? - So I've got seven sort of
things to share with you. Some, I don't wanna call them rules, let's call them agreements,
something like that. And I'm gonna read them
out and after each one, if you all would just use your
reaction emoji to, you know, give a thumbs up or applaud or whatever, just to show that you agree. And if you don't agree,
let me know that too, and let's talk about why you don't agree. That would be, I think that
would be interesting too. Okay, so the first is, you know, these conversations can
get kind of uncomfortable. And I think that it's important
that we can push through if the discomfort to some degree. So, you know, will you at
least stay in the conversation, through this discomfort long
enough to kind of figure out why you're uncomfortable? Will you keep listening to each other? Even when you feel like
you really wanna respond and you've got something to say, but will you just keep listening
until the person is done with their thought? So one of the things
that's kind of interesting as you probably are aware of
about our political climate now is that a lot of times when
people disagree with each other, suddenly they become enemies. You know, like you can't even talk. We feel like we can't
talk to them anymore. And so I don't believe that. People who disagree
with me aren't my enemy. They just think differently. And so, you know, when
that happens, will you, if it happens tonight, if
somebody disagrees with you, will you agree to ask more questions, to try to understand why
they think what they believe and why they hold those views? Will you share your stories
and personal experiences and not talking points to
explain why you hold the beliefs that you hold, instead of
dismissing other ideas, because they're different from yours, will you make the case for your own idea? This one is a really hard
one for a lot of people. You know, you're kind of going
along, telling your story, telling you're, trying to make your case. And then, you know, you
listen to the other person, so great, and then you
realize you might be wrong, but it's really hard to
admit when you're wrong. Even if it's just a sliver, will you try to admit when
you're thinking might be wrong or that you might've changed
your mind a little bit. It's really important
to assume that people have best intentions. People aren't actually
personally attacking you or trying to hurt you. I think when we assume that
they have the best of intentions and that if you can just
dig a little deeper, you can understand what
their reasoning is. Again, it makes the conversation better. So will you assume best
intentions in each other? The other really foundational
thing is storytelling. Storytelling is so important
on a couple different levels. I mean, one is sort of the obvious level. Is it humanizes people,
like you actually become a real person when I hear about
a struggle that you've had, that maybe I have felt too. So humanizing is essential
because we are now so used to being avatars to each other. You're just literally an avatar. You have literally become inhuman to me because I never actually, not
only 'cause I don't see you, but I can't even hear you speak. - Right.
- So the humanizing effect is so important. But the second piece, I think maybe more
important is storytelling, if it's done in a particular way, can this help establish
more trust between people. Because if you use the
prompts that ask people to really dig deep into
their personal stories, to be vulnerable, it takes a lot of trust
to be able to tell stories that make you vulnerable. And so, you know, if I tell
you that kind of a story, I have to trust that you're
not going to laugh at me or judge me or think
worse of me in any way. And when I trust you to do that, I am gonna be more willing
to be open to things that you say to me, if you acknowledge the depth of my story,
then I know that, ah, that means I can be more open to you and I can be more open to your
differing opinions from me. I think that's probably
the more important piece of the storytelling bit than anything. What I'm really interested
in is not knowing about what your political
views are just yet or where you stand on
the political spectrum. Like, I really wanna know
who you are as human beings, as people, and so, you know, instead of talking about where
you came from or, you know, what your major is, whatever,
which is all very fascinating, I thought what we could
talk about is if you would each introduce yourself by telling a story of when you felt like
you were your best self, when you know, and not necessarily
like in a show Offy way, but just in like when you just
felt good about who you are. - I'm Jasper, hi, my answer
is kind of different, I think, but it's what kept sticking
out to me when I was thinking of an answer or thinking
of a story, I would say, so probably like a year ago, actually, during the fall semester of 2019, where I was having a lot of
like mental health problems, you know, I was having a lot of anxiety. I was pretty depressed,
I was really irritable. And for like most of the semester, it kind of put me out
of damper on my friends and my academics are suffering
and it seems small, but like, I just remember when I
finally, and like towards the beginning of November
decided that I wanted to like do something to get better. And I like made an appointment with CAPS. It was honestly like a
really big inflection point. I was really proud of
myself for being vulnerable and humble and having
the humility to admit that I have to do
something and take action. And then it's interesting, 'cause I can like clearly
mark the transition from fall semester of last
year being really terrible, to winter semester before
COVID happening being like the best time I've ever had, the best three months of my life, it was like an awesome semester,
everything's going great. Of course, until we got kicked
off campus, but you know, it's kind of small, but I think that was a
moment where I really felt like my best self, because
I think a lot of my, I don't know my ego and
a lot of my ambition kind of went away and I
focus on, you know, myself and admitting that, you
