HomeMy WebLinkAboutTRC Transcript - Training Workshop of August 2, 2023[00:00:00] [00:00:07]
[MUSIC] It is now 5: 32. We're going to get the meeting started. Thank you, Stefanie.
[00:00:12]
Commissioner Dillard.
[00:00:13]
Here.
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Commissioner Merit.
[00:00:15]
Here.
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Commissioner Johnson.
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Here.
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Commissioner Krebs.
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Here.
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Commissioner Gathua.
[00:00:22]
Yes.
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Commissioner Nobis.
[00:00:27]
Thank you. I'm going to go ahead. What is on the agenda today? [LAUGHTER] We're going to read the
Native American land acknowledgment. It says we meet today in the community of Iowa City. Which
now occupies the homelands of Native American nations to whom we owe our commitment and
dedication. The area of Iowa City was within the homelands of the Iowa Muskogee in Sock, and
because history is complex and time goes far back beyond memory, we also acknowledged the
ancient connections of many other indigenous peoples here. The history [00:01:00] of Broken Treaties
and forced removal that dispossessed indigenous peoples of their homelands was an isn't active
colonization and genocide that we cannot erase. We implored the Iowa City community to commit to
understanding and addressing these injustices as we work toward equity, restoration and reparations.
I would like to move to agenda item Number 2 and move to public comments for anyone in this room
or joining us online. Just a reminder that we are only holding public comment before and after
because it's a public training for the commission. Anyone online? Anyone in person that likes to
comment at this time? Well, without further ado, I'm going to turn it over to our facilitator team for
agenda item Number 3
[00:02:00] [00:02:04]
Good evening.
[00:02:05]
[LAUGHTER] Good evening.
[00:02:07]
I'm very concerned by your response. Good evening.
[00:02:10]
Good evening.
[00:02:17]
I was telling someone that my excitement about being here is so great that it's possible you will call
the mental health authorities.
[00:02:25]
[LAUGHTER].
[00:02:27]
Please be advised. By the way, for those watching, I'm Larry Schooler. I'm On with Kearns and West.
I'm part of the facilitation team. Please, if you would raise your hand if there's a speech or a portion of
a speech that someone else gave that you've committed to memory, something that you heard
someone say maybe it was a president or a pastor or a spiritual leader or tribal leader or a athlete or
something and that's something that you have committed to memory and something [00:03:00] that
you really are inspired by. Does that apply to anyone? See one nod of the head. I see another couple
of hands.
[00:03:11]
My memory is not so good any more.[LAUGHTER]
[00:03:13]
I'm sorry, Vice Chair. I'm going to share with you a passage that I've committed to memory that I feel
really connects with how I feel in this moment and in this place. It's from a speech given by then
President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s at Rice University in Houston, where I'm from. My dad was
there when he gave this speech. He said, But why some say the moon? Why choose this as our goal?
They may well ask, why climb the highest mountain? Why [00:04:00] decades ago fly the Atlantic?
Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things not
because they are easy, but because they are hard. That's hard in Boston, if you didn't catch it, not
because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and
measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one we are willing to accept.
One we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win. As I look at the Commission assembled, I
am confident you will win. It is the privilege of a lifetime to be in your space. I want to hold some
space before I share some information [00:05:00] with you. The reason I'm holding that space is that I
want to give you all a chance to think about why you're here.
[00:05:10]
Mayor?
[00:05:11]
Yes, sir.
[00:05:11]
I think we had a healing circle to begin first.
[00:05:15]
I'm sorry? Eduardo? I don't know.
[00:05:21]
Sir, we were going to open up those.
[00:05:23]
Yeah. I think we're on the same page.
[00:05:28]
I apologize crew. I haven't eaten all day and Christine took me from some Italian ice cream. When I
got over here, I forgot my stuff. Tomorrow when we close out I have my stage, my feather. Then I'll
pass it around and then I'll explain that tomorrow. But I can just say repressing some standing. Give
me a second here. Old Castile our great God. I say thank you for this beautiful day. Thank you for my
relatives over here, they treat [00:06:00] me really well and our great God, I thank you for everything
that we have going on here. The gardener here of all the routes, they come from the four directions to
offer their expertise, their compassion, their sensitivity and love for the people that we serve. Great
God, our children, our elders, and all in between here that they embark on this school season here,
University of Iowa here, and how they travel near and far that you have a good year and our Great
God, you can bless them. Keeps them safe here and then being here, it was already said being most
of These good routes is my new routes is here, the brothers and sisters who represent is a real
blessing for me. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to come over here and be in the presence
of everyone here and everyone here blessing to their homes. They represent their loved ones here
that everything they want, their dreams and desires comes true. I says all these in your name. Thank
you.
[00:06:55]
It's the OGG. Am I right? The OGG.
[00:06:58]
Great grandpa.
[00:07:00] [00:07:01]
Thank you so much for that. One of the other reasons that I chose the passage from President
Kennedy's speech is he emphasizes that we are doing this not because it is easy, but because it is
hard. This is hard. Yet the six of you and then others to come that have been recently appointed have
stepped into the fire anyway. So what I want to do is give some space before my presentation to
allow you to share. First with a partner and then if you'd like to with the full group, why it is that
you're here. Why have you, after years of waiting, stayed in the fire, persisted in your pursuit of both
truth and reconciliation. What does being here and being a commissioner mean to you? The
[00:08:00] way we're going to do this may seem a little bit elementary schoolish, my last name is
Schooler so I'm forced to do things schooly.
[00:08:07]
I'm sorry, before we even get there, I think we have to at least give contexts. Yes, it is hard work. I
think that that's part of what Dave is trying to make sure it comes into the space. The energy and the
tone setting for today. Yesterday was hard. Was it not? Or are we imagining?
[00:08:38]
[NOISE] You all have been doing this for two, three years, and after so long, you finally get to a room
where you're like, okay. We have not just boots on the ground, [00:09:00] we are inching forward and
things are happening. They're not happening fast enough because folks lives are literally on the line
and we got folks that like, you don't know my story. If I could just be like, yeah, because many of us
we all got titles, we do this work or what have you, but we also come from real lives, real communities
and real experiences and I'm just a girl from the South Side of Chicago who sends everything there.
Sometimes you just want to say you don't know me and you all know what I'm dealing with today.
Even though I got to show up and do some work that I might have [00:10:00] signed up for but I didn't
know what it was going to be. [LAUGHTER] I didn't know it was going to require this of me when I
signed up for it. Part of that is we acknowledge that, we feel that, we honor what you have committed
yourself to do. But even in that commitment, there's still things that are left unsaid and pages
unturned or what have you. As a collective because we're commit it to being accomplices with you
and we are using this language intentionally because we know allies can back out, but accomplices
are going into the fire and so we're committed to doing [00:11:00] this labor with you because as my
assistant said it's everywhere in the globe. There are no borders. We're suffering around the globe
because of white supremacy, ideology and practices, institutions, and people. Whether we are in
Massachusetts, Vermont, Chicago, Iowa City, we're all hurting. Even as you show up as a
commissioner because we can't even get to the place of being commissioners without giving you the
space to tell your truth, to speak and to honor and to bring in relationship with each other what your
truth is. In the process of doing that, [00:12:00] as you model and are the conduits for other people to
tell their truth you have to feel ways. I don't know how you feel, but you are feeling something, you
are thinking something, you are experiencing and embodying some things. Before we even get to
creating an environment in which other people are open to sharing in Iowa City what their truth is, we
know that we have to give you space to share your truth. We would hope to start before you even
speak it to them because some of you might not even want to say it yet to another person. [00:13:00]
Before you even speak it, we just want to take five minutes right now. To shift some things take five
minutes right now and ask you to write and reflect for yourself, how did you come to this commission.
As a person of the global majority, how did you even come embodied in your bodies? How did you
come to even wanting to do this work, to applying to do this work and not just the application process
because you are doing this work whether you are commissioner or not but how. To be able to release
that for yourself how you came to do this work, and then to even share it with each other because
y'all can't even get [00:14:00] in a group of more than three without the whole world watching. At this
time we want to give you time to write for yourself, reflect for yourself how did I get here to be doing
and committing myself to do truth telling, and reparations work for my community? If you could just
take five minutes and do that, that's where we would like to start.
[00:14:44]
I want to [NOISE] first of all acknowledge Oasis Restaurant and the work of Vee and Loise Grace and
others to nourish us. There is nothing like breaking pita bread together, so thank you to the
restaurant to Vee, to others. [00:15:00] I also just wanted to acknowledge that I customarily stand
when I'm facilitating and that may make some folks feel as if I'm trying to assert some power and so
I've decided to sit for the time being. I'm going to do that. I want to ask if anybody would be
comfortable not necessarily, you could share your own reaction to the question that was posed, but I'd
also be curious if you wanted to share something that you've heard from another commissioner that
really is staying with you. Perhaps Commissioner Brown heard something from Wangui that you'd like
to share and so forth. I'll leave it to your discretion, but if there's anything that came out of your small
group share or private work that you'd like to share with the collective.
[00:15:54]
Excuse me.
[00:15:54]
Please.
[00:15:59]
I just think it's important to share [00:16:00] my story because it's a unique one. I'm on this
commission simply because we need native voices. Because before I was on here, there were none
and there was no attempt to try to recruit people from the indigenous community, which is mind-
blowing, it gets sick. Everybody wants to do a land acknowledgment, but they're like, where are they?
Like, hey everybody, let's put a land management together, but there's no natives on our
commission. They were already writing an acknowledgment when I got on which was like whatever.
Anyways. So, Amel Ali approached me back after everything broke down the first time and so we need
people in your native should apply. I said, hell no, that's not something I want to do, I'm to feral for
this environment. I'll probably see stuff that will upset people and she's like, well, that's what we
need. I was like no, I'm [00:17:00] not going to do it. But then Jesse Kay, approached me and said, all
this stuff that was going on and which was the opposite of the good things I was hearing from other
people. That's actually why I joined out of spite, actually. [LAUGHTER] Also out of anger that there's
not indigenous representation and no attempt to get indigenous representation. I applied and I wasn't
even chosen, they chose a white guy over me. A melon team went to bat and I don't know what
happened, but they must have said something and all of a sudden, I was part of this commission. I
was not valued even though my resume is long. I have so many things on there that tell you people I
need to be here because I'm not going to lie like I do a lot of stuff. I'm an executive director of a social
justice and environmental justice organization. So I have the requirements to be on this commission.
What blew my mind is that they had decided to [00:18:00] pick a white guy over me. When they
decided to pick me over this white guy, I was even more incensed if you will, to compete on this
commission. I'm really on this commission out of anger. You'll probably see that in my demeanor
often. You'll probably see me just be that way, because I don't really want to be here half the time.
I'm also angry because we're not getting paid to be here. Everybody who's getting paid except for the
commissioners. Bonum Buckley blubber again, is being used for free to help white people and other
people and we're here to help like the black and brown community. But in essence, we're working for
a city that's largely run by white folks. Again, I see this lopsidedness happening. This is why I'm here
and hopefully I can help make change and maybe get us some I don't know, in the future, people paid
[00:19:00] to do this work?
[00:19:02]
I just want to honor what you said and I hear the anger and I guess I wonder what it means to you to
have indigenous representation now on this commission, what does it represent?
[00:19:18]
If I wasn't here, T wouldn't be here or Danielle or Monopey because of how hard I push the team to get
proper indigenous representation to run these circles and to do these healing activities. Because they
wanted it to be led by non-indigenous people, which really blew my mind as well. Or Maria, because
when there was an opening that came up I was like, Maria, please apply. Now we're getting that
representations. That's what that means to me is like you got to break the gate open. You've got to
kick that door down in order to let others in.
[00:19:55]
I'm going to say something that I normally wouldn't say, but I've heard several references [00:20:00]
to white men. I think to most people I present as a white man, identify primarily as a Jewish man to be
truthful. But acknowledged that my presence and being a white man may make you all feel
something. I can only promise that I will do my level best to serve you as best I can. But I just wanted
to share that with the group because I've heard it said a few times and just want to own the privilege
that I have here to be here. Others that want to share something from their conversation or their
private thinking?
[00:20:39]
I'm going to volunteer Maria for our triad when you guys stepped out. If you're okay with that. She
shared and even Maria if you are okay with me volunteering you [LAUGHTER] because already it was
painful. I looked at [00:21:00] you. You cry I always cry, and also remind ourselves. When I say this
Stephanie, I'm not usually putting it on the facilitator. I usually put it on all of us and even those who
are online and hearing us. Let us remember as we do this work to always have Kleenex with us,
please. Maria, if you're okay with us volunteering you.
[00:21:36]
I can use this one, I think. I just shared my journey of what got me here. One thing about me, I like to
say one thing about me is I'm probably going to cry. [NOISE] It's already happened today.
[OVERLAPPING] [LAUGHTER] It's balanced. I just shared when I was young. I have a white [00:22:00]
father. He moved us to Iowa. We lived in very small rural town, like one of those towns where 20
towns go to one school because it's like 100 people in a town. It was an all white town and it was a
very racist town. It was very normalized racism was just everyday type things. We dealt with physical
abuse and I was the only kid in school who was not white, so I didn't have backup. It was just me
against the world is they say, hey [LAUGHTER] I'm young and I don't understand what's going on and
I don't know why everyone hates me and people are yelling go back to where you came from as me
and my mom were walking in the store. My fight is literally born in racism. [00:23:00] I got out of that
town as soon as I turned 18, as you can imagine, I was scared the hell out of there. I came to Iowa city
and I found myself in the black community here. I was in the black community, I still am. When I first
came I thought these people they're going to get me. They deal with racism like it's going to be
awesome. But what I found was that people that we're interacting with, they didn't experience it the
same way that I had. A lot of those folks had grown up around all black folks so they weren't getting
beat on and told to go back where they came from and all that stuff. They were dealing with racism in
a more systemic way. Now my eyes are being open to a whole another world. Now I'm seeing
[00:24:00] this happening. On top of that, I'm an inquisitive person by nature. I always want to know
why. Why are they doing this? Why is this happening? Where is this coming from? I'm reading
everything I can. Starting at 12 literally, I'm reading stuff because now I'm starting to get older and
understand why is everyone being mean to me? What is this racism thing? Where is this coming
from? I'm just learning as much I still am wow I'm not a spring chicken. I've been learning for a long
time and there's still so much to learn, that's how big this problem is. Then I've also been super
blessed to somehow manage to be around lots of groups of folks. I've worked with folks with
disabilities. [00:25:00] I get to see that world. I've worked with immigrants and seen that world, hear
their stories. I've just been so blessed to be enriched with lots of different communities and their
struggles in their lives. You start to see a common theme and a common fight. When you're with
these people, and you realize everyone were just people, we're all people. The struggles to me, they
become mine because I want to fight for everybody. [LAUGHTER] But it gets really heavy. It's so
heavy and then you're seeing it on the news every day and you see it in real life every day and it was
really eating me [00:26:00] up. I had to act so I was looking for avenues. I had no idea what to do.
None of my friends were activists. I'm going to protests by myself for years, literally by myself, like
[LAUGHTER] my little side marching or whatever. Then I ran into Sikowis, who opened lots of doors
and that was a lady to know to get you places. She opened doors for me and helped me tremendously
to be able to work this energy out in a way that hopefully I can help or do something rather than just
sit at home making Facebook posts and letting them eat me up. That's how I ended up here.
[00:26:54]
There's so much value in the lived experience that you've had as it relates to this work. [00:27:00] I
just honor that. I'm told you didn't cry, which is not. [LAUGHTER] You can cry as much as you want to
in this safe space. But anyway, thank you very much, Commissioner for sharing that. Leaving some
space open for others to share.
[00:27:20]
Just Commissioner Johnson. Well, one of the reasons why I joined is I believe that we can make the
world a better place if we put the hard work and effort into it. I already know that the world is a very
cruel and hard place, but it's only that way when we unite together to make things work out for all of
us. I keep up with the news a lot and I always have. I got involved in the politics that were around
here in Iowa City around when the elections were happening and I thought it was amazing that moved
to Iowa from Philadelphia. This place was so [00:28:00] big when the caucuses were going on, it was
just a storm so I figured this is a nice area, a nice place to try to make a change in difference. I was a
Marine myself, and as a Marine, we fight for whatever reason is a good reason as far as we are
guided. I also am a boxer, so as a boxer, fight, fight, fight as you just can continue to keep here. When
I hear that I Warrior, I heard person who is willing to push forward through adversity and I feel like in
this situation, I was told about the TRC opening and when I heard about the TRC opening that's when I
decided this is another way to fight. It's a more positive way to fight and it's going to be hard. I heard
no politics are [00:29:00] unique I would say, but push through and persevere is the name of the
game for me. That's all. When I saw things falling apart, I'm not going to quit, I'm not going to let
anybody else quit. If they are, I'm not going to force anybody but what I mean by that is [LAUGHTER]
if we can keep moving forward, that's the goal. [NOISE] Petty things, all the things along those lines, I
would like to get to the side because there are people who sacrifice so much for us to even have this
opportunity to get here and I don't feel like that's opportunist should be wasted in any way, shape, or
form. I am here to do whatever it takes to make it happen and fears, it's not in a game plan. We
already know. We already know it's a mountain to climb, but others have done it, I am no different, I
will do the best I can to the best of my abilities. That's why I'm here.
[00:29:58]
Thank you.
[00:29:59]
I know how [00:30:00] cliched it's become to thank someone who served in the military for their
service. I wear a bracelet that I was showing Eduardo that has the name of a good friend who was
killed in Iraq in service to our country. Just know that I see your service and I appreciate it. I see all of
your service because this is, the commissioner pointed out, service that is formed here and it is a
form of service. Holding additional space if anyone wants to take it.
[00:30:32]
When I was hearing the prompt, how did I come to the TRC? I would say that when I joined, I did not
know what a TRC was. [LAUGHTER] I thought I was joining a I thought a cool project to give people an
opportunity to tell their stories. [LAUGHTER] I say, cool, not cool, it's racial issues. But I am a person
that in a past I was a journalist [00:31:00] and I believe in the power of storytelling. I did an amazing
project in college where I was telling these two ladies where I sat with friends and children of
immigrants and that dynamic of telling what it's like to grow up as a child of an immigrant who
doesn't speak English and how that is different and just being able to share that story. For a non-
profit where I work, I used to work more closely with children in this community who have
experienced so much racist acts. As a person who grew up, born and raised in Iowa, I was appalled
because it was not my experience to that extent. Having the opportunity to give people an option to
tell their stories, knowing I'm a person that has a little bit more opportunity to share my story was
really what I was looking forward to. But again, when I started this journey, I had no idea what we
[00:32:00] were getting into. I could not fathom what we're doing now and talking about to almost
two-and-a-half years ago.
[00:32:09]
If I may. Because it's been some time for all of you on this journey, not months, years. Now thinking
about how you got here and like being in this word, what a commissioner is, what comes up for you?
To your point, when you started, you had like, I don't know, maybe people is it? But what does it mean
when you say I am a commissioner?
[00:32:52]
Is that open?
[00:32:53]
That's open.
[00:32:55]
I'm just going to say for myself, I feel like it's been an evolution of emotions. [00:33:00] There has
been times where I've been ashamed. The same a commissioner, there's times I have been angry and
wanted to share the world like this is what I'm here for. There's been times where I was afraid
because I didn't know what it meant. It's been a roller coaster of emotions. I don't know how to further
answer that.
[00:33:25]
I just wanted to mention that as you said, I felt this was a cool project where people would get them
tell their stories.
[00:33:31]
Let me not say cool to begin with.