know, I needed help, admitting that there was something that I could be doing better. - Yeah, and so in Looking for America, we asked people to bring an object that they could tell a story about, that represented their
connection to their community. So people brought in like
all kinds of amazing objects and the object could be
like a song or a recipe. You know, it didn't have to be, you know, a piece of paper or, you know, a thing. And so it was really cool
to see what people brought. And then of course it was really amazing to hear the different
kinds of stories they told and, you know, by doing it that way, it kind of gives people
sort of a baby step into being more vulnerable. Like they can focus on
something else first. And then we like take
them to the next step of digging a little bit deeper
into their personal story, but it's a starting point basically. - [Girl] Okay, so this
picture was actually taken right before my mother
and I got on a plane to meet my father in the United States. I don't remember much about the day except for it was really exciting. And I was actually excited because I got to sit on
top of a bunch of suitcases and got like wheeled around,
but we were all nervous. I also remember my mom
made me dress really nice and I had to wear these
tights and they were itchy, but I remember getting on the plane. And then I remember the
stewardess actually, and I remember she had like golden hair and I was like, wow, she's different. And then I remember she
gave us these trays of food and that was really different for me. And then everything was individual. And for you just where you were
used to sharing everything, but I had own tray just for me. And I remember the glass that
she gave me, which was a, like just this glass of water. And it was so crystal clear
and that, yeah, so that's, this is a picture of whenever
we kind of left China and it was the start of
everything in America. - We are here to really
grapple with difficult issues and we are here to stand
up for what we believe. It's not about saying that, you know, you need to give up anything. I mean, if your deeply held beliefs are your deeply held beliefs
and you should speak your truth and you should allow others
to speak their truth. And if there is a clash, I
love it when there are clashes, if you can speak to how you
feel and you can support it with your own experiences, I think that's an amazing
thing to be able to do. Now, if your truth is oppression, that's not invited to this table ever. And so we shut that down for sure. - I'm surprised because
being raised by my mom, who, she was a single mother
for 15 years and met my dad and then had my brother and I, you know, she grew up, she raised my
brothers throughout the '80s and the '90s and there, she
and my brothers are dark skin. So they have a different
black experience than myself. So she, but she raised
me with the same mindset. And that was that like, you
got the talk pretty early on. And if you ever get pulled over, put your hands on the
wheel, all this stuff, keep your wallet in a place
where it's all, you know, the whole nine yards and
raised with the knowledge that everything that exists is not for me, everything that exists in
this country or at least, you know, that the implication is that it wasn't built for me. It wasn't built for people like me. Where I'm at, this school,
the everything, you know, this wasn't intended for
people like me in America, because it wasn't even
legal for my parents to get married until
like the '50s, you know, so four years or so
before my mom was born. So that kind of stuff
that has been told to me and all the experiences that
my mom has been through, being spit on and all the racist
stuff and in the workplace, 'cause she worked in like banks and stuff in Portland, Oregon. And I'll tell you, Portland,
Oregon is a very racist city, no matter what the media portrays. You know, all that stuff has
like led to me to this day, still being surprised
when I see white people show up for black people. - I think I really
encourage people to speak from their personal experience because at the end of the day, like most people believe that they make well informed decisions. When in fact, I mean, social science has shown
us that most people are not as informed as
they think they are. And in fact, the more informed you are in terms of like following
the news and whatever, the less likely you are to be persuadable and more likely you are
to actually be wrong because you refuse to see
any other perspectives. And so your views are probably,
are more likely to be wrong because you won't inform
yourself of different viewpoints. So anyway, so it is kind of interesting, like a real foundation to the, to having good conversation
is to be willing, to be open to other perspectives
and to actually ask people about their perception. - Like y'alls experiences
are totally validated and perception is 100% reality. And I think the thing
that really gets to me is when someone makes
a knee jerk response, it's tries to invalidate your experience or make an argument against
your actual experience or being as a person. I'm like you miss the point. Yeah, so thank you so much
for really sharing that. It's really interesting to
hear and I feel like this, over the past couple months
has sort of been a wake up call just to like, you know,
this is not your time. Like, this is just your time
to listen and understand and really try to empathize
with people's experiences as opposed to just creating an argument instantly against them. - You know, but I do think
that one misconception of having a good conversation is like, we always talk about
like ask more questions and I do think that's really important, but good conversations go both ways. Like you ask questions, I answer them. Then I ask you a question
and you answer it. Like it has to go both ways. - And you have to be genuinely curious. - You'll have to be, oh, yes. For sure, because one thing
that bugs the heck out of me is, you know, when people
like interrogate you, it's not a real curiosity,
when you feel interrogated. - It's almost when the
questions are actually more about the person asking question than they are about you.