[00:33:33]
No. But what went through my head was, I think it actually is or it will be, meaning that for me and in
my experience of TRC work, it is at its core, giving voice to people who felt they had never had a voice
before and giving them a captive audience of you-all as stand-ins for the broader community. Just to
say that perhaps your perception [00:34:00] will meet reality more quickly than you think or more
neatly than you think. Did anybody else want to take the space? Go ahead, Vice Chair.
[00:34:10]
When you asked about what does it mean to be the commissioner, the name, I don't think about the
name because I've served as a commissioner for something else for the city of core bills, so it's like
that itself is just a title, but when somebody asked me about the TRC, what does that mean? Who are
you? I love that opportunity to explain. [NOISE] We're going to give people a voice to explain their
trauma or whatever, talking about their truths and try to help educate everybody else to ask them
empathy and change [00:35:00] their ways and the fact that I'm trying to be a part of that. I was
telling them, I've been in Iowa since I was eight. My dad was a radiologist in New York and had a mid-
life crisis and decided he wanted to farm and came to Iowa. I've moved [inaudible 00:35:17] I lived in
Minneapolis by keep coming back here and now I know Iowa City is going to be it for me and I'm
hoping that my experiences that I've had living in rural Iowa, being around Iowa to help bridge or
close that gap and I want to be a part of that. I'm very passionate about Iowa City, and I don't want to
see it turn into some of the ugly places that are around so our grassroots start here and I see that it
could be something major and could be applied elsewhere.
[00:35:58]
Thank you for that. [00:36:00] Commissioner Johnson, I think you may be ahead.
[00:36:04]
Go ahead.
[00:36:07]
I just consider basically I'm a voice. I am a voice for those who might not have or feel they have that
voice. I am just a vessel. I am here to make sure that if you do need your truth heard, somebody will
step up and help you out and make sure that you can get to the podium and then the next person,
and then the next person and the next person. I do not see myself as super important when it comes
down to it other than the part where I can help out somebody else. That's it. My goal is to make sure
that we do not let anybody be silenced. That's it. That's the bottom line.
[00:36:55]
We asked that question very intentionally [00:37:00] and Eduardo, if you want to share more what
you were saying earlier. Because as commissioners who are also community members, there is a
duality of being in this work that you have every right to continue telling your truth. But as you all are
speaking and saying, creating and leading the space for others to tell their truth and be the conduits
of the listening. Eduardo, did you want to say more?
[00:37:58]
Very briefly.
[00:37:59]
Can I [00:38:00] go before Eduardo?
[00:38:01]
Absolutely.
[00:38:02]
Just next to my fellow commissioners before we transition to you. I'll start by piggybacking on what
Cliff has just said, making himself a voice and that's my why.
[00:38:28]
Larry you started off by saying some of the things you remember and as you talk you started with the
word why. I remembered today during my day job staff meeting, somebody shared a video of the
song, Amazing Grace, Sakawicz I'm not going all Christian. But Amazing Grace by Michael Smith,
[00:39:00] he was told to sing, so he sung. Then he was told, now sing it the way you sing it in the
hood. In our meeting, we all got chills when he's sung it, when he was told to sing it the way he sings
it in the hood or the way they sing it. The person who was facilitating when he was told why is he
singing it different ways, he was saying, one is the what and the other one is the why. The first one
was the what. So what are you doing? I'm singing Amazing Grace. The second one, when he was told
to sing how they sing it or how he sings it in the hood was the why? [00:40:00] For this month, we
have our meetings monthly, like a lot of organizations I know. The facilitator, the point of doing that
and playing that and telling us that is, as we sat through the meeting and we went out, what's your
why and what's your what. It has stayed with me and this will stay with me for a long time because
when you talk of your why you're here and I know when of the facilitators, you and Eduardo and Dio,
the members of your organizations were some of the people that we interviewed and have been
interacting with. That's one of the questions we didn't have to ask you, but you answered that even
you Eduardo everyone here and you repeated that here. [00:41:00] For a lot of people who've heard
me, I'm saying it again. My what is being on this commission, why? I always take my story back to
1847. Of course, I wasn't born. I don't know whether anybody is alive who was born in 1847. If there
was, I would want to be that person. But my why I'm here start there and I repeated that yesterday.
That's when the first white person landed on the Kenyan Coast. I'm from Kenya. I originally come from
Kenya, but now I'm an American citizen. But just because I wasn't there, my ancestors were there.
African philosophy [00:42:00] and a lot of the world, they operate on the Ubuntu philosophy,
humanness. This person came and my ancestors, they looked at this person. Some of them were,
what is this? It isn't an animal because it's walking on two legs. But when we look at it, it's walking on
two legs. But the skin color, is it that it doesn't have a skin? Whatever interactions that were
happening, it was the universal human language of individuals sign language because this person,
Vasco da Gama, wasn't speaking [00:43:00] Gikuyu, whatever language that was there or Swahili on
the East-African Indian Ocean coast. He wasn't speaking Swahili either he was speaking Portuguese.
But they were speaking. My people, the African people and I pick Vasco da Gama because he was the
one who landed on my ancestral land. But there were other white people landing everywhere on the
globe and different reactions and interactions. My people, in their Ubuntu or humanist philosophy,
they realize this is a human being. They welcomed this human being because it's a human being. We
don't have the same skin color, but it's a human being and the [00:44:00] interaction begun.
Unfortunately, the humanness wasn't returned. The people who lead from that coast coming up were
Christians. They carried the Bible and humanness is welcoming the person. Have a seat, have a drink
of water, or whatever I'm eating, let's share, including land to shelter themselves and for the church.
Of course, one of the Christian practices, let's bow our heads or close our eyes in prayer. To date,
most of Africans are left holding the Bible. The white man had the gun, the land, and they still having
that land. Fast [00:45:00] forward 20 years ago, Wangui comes into Iowa City to pursue education.
Because one of the things that my ancestors were told, learn the ways of the white person, learn their
language. Once they realized they were robbed so that you can get yourself off this yoke. I get to
Iowa City. Of course, we did throw them out of the continent as late as 1933, end of Apartheid.
Sakawicz, we would be where indigenous peoples are in North America, in America if that didn't
happen. If the oppression, the white colonization, the political wasn't thrown of Africa. But it was
thrown. [00:46:00] But economically, that's documented, it's still there. Africa is still under that. Back
to fast forward, 20 years ago, Wangui lands here with her three daughters, with her two sons,
between two and 15, to pursue this white man's education, to continue shaking off this yoke and my
now ex-husband. But as I do that life happens because then I realize, okay, now I remet the other
ancestors who ended up here involuntarily and I get to realize I had read about it and thought about
it. The oppression in the Americas. Now I come and find, now I'm in the middle of it and now the
struggle continues. That's why [00:47:00] I begin my story all the between 1847 and it's happening
even now and I've been living in the city that I never left 20 years ago and still wanting to make it
better. Which is why when the opportunity came, I joined and also knowing that it's still happening
and I'm part of it. The summary of my life in Iowa City with racial discrimination is living in irrelation
with whiteness. Yes. Geographically we inhabit the same space, my Iowa City, but in irrelation. As I
joined the [00:48:00] Commission I dare to dream that one day it won't be in irrelation. The
pessimists past of me thinks, Wangui, it won't happen during your time. Not even during your grand
babies time, she's three, but I dare to dream. I am here and it's been a good brade since 2021. The
good part working with all of you at whatever time you joined, it's been good. But at the same time in
that good because there have been successes, even just sitting here, this is huge. Larry I'll join you
when you're going for that session, you talked over mental health session because of the excitement.
Just going [00:49:00] through these and wanting to make my Iowa City better. I will stop there. That's
the short form of my why.
[00:49:18]
It's beautifully said.
[00:49:21]
Don't laugh at me, Lauren. I can freely baster. [LAUGHTER] I can talk the whole night.
[00:49:27]
I know you can.
[00:49:28]
But I can listen the whole night. [LAUGHTER]
[00:49:37]
Thank you.
[00:49:39]
I think I admitted that I will speak about this when my turn gets to talk about public hearings because
I will think of this when you're starting to care about music and singing. There are certain songs you
hear them and they change your world, and amazing [00:50:00] Race is one of those for sure. Being
in a scenario, listening to that song or being anywhere listening to that song has a deep impact on
you. Singing that song for others is another role. I fear that kind of role [LAUGHTER], I mean that kind
of responsibility that someone is going to sing the song. But there is another role, there is a third role
here that is also very necessary. There are someone who needs to create the platform for the singer
and no one sees that person because the role of that person is not to be seen. Is to facilitate the role,
to facilitate the singer's space, and to facilitate a space for those in the audience. The complicated
thing about truth commissions is that that is a role that is asked [00:51:00] from you. You are the
third person. You have your own experiences, you could sing perfectly well but you're facilitating
others to come with their voices and to hopefully change the life of the listeners. That's what we're
going to see and not easy at all. Now, it's a way of being an organizer for sure, is a way of being an
activist, only it's a very special way and I hope I have time later on to show how they have done that
in our commissions and different ways to do it.
[00:51:37]
I have two process questions. The first is for you because we're about to pivot and I wonder if you
need a moment like a five-minute pause, whether for the restroom, for water, just to breathe.
Question 1, Question 2 is to you. I feel that it would make more sense to go directly into hearings
[00:52:00] rather than fact-finding. I'm wondering if you'd feel comfortable if we inverted the
sequence and had you go.
[00:52:06]
No, we can move the sequence and I agree with the idea of stopping a little bit.
[00:52:11]
Yeah.
[00:52:11]
After listening to all these stories, we probably have.
[00:52:14]
So would it be all right, I have 6:35. Would it be all right if we came back at quarter to.
[00:52:20]
That makes sense.
[00:52:20]
Then we will pick up with Eduardo's presentation and I will come in again later on.
[00:52:26]
Makes sense.
[00:52:26]
So we'll pause here.
[00:52:27]
Thank you. [BACKGROUND] [00:53:00] [00:54:00] [00:55:00] [00:56:00] [LAUGHTER]
[00:56:41]
[BACKGROUND] [00:57:00] [LAUGHTER] Welcome back. [BACKGROUND] Melinda, [00:58:00]
[00:59:00] [01:00:00] [01:01:00] [01:02:00] [01:03:00] hope we all got time to stretch our legs and
get a little heat. Because my arms are folded, for the body language readers, I'm not upset, I am
freezing. [LAUGHTER] I'm so cold. We are going to go with Eduardo. [BACKGROUND] No, he's over
there. But Melinda is actually going to get us back in the room.
[01:03:44]
Time to get up.
[01:03:45]
It's okay.
[01:03:46]
Can I invite everyone to their seats. [LAUGHTER] [BACKGROUND]
[01:03:59]
For [01:04:00] just two minutes in the space. [BACKGROUND]
[01:04:05]
Thank you everyone. We're going to begin our circle in the section here with an embodied practice as
a way to find clarity of consciousness to rest our minds, to check in with what we may be feeling, and
to notice the ways in which our bodies become entangled with the history of this nation, and with our
society, our community as a whole. A mindful embodied practice helps to bring us back into what's
happening now and we can grow our capacity to be present. I'd like to invite you to gently close your
eyes, or if you [01:05:00] prefer to lower your eyes [OVERLAPPING] or heavy your eye lids, and to
keep the gaze soft toward the floor or the table in front of you. If you can, can you scoot away from
the backs of your chairs, and to bring your pelvis, your hips closer to the edge of your chair as a way
to untuck your tailbone, the end point of our spine and allow the legs to uncross and place your feet.
Pull about seven inches hip-width distance apart with your feet pointing straight forward. Maybe you
can spread your toes wide in your shoes, in your sandals. Can you notice [01:06:00] where your toes,
your heels, and the sides of your feet are connecting with the earth below you? Take your arms and
place your fingertips on your chair behind you and press your fingertips into the chair and allow that
to lift your spine towards the sky, lengthening and taking the crown of the head higher and then
gliding the skull back. We sit on our phones, our computers, with our heads thrust forward. This is an
opportunity to create a direct line from the crown of our heads through the base of our spine
[01:07:00] and into the earth below us. You could release your hands and just allow the hands to rest
gently on your thighs, press your shoulders down and lengthen the neck as you grow taller. Then turn
your attention inward towards your breath. Just become the observer or the seer of your breath. Just
notice the pace, the rhythm, the texture of your breath. Notice if the breadth is beginning to slow
down, when we share our truth, when we tell our stories, [01:08:00] our awareness heightens, our
central nervous system, might become stimulated. When we return to the breath, we can bring
greater focus, increase the awareness, and calm the mind.
[01:08:37]
As you sit with your breath for a few more moments, see if here you can increase the length of your
inhales, increase the depth of your exhales. [01:09:00] Begin to notice the impact that the breath is
having on the mind and on the body. Notice where in the body there might be some sensitivity, where
there might be some tension. Bring your awareness to those places. Offer some love. Offer some
caring. Embrace. [01:10:00] Then come back to the feet that are connecting with the earth below us.
Know that our feet are standing on Turtle Island, Pachamama, Mother Earth, providing support,
predictability, grounding. Allow what you can [01:11:00] take from the earth below into your heart.
Notice now the overall climate of your breath. Observe its texture. When you're ready and in your own
time, you can gently blink the eyes open and bring with you back to our gathering, what you may
have collected from this moment of quiet.
[01:11:50]
[inaudible 01:11:50] [01:12:00] This part.
[01:12:33]
Thank you so much, Melinda, again, for helping us transition into this section of the conversation.
What I want to do now is to provide you with a few cases or examples of how truth commissions have
typically prepared what they call public hearings. Meaning platform spaces that are safe, that are
respectful [01:13:00] to facilitate survivals, an opportunity to share their stories. I have selected four
cases. One is the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, the other one is a TRC of
Canada, the third one is a Truth Commission of Greensboro, North Carolina, and the last one is a
Truth Commission on my country, Peru, where I worked. In fact, my job was to organize hearings. I
would like to perhaps provide just a couple of comments before I show each video and then allow for
the conversation to happen. What are the elements that jump to your attention and you think are
probably the most significant. If we could Stefanie, perhaps we need to take down the lights of it.
Thanks so much, Stefanie.
[01:14:00] [01:14:02]
That's the one. We're still a little bit in the [OVERLAPPING].
[01:14:08]
Oh, seedless watermelon. Just 388.
[01:14:12]
Torture. How many times have you heard stories of South Africans who said they were tortured?
[01:14:17]
It's three minutes.
[01:14:18]
Do you believe them? Well, this week, the truth commissioners and the public had no doubts as they
sat in silent anguish listening to testimonies of horror.
[01:14:30]
Singqokwana Malgas was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment in the 1960s. After his release, he was
detained frequently and tortured on each occasion. His son died in detention after police poured acid
over him.
[01:14:44]
You have told us today that you were tortured many times, in many different places. If you are able to
and it's not too painful, could you describe [01:15:00] some of the torture? What actually did they do
to you? There is what they called the helicopter method of torturing of some kind. They suffocated me
by pulling a mask over my face. With the helicopter methods, they put a stick behind your knees and
you were hung upside down. While this was happening, you are suffocating.
[01:15:48]
It's fine. Don't worry about it. [01:16:00] That's all.
[01:16:18]
Joe Jordan, now a member of the Eastern Cape provincial legislation.
[01:16:24]
The South African Truth Commission was the first one in organizing party queries. Before this
commission, all of those commissions were basically behind closed doors and what they did was just
fact find, getting information, compiling information, writing a final report. They were what we usually
know as a blue ribbon committee. A committee of experts that gathers information, writes a report,
publishes the report. Then whatever made those commissions before South Africa. But this is
[01:17:00] usually seen as the first one, probably because it was the first one in use this issue. They
only did that because it summarizes the victims and survivors of the organization. Those commission
in South Africa was created because as part of the political transition in that country. The political
leaders from both sides decided that there was going to be a mechanism of amnesty for the people
human rights violations. But they agreed also that in order to receive an amnesty and individual
knows how to participate in hearings and confess what they did not perform. Since they also realized
that it would be unfair to just give an opportunity to persons accused of human rights violations, they
decided to do hearings with victims and survivors. Over time they received in a truth commission
around [01:18:00] 4,000 people. They organized around 50 different hearings. The hearings look like
this. The word public both in the sense that they were televised nationally and also that they were
conducted in public spaces with persons coming to participate in the audience. I don't know, you
made him realize ideas, images that come to your mind. But you can see the commissioners in front
of their survival, in front of victim is at very close second. It's almost singular. You have some
conversation. The vice chair of the commission, who was a pastor, Alex Bahrain, asking questions to
the survival of Congress. This is of course just announced a little fragment, a segment of what was
really along testing [01:19:00] but you can see that it is not just the witness who is feeling the
pressure and crying and manifesting all these motions, but also the commissioners themselves. The
way they're doing it is just supporting and accompanying the person who came. That's one example
and this is how those commission started to use periods. That of course, created enormous reactions
in South Africa because just until that moment, basically people could say they didn't know, could say
that everything can be exaggeration or these horror stories that were used for political groups. No
longer a service. Which is why the center of the TV show, which have it every week by the way says
have you ever heard stories [inaudible 01:19:58] [01:20:00] Do you believe those? These is what was
shown by this commission this week. This is what the way it starts. Let me show you a simple
example, and this is Canada.
[01:20:23]
So long, it takes dozens of people to carry the names of more than 4,000 children who never returned
home from residential schools. These are the documented cases. The total number of deaths is
believed to be much higher. In their memory, the first indigenous Governor-General placed tiny shoes
on stage, followed by the prime minister. They watched as survivors told their stories.
[01:20:55]
I hate your residential school, I hate you. You're a monster. [01:21:00] Your throat muscles, force me
down into your stomach, your throat muscles squeezed my happiness. Squeezed my dreams,
squeezed my native voice.
[01:21:09]
I believe your stories and I believe in reconciliation as part of the healing journey.
[01:21:17]
The prejudicial policies that force more than 150,000 first Nations, Matey and Inui, children into these
government-funded institutions called out.
[01:21:28]
I saw the impact on my community. I felt the void left by the children.
[01:21:35]
It's taken decades for the country to face the damage done and it's enduring impact.
[01:21:40]
This important work of reconciliation is not a one-day affair. As we say, it will take us several
generations. On September 30th, I'm simply asking you to extend the same courtesy to survivors that
you are used to doing for others.
[01:22:00]
Residential school intended to assimilate us and destroy our culture. We are still here. We will survive.
[01:22:09]
Resilience even as waves of trauma ripple through generations.
[01:22:14]
I'm an intergenerational residential school survivor. I know it's happening and I can feel the pain of all
the other children. They have been hurt because of this.
[01:22:21]
Indigenous youth her age are still being ripped away from their families more now in foster care, but
not the height of the residential school era.
[01:22:31]
All I want, everyone to know is just to understand and reflect and just be able to learn from all of the
past mistakes and that we can all take a step forward in reconciliation.
[01:22:40]
One, leading to a future that breaks the cycles of the past. Olivia Stefanovich, CBC News, Ottawa.
[01:22:58]
I remember the first [01:23:00] public hearing in the Canadian commission. If I'm not wrong in
Winnipeg. Something that I think was very useful on the side of the commission is that they didn't
organize it, something that looked or resembled a very formal space. They asked the organization, the
assembler First Nations on circle of survivors to tell them how they wanted to tell their story. The way
that came out of that consultation was organized circles. The circles were precisely that, not just
figuratively, there were actual circles of people all together coming in a huddle to listen to the stories.
I think that was very useful, very appropriate because it reflected the culture. The big difficulty here I
think was that since there has been impunity for generations, [01:24:00] the survivors were old,
where elder people and some of them were unable to come and share their stories. In some cases,
the people telling their story where the children of the survivors or the grandchildren of survivors. But
there was the intention of the commission to listen. Even if they were not able to listen to the direct
survivor, they would find a solution. They would find a way to channel those ancestral voices. I think
that is what they tried to do. But as you can see it became also very open space. Yes, you go.