- Exactly, exactly. - Just out of curiosity, can I ask you why you choose to be Republican? - Yeah, no, that's a good question. I get that question a lot, so. Yeah, you know, at the end of the day, I think I really do believe that America is a place of opportunity. I don't believe it's a perfect
system at all, but yeah, just learning about other systems, I do a lot of like
comparative government work and that's like really been
an eye opening experience for me to see what we actually
have in terms of free speech and representation and systems like that that a lot of countries like don't. That's like one part of it. People can think better for themselves than the government can, and
I would much prefer, yes, like this is a difficult way to word this. Sorry, I'm just like
thinking for my thoughts. - No worries. - Yeah, I think this idea of
like empowering the person over the systems within itself, like if the system is inherently racist, which I do think there
are parts of it that are, like just act up, sorry,
I didn't mean to swear. Are just like messed up, like if the system is inherently racist, like why would you trust the system to run every part of your life? Like, wouldn't you prefer
yourself, don't need like, have more faith in yourself
and in your fellow neighbors to sort of decide what they
wanna do with their lives. You know, so I guess
like that's a question I always ask people,
if you're so like angry and mad at the system, why do
you keep giving it more power? Because it's just proven
to be ineffective. - Yeah, that's definitely an
interesting way of thinking. I never thought of that
question, honestly. - Also when you're talking
about the history of police, specifically police 'cause to me, like even if like law enforcement on ice are like the same and
a lot of similarities, I think my stance on
them is pretty different from one another because I, even though there is
definitely a lot of history with the police, I do think it's a bit of an oversimplification to just say, we should just completely get rid of them, they don't serve any purpose other than persecuting
specific groups of people, which is like, there's
definitely a lot of history there for sure, I'm not denying that. But you know, that's kind of
my sort of like gut reaction to hearing of also police is,
well, let's wait for a second. You know, the police are the way a lot of people defend themselves. And a lot of police officers, even though there's a lot
of problems in the system, there's a lot of really
corrupt individuals. You know, police have hard jobs, they have to go out every
day and they don't know if they're gonna come back alive or not, and I think they're,
it's really, you know, it's a really tough job
to be in that, you know, there's a lot of good people that are, that have those visions,
like I'm sure Philipo like, I'm sure your cousin is a great man. You know, I don't think, I don't want to say without
knowing him that he's racist or has a hateful bone in
his body, but you know, it is a tough position. And I think there's a
lot of the same people that are saying we should
get rid of the police, are also saying people
should get rid of other ways to defend themselves like
firearms and things like that. And to me, I think it's
a little naive to say that if we get rid of these things, then all crime is gonna go away and that people aren't gonna need a way to protect themselves. But you know, it's definitely
a very nuanced conversation. And it's interesting, especially to hear specifically
like Lupa and Jacob, I talked to hand all the
time about this stuff, but its just your guys' perspectives because it's as regular that
I see a lot on like Twitter and stuff like that. And I do hear like an
occasion for my friends, but I don't really get to have like full explained conversations about it. - So how do we cultivate
genuine curiosity? - The function of art in this
scenario it's really about, well, what does that mean? What is this image telling me? You think it says that,
Oh, I think it says this and that it's a primmer
almost for the conversation about you think that way about
immigration, interesting. I think this way about immigration, hmm. You know, and my family's
experience is this and your family's experience
is that interesting. I hadn't heard a story like that before. I think that that's
what you're getting at. It's like, there's this the give and take and being curious and tell me more. - It's the tell me more because the art doesn't even
have to be about immigration to show you how to ask
questions about immigration. - That's what what I'm.
- Yeah. - The exercise is the same. - It's the exercise.