[01:24:44]
I just wanted to add some important information because it wasn't just elders. The last residential
school closed in 1996. My cousins actually went to the residential school on my reservation and so
there was residential schools [01:25:00] opened for people that were my age actually to attend. Just
so you know, the atrocities kept going.
[01:25:09]
No, you're right. In fact, the mechanism of forcibly assimilating kids is something that, it didn't start in
Ghana, of course, it started with the so-called industrial schools here in the US.
[01:25:25]
Yes. The industrial school, they're called boarding schools here so just to clarify, like there's
residential schools in Canada boarding schools here, but it's the same thing. There were actually
three here in Ottawa and actually one right in Nebraska right now, that's being stolen art I believe, or
looked into for bodies at the moment. It's not like this isn't happening here as well.
[01:25:58]
I just wanted to add [01:26:00] one last thing just for facts and I forgot it, but yeah, I just wanted you
to just to clarify.
[01:26:10]
That's a Canadian example. Of course here the boarding school coalition is trying to create an US
truth commission on this issue precisely. In Australia, there is right now a local truth commission
dealing with these. In New Zealand, there has been an effort to deal with this because this has been a
very common practice. Of course, it's incredibly difficult to bring it now to the present. I think they did
a very good job in Canada.
[01:26:43]
That's what I wanted to add. When you say that it was different, it wasn't just like a commission was
set up where people just talk and testify. These are relatives, they decided that they wanted it to be
culturally appropriate. That's why you see it carried out the way it [01:27:00] was carried out. I think
that's really important to note with our commission that culture has to be the backbone behind
everything that we do, like the culture of black and brown folks. That's what we need food all the time
and everything would be.
[01:27:16]
Let me show you the third example that I was thinking will be used. This one is the green swallow
Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Just a second, please. As you just to remember the case, this is
a result of an act of extreme violence that happened in 1979. The Klan neo-Nazis attacked
demonstration by union activists and in black neighborhoods. They killed five people and wounded
many others. Now, when that massacre [01:28:00] took place, the attackers were tried and they were
declared not guilty, of course, via an all white jury. The survivors 20 years later decided that since
they had been cheated of their possibility of obtaining justice through irregular criminal court system,
they will create a truth commission to establish the truth about what had happened and to create a
social process by which people would learn from it. What is interesting about the grades for
commissioning and you will see this, is that they found the survivors who wanted to share their
stories. They also found the perpetrators who wanted to tell their stories. Some of which you're going
to see that, again, quite old. They were not dependent. This was not an easy or satisfying space
[01:29:00] in which you have a perpetrator apologizing or asking forgiveness for what he did. Actually,
they vindicated what they were doing. That is what was so hard about it, but the commission created
that space so that the community would see how divided they were about their memories. Let me
show you just a fragment of one of the hearings of the Greensboro Commission.
[01:29:24]
We will now bring this here into order. We thank everyone here for their willingness and openness to
listen to the variety of viewpoints on traumatic events in our history.
[01:29:35]
Over the course of three public hearings held in Greensboro, 54 people spoke to the commission
about the events of November 3rd, their origins and lasting impact.
[01:29:48]
Reason I came to Greensboro. They put the poster out. There after the Klan said they would hide
under a rock, we wish to come out as good as any man walked home desert.
[01:30:00] [01:30:04]
Gunfire, screams, engines gunning as the shooter is flat. Here is silence. I could smell gunpowder in
the air and heard the groaning of people who were dying.
[01:30:23]
You don't let two groups with extreme political views from each other come together without a buffer.
The buffer would have been the police.
[01:30:35]
My opinion.
[01:30:35]
Yes, we should have been there.
[01:30:38]
Thank you. If we can stop there. Just an uninteresting detail here. Degrees for a commission was not
an official commission. It was not established by the city of readings. The survivors wanted the city to
pass an ordinance or a solution creating it, but the city refused, which is why it had to be [01:31:00]
an all volunteer effort. Meaning it was the survivors themselves who organized the commission, who
brought together the community to actually run a commission, select commissioners, organized
hearings and so on and so forth. Also, because it was not official, it didn't have any power to compel
testimony. They were not able to deliver anything resembling a subpoena, for example. They had to
talk and they had to persuade each person to come to this discussion. Including as you have seen,
retired police officers who had actually facilitated what happened that day, they had to persuade
former Klan members to come and present their perspective and that allow them to be able to say
when they finally prepare the report, we have heard all voices and it was true, they have. That is what
I think makes this [01:32:00] particular case very interesting, is not an official commission. Is perhaps
the first local commission in the census it happens in a city, but it's not official. These can probably
bring here some ideas. You are a local commission. Only the advantage is that there is actually an
empowerment by the city for these particular commission. Larry, you're analyst at the time of the
Greensboro Commission. I don't know if you can add something here.
[01:32:29]
I was just going to add a word of it. I think one difference between Greensboro and others is that in
many cases, the people who testified during the hearings were invited. In other words, the
commission set up a trio of hearings based on what led to the shooting, what happened at the
shooting, the aftermath of the shooting. Then they asked specific people, if I recall, to be at each
hearing based on what they could provide as expertise. [01:33:00] It's different. It doesn't mean it's
better or worse, but it led to a level of dramatic power that I think is hard to achieve when you don't
know who's going to be there. But to hear some of what both the Klan and the organizers of the rally
testified to, the same day, the same hearing and in the same space was extraordinary, but it was a
choice on the part of the commission to not subpoena, of course, but to stage manage that to the
extent that they did.
[01:33:36]
When was that hearing?
[01:33:38]
2005.
[01:33:39]
Thank you.
[01:33:40]
Yeah.
[01:33:40]
[inaudible 01:33:40] Let me show the first example, and then we can roll it all around.
[01:33:51]
Before you move on, I just wanted to share that the Greensboro Community, the beloved community,
is in the process of [01:34:00] establishing a statewide Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This
past fall, they invited activists, organizers from all around North Carolina to come together and to
organize and to build momentum for a statewide commission.
[01:34:25]
Yes, great point. The last example concerns my country, Peru. Peru had an internal conflict that lasted
from 1980-2000. Basically only time I was growing up there. It's conflict that confronted on the one
side, the Peruvian state and on the other side, subversive organizations, one called The Shining Path
that became very well-known. We calculated in the commission at the end of our work that about
69,000 [01:35:00] people had been killed or disappeared. Which is just an indication of how brutal the
conflict was. Three-quarters of that people were people from the rural indigenous areas of Peru,
speakers of the Quechua language. The violence was not random, it was directed, it was targeted. It is
the communities that were indigenous communities, both in the highlands and in the amazon areas
that were particularly targeted by the violence. I think this was also very challenging to organize. The
Commission was established by law. The country established a commission. It's an official institution.
The members of the commission were selected by the national cabinet, the cabinet or ministers. We
worked just [01:36:00] two years. This Commission also did not have any subpoena power. They did
not want to invite to the hearings perpetrators, because there was always the option of using criminal
justice mechanisms. If you invited perpetrators to come, probably they will alter the possibilities of
criminal justice later on. In Peru, there was not an amnesty. There was not any conditions to obtain an
amnesty. People who committed these crimes would be prosecuted. In fact, many have been
prosecuted. The focus of the hearings were still listening to the victims directly to a survivor's directly.
[MUSIC]
[01:37:00] [01:37:29]
[MUSIC] [FOREIGN] The human rights movement insisted that the transitional government established
the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission, [01:38:00] headed by Dr. Solomon Lerner, Carlos
Ivan Degregori and Sophia Mohr, the human rights leader and 10 other commissioners were
empowered by the new government to uncover the truth about Peru's 20-year war. [inaudible
01:38:12] In an effort to have a broad perspective, Beatriz Alva Hart was invited to join the Truth
Commission. [FOREIGN] [01:39:00] In the first public hearings ever held by a Truth Commission in
Latin America, Peruvians listened in stone silence.
[01:40:00] [01:41:00] [01:41:05]
Again, this is a completely different case, perhaps is more similar to the South African case because
it's about an armed conflict. There was an armed conflict there were parties fighting, and the scale of
the violations is some level. The 69,000 number, it just refers to the people killed and disappeared.
But the hundreds of thousands of people who had to leave their homes, who had to emigrate, go out
of the country, that's an enormous number, not to mention torture, assaults, different kinds of
violations. What I think is important is that the commission had several activities at its disposal, that it
had tools to deal with it. Even thinking [01:42:00] of the normal scale, they had to do something.
What they decided to do was first of all, they were going to receive testimony. They were going to
install offices in all the country, open the doors, invite people to come and talk about what had
happened. The commission received about 22,000 testimonies, which in addition to the records that
existed of that time allow the commission to reconstruct the history of those years. Second, the
commission was going to organize public hearings, that is organizing about 40 events around the
country in which it invited people from the different cities, different locations, different regions to
come and talk about what happened to. Those were hearings with people who were invited. It was not
an open-door, first-come, first-serve basis. It was invited because the testimonies were selected on
the basis of their capacity to teach something to the nation. The [01:43:00] third one was the
explanations. Since you are talking about thousands of people missing or disappeared, this basis of
disappeared persons means basically that one of the parties of conflict, typically the army, who
execute people will commit a massacre and then try to disappear their bodies, putting them in some
unmarked grave. One of the things that the commission did was to identify bodies. You have seen, for
example, images of the moment of the evolution of bodies to a community that are completely
identified now with names so the community can give them proper burial. That's another activity of
the commission did and of course, the commission work only two years. It was unable to do that for all
the cases of missing and disappeared persons, but it opened the possibility of doing that, and there
are exhumations happening even now, 20 years after the commission and 40 years after the war.
[01:44:00] The other thing of course, was that the commission wrote a final report, a document that
compiled all the information that the commission had received, organize that information in order to
understand what had happened, and to make recommendations to a country. Now, we have seen four
cases, very different ones, very different kinds of atrocity of human rights violations, internal conflict,
racism, cultural genocide, a massacre. In all those cases, the story that needs to be told is very
complicated because it has structural roots, structural frameworks to understand what was going on.
It has also the specific story, what happened in this particular case, the anecdote. How to ensure that
the nation, that the public, that the citizens, are going to understand [01:45:00] such a complex story.
Moreover, a story that has been denied officially because the state, the government never wanted to
accept that this has happened. Not in a country like Peru or Canada or South Africa, not in a city like
Greensboro. But they ended up because of the situation in the situation of creating a Truth
Commission, and they had to accept the fact that they had to listen to the stories and accept that
they were true. The hearings helped the commissions to do this, to provide a space in which we will
restore credibility to the voice of the victims. That was profoundly important, profoundly significant.
Because at least in my case, in the case of Peru, the public space has always been reserved to some
people, the powerful corporations, politicians, [01:46:00] people who have some celebrity. I had never
heard, growing in Peru, in my life in national TV people speaking in Quechua language, never. It had
never happened before. It was only with the Truth Commission that it happened, Quechua language,
Aymara language, Ashaninka language was the first time it happened. There was never in the case of
Peru, an opportunity in which persons of an organization created by the government, by the state
were sitting on the same table with victims and survivors of an atrocity caused by the state. It had
never happened before. I think what we wanted to show with the hearings was that this kind of
dialogue and recognition and acknowledgment could happen. That's perhaps my introduction about
what we tried to convey in the Peruvian hearings. [01:47:00] But the cases are, as you see, very
different, and this is just a selection. They're having around 42 commissions in the world. I would say
broadly 15 have had public hearings, perhaps more, and all of those look different. They have
particularities. They are culturally appropriate for each particular country, location. This is the
challenge for you. First of all, to decide, under the truth-telling item rubric of your mandate, what do
you want to do with that? Is it public hearings? Is it town halls? Is it some other type of platform,
circles, theater plays, music. What kind of testimony, what kind of platform would you want to
establish? Are those platforms going to look similar to what you have seen, or are they going to be
[01:48:00] more specific, more reflective of the culture, the logic, the wisdom of Iowa and Iowa City?
Those are the questions that are open and perhaps this will be a good moment for having a few
reactions on what we have seen and ideas about how what we have seen may be useful for us in the
DRC.
[01:48:26]
First, I would like to thank you for presenting that to us right there, that was extremely helpful and
moving. I think my own personal opinion, we should definitely have it out in public. I think we should
make sure that we also add a theater aspect to it. I am a firm believer of people have to feel it
themselves in order to understand what it's like and I think a mixture of the two can be really helpful.
I've been thinking about that for a long time and I was [01:49:00] hoping that we would get around
here with that. I was wondering your thoughts too.
[01:49:07]
One thing I would say much because we think about doing it in public. Yes, we get the word out. But
this isn't about asking the people, how do they want to tell their truth? Because technically it's their
story and they need to be the ones that feel comfortable and safe to tell it and what environment and
what methods. It's like we need to think of multiple avenues that people can tell their truth. Now, not
the way we necessarily see it, but how they want to do it? The question is, how do we get out and ask
them.
[01:49:46]
I'll piggyback on that. Thank you again, Eduardo. For me, I've been lucky to hear you talk about the
various truth commissions that have [01:50:00] happened around the world. The other two times, I've
also heard you talk about the Kenyan one and of course, it's interesting that I really got to know about
the Kenyan one. I'm from the country and I was actually part of the victims yet I didn't even get to
really learn about it and go back and engage until you talked about it. Both as you've done your
presentations with us commissioners, as we learn about TRCs and also during the courses that we
took over six weeks, you were part of that. You gave us a lot [01:51:00] of information on what was
happening. Now watching it again, I'm piggybacking toward Cliff and Lauren are talking about to what
you said and what Sakharov is talked about as we go out into our communities to hear and to listen,
to contextualize. You're talking about in Peru. Listening to people in their languages and that's one of
the things that we have here. As we've been doing this work, I keep also wanting to make sure that
we also bring in the Hispanic community because I've been feeling their absence and the absence is
very loud. Also to think about the, not just the linguistic contexts, but also the cultural context as we
[01:52:00] move in. Not necessarily inviting the communities and as we do our listenings, but our
selves going to the communities, if the Mohammed doesn't go to the mountain, then let the mountain
go to Mohammed. I'll stop there.
[01:52:21]
Thank you. There are a few. Sorry.
[01:52:25]
Is it okay? The thing that keeps coming to me, I mentioned that this task seems so big and everything
is, I feel like the biggest thing that makes us unique is that we don't have one culture or one group of
people to think about. Even in the black community, that's several different groups and we're trying to
come up with something that fit everyone. It seems we need multiple TRCs for every group. I am
thinking about how do we decide which way to go? How do we decide who to work with first, or
[01:53:00] do we decide to do at all which seems impossible. That's what I'm thinking about. How do
we prepare for any of this, if the one thing that was putting them all together is, they had that one
event or that one thing that brought them together. I know ours was initiated with the murder of
George Floyd, but that is not a local event. It just feels a little bit different.
[01:53:29]
Thank you for the interventions. A few ideas that come to mind. First, the public character of the
activity. The ordinance creating the Commission says that there has to be truth-telling, but it doesn't
tell you in what form exactly. It gives a few ideas. It says, you explore forms of organizing this and it
may insurance public hearings as a possibility. It's not that you are forced to create a public hearing,
but you can explore forums in which you create a platform for people to tell their stories. [01:54:00]
The challenge now is to put our minds to work and think, how is that going to look like? Now, another
question here. Does every survivor want to actually come and speak in public? Clearly not, many
people are not prepared, do not have the obligation of course and they may never want to do that,
but they want to talk. The commission needs to also establish spaces for private conversations to
receive testimony that is directly given to the Commission in the conditions in which the rival wants to
share them. Rivals may want to tell her story just for the moment, not being recorded, just to release
survivors may want their story to be recorded. Survivors may not want to give a name, survivors may
want to give a name. All those possibilities should not be a decision of the commission [01:55:00] by
the decision of the survivor. On the question of what is valid what it's not. Again, the criteria is what
the survivors are telling you. In the case of Columbia, which had just had a truth commission, I didn't
bring the media because it was in Spanish. But in the case of Colombia, they organized a specific
hearing to talk about sexual violence, which of course, it's incredibly difficult to think of as an activity
that you're going to make in public. Different commissions have addressed the question of the voices
of survivors of sexual violence in different way. In Colombia, what they did was there were survivors
who wanted to speak in public, who wanted to give their face and name and speak about what they
had suffered. The were all others who wrote what had happened and an actress person from the
public would read what this person had mentioned. There were others who wanted to actually
[01:56:00] speak, but to have the space completely darkened when they were in the stage speaking
about what had happened. There were many possibilities here, and the commission accommodated
the survivors to tell their stories in the way they wanted to do that. So the idea here is, this is not an
act of voyeurism for the public, this is an act of declassification, an act of recognition for the survivor.
In order to do that, it has to be done in the conditions that the survivors want not conditions that the
commission wants. So that's has to do with the question of publicity, isn't it?
[01:56:41]
If I I could add add Eduardo, I'm glad you said that speaking is also not just a verbal audio activity. As
we are telling stories, I think about the way [01:57:00] history and stories are transpose for African-
American women through braiding. I've been watching commissioner, and it it may be just a way of
being present in the room crocheting like the knitting, there's a difference. There's so many ways
people can tell their stories that don't have to be a testimony in the way that we traditionally
recognized testimony that is culturally appropriate. A month ago, my neck was sliced open and I could
not speak and to be able to even speak right now or [01:58:00] to be at a moment where I wanted to
and I just physically couldn't. But that didn't mean like I had to communicate to my doctor that I was
about to die. It may not be anything that has ever been seen before in anybody else's Commission
that if you allow yourselves to be open to how your community is communicating to you about what
they want to share.
[01:58:36]
I'll piggyback on Stephanie's words. You've just reminded me people of African origins peek through
song and dance. Every year we get the Soweto township choir coming to Hancher at the University of
Iowa theater. [01:59:00] The apartheid was dismantled, but we know the legacy is still there. For the
three hours they come and perform, everybody who comes out of that theater, you are left with that.
A lot of the people, I being one of them, we don't understand the South African languages they sing
in. One of them is Xhosa. But you are left with that story and those experiences. Some of them didn't
even directly experience apartheid. But they talk through song and dance, and it does come through,
even if you go right now watch their recordings that has reminded me. [02:00:00] Even a lot of the
African songs, those of us who've become Americans. Even as we experience what has been in the
past and what still happens, we do do it in song and dance, and express that.
[02:00:22]
I just wanted to go through the question Chasity raised. The question of the diversity of voices,
diversity of cultures, and diversity of modes of sharing. As you can imagine, in Peru, we were talking
about a country of 30 million. We have 42nd native languages in our country, in addition to the
Spanish. Just organizing that was incredibly complicated. We didn't have commissioners who spoke all
the languages [02:01:00] of the people who were harmed. The national TV had never done live
translation, for example, of this thing. We needed to find the mechanism. Now, the commission was
very short. We operated only for two years. After the commission finished, the storytelling continued.
Only it continued in different ways. Communities themselves started to do activities to tell stories.
One that I want to show you is what they did with the help of the International Committee of the Red
Cross. It's called the Scarf of Hope. Basically, what it means is that the relatives of the people who
disappeared or missing, came to here to do this. You're going to to see it. [MUSIC]
[02:02:00] [02:02:02]
[FOREIGN]
[02:02:14]
Basically, each family, each relative of a person who has disappeared or got [02:03:00] missing,
created its own scarf with the names or mementos or ideas.