- The exercise of it. - Yeah.
- Exactly. - Which is what I love about art. Yeah, yeah.
- Yeah, exactly. It's truly, it takes practice. And so, you know, one of the
things that I won't call it, I'll call it a failure of
Looking for America so far, but that which we're trying
to fix is that, you know, people would come to these
dinners and they would leave, most people would leave
saying this was so amazing, like I never had a
conversation like that before. When's the next one? - Yeah.
- And we rarely had a next, in fact, we never
had a next one until. - In those individual communities? Yeah.
- Exactly, exactly. I would say, Oh, but you
can organize your own, but it's hard, so and I get that. So, you know, that's what
we're thinking about next. And so one of the solutions
that we have for that is to develop a fellows program. And in fact, so we have
our very first fellow, Amber Paradon in Northwest
Arkansas actually. - Oh fantastic.
- So she and I started working together
last year, she's amazing. And so she has continued sort
of the on the ground work of organizing and we
just launched a project called Ozark Story Project. It's so good, it's actually
going on right now. I am really excited
about it because the idea is to collect stories from
old timers and newcomer slash immigrants to the Ozarks and to show how all
their stories intersect. - Hey there, my name is Brandon Weston with Ozark Healing Traditions. And I'd like to welcome you
to the Ozark Story Project. You've probably brought
in a photo with you, something connected to a family story, or maybe just a good memory. And I encourage you to
think about this photo as you move through the project. How has the stories
being told in that photo influenced your life today? How has it shaped your family? How has it influenced how you interact with the world around you? Your photo will be added with those from other participants
to form our tapestry of Ozark Folklore Ozark Folklore is an
interesting thing to look at. It's not one entity or
one body of knowledge that we can point to,
but a mixture, a blend. We might even say a tapestry
made from immigrant stories from across the United
States and the world itself. All of these stories,
intimate to the families that created them have
built upon each other. They've grown and evolved with each other to make what we call Ozark folklore. But as we enter into the modern
world, folklore is changing. Folklore is evolving
with every new community that comes into contact with it. And as you go through this project, I'd ask that you would think back to your own family stories, your own experience in the Ozarks, how have the stories that
your family has given you or the maybe even remedies,
recipes, prayers, songs, traditions, how have
all of these traditions, all of these folk beliefs
that you're used to, how have these added to what we might call modern Ozark folklore? - And then we're planning to, we're going to give all of those stories to a theater company, a
local theater company, and they're gonna turn the stories into little mini Zoom plays. And so people will be able to
watch, experience the plays on Zoom and then have
conversations with each other. So anyway, so that's what we're doing in Northwest Arkansas with
Amber, as a fellow there, and then we're gonna
continue developing that. But now we wanna establish
fellows in other cities so that we can adapt this
model to other cities. We don't have to do the
story project in every city. What would work in that city?
- In each place. - Yeah, what would make
sense and this other place. - And is the idea to pull in, to keep that sort of bipartisan to keep the sort of the political dialogue
as an undercurrent there? - The political part is
definitely still an undercurrent, but at the end of the day, the real undercurrent is
bringing people together who would just not normally
talk to each other. So sometimes that means
it's a rural, urban divide, which, you know, we know that that is a
really powerful divide in our country. You know, sometimes it's a racial divide. Sometimes it's a cultural divide. So, you know, there's
this really great book that says that America is actually made up of 11 different cultures and
we are divided by our cultures. And I don't know that book
really just like blew my mind, was like, Oh yeah, like
this country is huge. And there's like a lot of
different kinda people here. And we don't know anything
about those other people that are like in that
other part of the country, we think we do. What does it mean to be American when there's 11 different
cultures in our country. - To the one person who leaves the dinner and isn't coming back, right? Isn't gonna go to another dinner, isn't going to engage in
the fellowship program. What's the one thing that you
want that person to leave, having learned or acquired? - I hope that they have more
curiosity when they leave, even if it's just a microscopic
amount of curiosity, because that microscopic
amount of curiosity can open up a whole new world. I think about the people who have grown up in an environment where they
never saw anybody different from them themselves or lived in a world where all the beliefs
were exactly the same. And if we can just crack
that open a little bit with just a teeny bit of
curiosity, maybe we can smash open the whole thing. And so curiosity, if they could just leave with the barest amount of it, I think that, you know, we
can really make a change, a real difference in the world. (birds chirping)