[02:03:06]
[FOREIGN]
[02:03:57]
What she says is something very interesting, she says [02:04:00] that in the highlands, it is traditional
that as a gesture of love for someone or gesture of favoring someone, you are going to prepare a
scarf, and you're going to give this person a scarf. It can be your boyfriend. It can be someone in your
family that you love, particularly. What they said is we re-signifying that particular gesture, and we
put the names there of the people who got disappeared and whose bodies have not been returned to
us. They invited relatives all over the country until they got a few hundreds. Then they joined all the
pieces and they made a scarf which is about 1,000 meters long. The scarf is now in the National
Museum of Memory in Peru, so everybody can see it. It's another way of bearing witness to
something, to what happened. Many of these people [02:05:00] were not able to come to a truth
commission or to participate in a public hearing, or perhaps they may not even want to participate in
a public hearing, but they wanted to speak anyway, and they wanted to be represented anyway. If we
had the time, probably we would have explored this possibility. We only worked 23 months, as I told
you. We never had all the resources or the ideas. We were very much under the impact of South
Africa, which had happened just before. We were emulating that, trying to do something that was
pretty much inspired by South Africa, but there were other mechanisms. In fact, after our experience,
so many of these initiatives have multiplied. Here is an invitation to creativity really. That is where I
think I could leave it. We can continue with the conversation.
[02:05:55]
When did the Peru one happen? What year was Peru's?
[02:05:59]
[inaudible 02:05:59] commission.
[02:06:00]
The commission worked from 2001 to 2003.
[02:06:03]
Okay.
[02:06:04]
[inaudible 02:06:04].
[02:06:12]
We're great. Dave and Melinda are going to jump in, because they have even more ideas to present
and compare with possibilities again. You aren't limited to say like, we're only going to do this.
[BACKGROUND].
[02:06:45]
Yeah, two or three. The minutes.
[02:06:48]
Probably take five minutes, come right back. [BACKGROUND]
[02:07:00] [02:08:00] [02:08:22]
[POOR AUDIO SECTION - START]
[02:08:22]
[BACKGROUND] [OVERLAPPING].
[02:08:33]
Mr. Johnson?
[02:09:00] [02:09:05]
Yes.
[02:09:05]
What's your first name?
[02:09:06]
Cliff Johnson
[02:09:08]
I wasn't expecting that
[02:09:10]
I love that.
[02:09:11]
[inaudible 02:09:11].
[02:09:11]
I love that, that's fantastic.
[02:09:13]
I like that
[02:09:15]
Okay.
[02:09:15]
That was my team brother.
[02:09:16]
No you can touch her she's fine now.
[02:09:25]
I really appreciate it.
[02:09:26]
[OVERLAPPING].
[02:09:27]
I love that that's awesome.
[02:09:43]
I like the color and my dog.
[02:09:49]
Native.
[02:09:49]
That's my [02:10:00] daddy last stuff and I got nothing coming to class.
[02:10:08]
Find out what the outside of your shoes.
[02:10:18]
That's right. Well, gosh, my head down. I couldn't buy their mother 2047 and let's write it as P boxers.
50 years ago Oh, that's pretty awesome.
[02:10:37]
You guys got it.
[02:10:40]
Up to yarn bags. Know they got the little guys like we haven't left Nebraska. [02:11:00] Andrew dam
or to go into my gradient by first name is Steven is cool. Attitude. That's right. I had to have a hard
time. Yeah. You got to start sending requests every two weeks, right?
[02:11:34]
That's right. I was on the run button that teachers resilience.
[02:11:42]
So it's all very strongly in better. You keep pushing for it. It's all by the spirit. I want to be them so
that if something to me, [02:12:00] amylases, dog had his head down. Whenever you came back into
the picture? It was hard to see though. Of course for me, the residential school. Why don't you hold
on. I have one on the ground. They're kinda going up rather than actually straight up and down right
there.
[02:12:39]
There is no other way.
[02:12:42]
We're not gonna be Tense, Verb Tense. Something really bad is that is an opening it up to [02:13:00]
the top. I'm sorry. Not there are people that surround them by saying because like it feels like just I
was sitting. It's connected to oh, yeah. You were saying yeah. I make that will make sense. Yeah. I
love your merits. A reasonable feel like they're gonna be like No, I don't want to make sure that I took
random feel free to mark [02:14:00] the color yellow with all these colors.
[02:14:03]
Are they?
[02:14:06]
That's one. When I was there. I was really trying to teach.
[02:14:26]
I'm trying.
[02:14:32]
But also there's a large extra small for watching.
[02:14:44]
They're like little postcards.
[02:14:47]
I just thought the blue was more [02:15:00] like a large sweat. Sometimes a guy.
[02:15:46]
[POOR AUDIO SECTION - END]
[02:15:46]
[BACKGROUND] [02:16:00] [02:17:00] You sit here? I'll pull a chair.
[02:17:40]
No worries.
[02:17:42]
Welcome back. I love that word. Welcome, is also like welcome back. [BACKGROUND]
[02:17:55]
Thank you. [BACKGROUND]
[02:18:00] [02:18:03]
Testing. Yes. [BACKGROUND] I'm going to just start a little bit like a pre-start. I'm going to sing. One of
my favorite songs I sing before entering into something is a Brown, My Ancestors. This is from the
Black Youth Project. After Laquan McDonald was murdered by the Chicago Police, many of the Black
Youth Project had a chat and it was like, I know they're watching, ancestor's watching, I know they're
watching, I know, I know. To me when I do this work of truth-telling is about invoking [02:19:00]
something sacred, and that is my ancestors and those who become martyrs unwillingly, and
particularly that's what where police violence has been in this country, people unwillingly became
martyrs. I'll just give you a little bit which piggybacks on to Eduardo's conversation as well. It's about
essentially how we came into this work, and also what are some examples? What does this look like in
practice? I'm being honest, I think that while we were doing in Ferguson and St. Louis is very similar.
Because you all began thinking about a TRC after [02:20:00] the George Floyd protest. Wow, in
Ferguson, we started thinking about Truth and Reconciliation as an intervention. A big context as
similar as social movement it was happening. I don't want you to forget that. That social movement
was about this work that you all are engaged in. It's not just our city, but a larger social movement.
Sometimes police violence can come to be a big outward face of so many other structural issues
because communities around the country experienced police violence. The violence of police are like
the tip of the sphere, the visible part that many communities see under colonial [02:21:00] empire
rule. For us, I don't even know if people remember what that protest was like or if we remember like
we forget like just the craziness happening during times of protest. For our context, it was St. Louis. It
was a year before the Ferguson uprising, there was a British reporter who came to St. Louis to study
cities that experienced tremendous segregation and at the time I was a faculty member at Southern
Illinois University outwards Ville. This person came in and looked at the street called Delmar Divide
and the North side of Delmar, Black people live, people of color, and it was extremely impoverished.
South of Delmar, mostly White community, much more resources supported by the city. [02:22:00]
This is like a clothing bin, this other picture right here that you see my cursor around, that was like
right during the protest. People were just showing their feelings about what was happening
throughout, and I have a little video let's see if I can. I like to have videos from.
[02:22:38]
[BACKGROUND] He's supposed to be locked up. If it was a Black man he will be locked up. That man
should be locked up and justice and investigation will be done but that man is supposed to be locked
up. You want justice, you want peace, you lock [02:23:00] that man up, and then you charge him and
everything will be alright [OVERLAPPING] Maybe the Black people go home. But until they charge him
ain't going to be no justice, man.
[02:23:12]
We should plan for the night 22, 23 minutes away from the curfew.
[02:23:15]
You will see it clear. Everybody knows all [inaudible 02:23:29] [OVERLAPPING]
[02:23:29]
The world is watching, the world is going to see this, y'all, justice to Mike Brown.
[02:23:33]
Hands up, don't shoot.
[02:23:35]
Hands up.
[02:23:35]
Don't shoot.
[02:23:36]
Hands up.
[02:23:37]
Don't shoot.
[02:23:38]
Hands up.
[02:23:39]
Don't shoot.
[02:23:40]
Hand up.
[02:23:41]
Don't shoot. [NOISE]
[02:23:48]
I just wanted to show that to just give you all some context of what it was feeling like every day. I
came to St. Louis, honestly, from my mama's birthday. [02:24:00] I was a year later after Delmar
Divide. I was teaching at a college in Pennsylvania. Mom's birthday and my nephew's birthday on a
day Mike Brown was murdered, and I come home to that. I'd never seen any protests like that before.
People was mad, people was unwilling to go home. They were challenging everything. It wasn't until
this young brother name, Gauguin Paul was killed across the street from my parent's house. This is a
couple of days later. I don't know if you all can see the memorial. Then later on that night, it was this.
That's not going to work but, it was [02:25:00] that feeling this young man Gauguin Paul went into a
grocery store, got this Discana energy drink, put it on a sidewalk, count 10 seconds, he was dead as a
police derive. Everybody in the neighborhood knew that this young man had some concerns. My
neighborhood had been a very strong black working-class neighborhood that while I was in high
school, we got crack. To this day, my brother is still addicted to crack. In a video, I'm going to give you
all, this is your PowerPoint so you can go back and look and see what I'm talking about. This man is
talking about transformative justice, he's talking about the [02:26:00] ways that Black communities
ran themselves without police interference, and what that looks like when police interfere. Ferguson
became this symbol for resistance nationwide in ways that I didn't know that I was taking on. l'll just
give you a little sample. This is some music.
[02:26:32]
They don't know their own name. They have lost their own identity. This is amnesia. When a man
doesn't know himself, he doesn't know what belongs to him. He could be the richest man on this
Earth, but by having lost his identity, he'll walk around like a puppet. Here we have 20 million Black
people in America who are wearing the names of their former slave masters as we were told by the
honorable Elijah Muhammad. [02:27:00] By suffering a form of amnesia, they don't have a name of
their own, so they've taken your name. They don't know their own language so they've taken your
language. They don't have a history of their own, so they let you tell them what their history is and
[inaudible 02:27:14] that you found them in a jungle someplace with a spear chasing white people in
a cannibalistic way.
[02:27:34]
[MUSIC]
[02:28:00] [02:28:32]
That was incredible.
[02:28:46]
I see. This is the context for us telling Project Deaf Feeling, how do we have another space for people
[02:29:00] to tell stories? We don't want to mediate anything, we wanted to tell stories but also
inspire by radical age of activism. Also, the context was Black Lives Matter, which is also ideological
intervention, which is listed here as well. I just want to name, for us, Black Lives Matters meant this
self-adjudicating moral claim about the worthiness of Black Lives. Also, the context is justice in the US,
rooted in a social contract tradition. The original position as mutual benefit among equal parties. If
you are Black, indigenous, Native American, you are not an original party. [02:30:00] If you look at this
room right here of Orlean's white dudes, the people in charge of our country look similar still. Or it
might be some black and brown people in the room as well. Because of this original position and
because of how we understood truth, we understand that truth as perpetuated by society even police
was essentially a creation of willful ignorance or even a reinforcement of silence. If people have
specific questions [NOISE] about the concepts, I can talk about it later. [02:31:00] As well as the way
that when people try to tell their truth and when people have movements and change, something like
counter-mobilization occurs. That is when groups take on some of the same language of say civil
rights, social movements, or even Black Lives Matter, and say White Lives Matter, as a way to
counter-mobilize against the thing that you're trying to create. We came to truth-telling with this
understanding of what truth-telling was. That is the beginning of a moral inventory. Truth-telling is a
moral inventory. Ask us who we are. I like this quote from Alice Walker where she says that [02:32:00]
each thousand years of our silence is examined with regret. The cruel manner in which our values of
compassion and kindness have been ridiculed and suppressed must be brought to bear on a disaster
of the present time. The past must be examined closely, I believe before we can leave it there. We
created this project that was for us the outer space of justice. Since we weren't getting justice, since
police have been infiltrating our protest in our groups, in our communications, we created this project
where it didn't matter if that happened, but people could tell their own truths, tell their own stories
rooted in this context of transitional justice or truth and reconciliation, and we can build our own
narrative, create [02:33:00] our own rituals so that we could decide what justice looks like. Even while
we were doing this, there were other people, for instance, Department of Justice reached out to us
and asked what they could do. We said nothing. The city also asked us, how do you cooperate in that
particular moment? I'm just naming a particular moment of protest, a particular moment [NOISE] of
active organizing against the state like figuring out ways, because we were thinking is this the
beginning of a revolution since is a different time?
[02:34:00] [02:34:10]
We created essentially this project. I'll share with you our mandate in declaration. I'm just including it
in this document so you can have a link to it. But basically we created the mandate to say what
justifies this work? Why are we doing it? Who gives us or what situation gives us the authority to do it?
In a similar, ultimately you make your own authority. When a group of people come together, they
can lay claim to whatever morality, whatever situation [02:35:00] occurred to say, this is a valid
process. While we were doing this, there were other groups laying claim to what we were doing and
also the city creating what they call it the Ferguson Commission, which was about business. How does
business look after this? We got a lot of our learning from Greensboro. I'm going to jump. We also
have Bishop Tutu. This was what Bishop Tutu, the message he sent us. Thanks to folks like Eduardo
and Christoph law and he said, "Friends, I have learned that already due to your courageous
presence, and unbiased spirits in it street and has a power over the last eight months that you've
begun to be heard and that [02:36:00] you have changed the nature of the national conversation
about racist police violence, bringing to light the unfortunate pattern that until you stood up has
largely been understood as isolated events, but now the nation is debating the D problem with
structural racism, the militarized police violence, police tactics. This reframing of the problem is the
first step towards true and lasting transformation." I just listed on this page some of the framing for
the work, part of it obviously is with Truth Commission and in addition to being focused on truth-
telling, we weren't sure, and this is all our community, the community, groups of people we had
convened on [02:37:00] multiple occasions, town halls, activists meetings, we were telling them what
we wanted to do and we were asking for consent and they say, well, we like truth-telling, but we all
know about reconciliation, reconcile with who? That's just some of the framing of what we were
thinking, given the ongoing violence, given that we weren't post-conflict. It feels like a different time
now. Part of what we decided on was we would create a official report, we would do truth-seeking, we
would move along side social movements, we would accompany them and deal with the issues of
direct structural violence. Human dignity. Also framing our work and critical race theory. [LAUGHTER]
[02:38:00] Derrick Bell is a founder of that, and just looking at his framework in this particular book
and we announced saved essentially critiques the notion of that Civil Right. Well, there's a book
basically says that there is a remaining structure of racism that's foundational to this nation and
that's the basic argument of the book. We were looking at that as well as intersectionality, all of these
areas. Because especially if we think about truth and reconciliation and transitional justice, the reason
why it's termed transitional justice, because it's usually after post-conflict or some really difficult
situation that we're transitioning away from and thinking about justice after this particular situation.
[02:39:00] Also, this framework of colonization and Neo-colonization, like, you may be a person of
color, but who's in your head? What cap is in your head? Are you operating out of a colonialist
mentality? Essentially, our work began specifically in the protests space where we began with these
videos are going around getting people to tell their stories or truth about what they wanted to see
happen and what does justice look like? People would tell their stories online, usually on YouTube and
through our website about what do we want it to happen, and this is before Darren Wilson was not
indicted. People were [02:40:00] sending us videos and posting, if you Google it, even people were
like, well, I want this to happen in this happen, and this is what I think justice is. Then the pictures that
you see are from the truth-telling weekend. But we initiate it because our organization or the group
that we were a part of, my own connections, and Melinda as well, is comes out of Peace and Conflict
Studies. I did my PhD focusing on peace and conflict studies, and we notice that most faculty in most
universities had a peace studies or conflict resolution or related department, and we sent word out to
universities around the country that given that Darren Wilson did get an indicted, we wanted people
to do a visual [02:41:00] of four-and-a-half minutes of silence, around the same time that Mike Brown
was murdered, representing the time that that boy laid in the street [NOISE] in the hot sun for four-
and-a-half hours, police made jokes over his body and all things like that. Then we had a truth-telling
weekend to bring all the interested folks together so they can learn about truth and reconciliation and
we could talk about what this might look like. These are just some images from that. Then that led to
what we call the launch of our process, which we call the truth initiative. We use different language
from traditional transitional justice. For instance, we [02:42:00] call the people who gave testimony
truth tellers. For instance, Cori Bush, she came and she told one of her story is also as one of the co-
directors and this mama care and this was part of our witnesses to the truth. We have local folk and
national folk hearing us. I'll give you example of what some of the testimony look like.
[02:42:39]
We're inviting you to share your story with 30 minutes timeframe allowed for each truth-teller. Ms.
Taylor, please tell us your story of direct or indirect experience with police violence, please. My son,
Cary Ball Jr. was my [02:43:00] first born. He was shot a total of 21 times by two St. Louis City police
officer, Jason Chambers and Timothy Voice. Less than 30 days later, we was making this video was St.
Louis American, and you can watch it right here for yourselves.
[02:43:20]
I've completed over 12 development education credits. This was given to him.
[02:43:26]
Police harassment right there and involvement with the police. At first, when we did this we only had
a medical report paper from Cary. We hadn't had the autopsy yet. The medical report did say that it
was a total of 25 wounds in Cary's body. Some of those was exiting injuries, but it was a total of 21
gunshot to Cary's body. Like they said, on that [02:44:00] night, Cary was coming home from work.
He was actually going to drop a coworker off down at O'Fallon and place. They stopped at the 7-
Eleven down on 18th and Pine in the downtown area. Right there, one set of police officers decided to
follow Cary for tinted windows. Well, in St. Louis there's a no chase policy. You're not supposed to
stop anybody puts any windows. Cary call was registered and the the tint was of legal tint limit.
[02:44:31]
I'm just going to pause it, but I've given you the links and this whole document is available to you.
There's also Michael Brown Senior's testimony in here. Then this this document right here is in
addition to the testimony, some people didn't want to testify in public and we had an arrangement
where they testify [02:45:00] in a private place in there and they were able to decide how much
access they wanted to give to the public about their testimony. This document is right there. All of the
testimony led to what was called a night of 1,000 conversations. This is really important part because
in order for the Greensboro Truth and Reconciliation to get the public to buy into it, there was a play
about the Greensboro Truth Commission. After the play, it was one of the nights that people in town
go out to go to the restaurants and they put no cards at all the tables. [02:46:00] They call it a night
of 1,000 conversations. People were talking in their communities about what happened in
Greensboro. We did something similar. After the testimony, we simultaneously streamed it out to
about 40 different communities around the country. We provided questionnaires and worksheets for
people to talk about police violence, along with the testimony as an entry point. I'm just going to wrap
this up real quick. Also just name that some of our other activities included. What we [02:47:00] did
was we didn't have the funds to do fact-finding in that way, so we stay with mostly public and well-
documented stories. We also created a learning platform so that more people could benefit. It's called
It'sTimeToListen. This is the website. It basically gives folks a way into the testimonies. Some of the
issues that come up where people's testimony like militarization of police, structural poverty, school-
to-prison pipeline. We've also done teachers convenings. We were part of helping to push forward a
national true process around police [02:48:00] violence. One of the big things we asked to do was
youth speak truth, and this speaks to where Eduardo was leaving off, where we were youth mostly
testified and we created a space for them. Before the whole thing, we did a workshop and we had
therapists like the whole time. A workshop was about teaching youth how to tell stories. We did it with
StoryCorps. We had a session where we taught you how to make film. This is one of the films that
they may scar, Youth Speak Truth. I'll just give you a quick second of it.
[02:48:53]
On August 9th, 2014, mom was in her room watching TV, and she was [02:49:00] like, the police and
then just killed Mike Brown.
[02:49:05]
Focusing like this right next door to us. I was like, what happened? What's going on?
[02:49:09]
They called mom on the phone and she answered the phone. She was like, okay, I give him the phone.
He jumped up off the costumes and said, the police killed my son. The next thing I know is I was
running downstairs crying.
[02:49:23]
Tinah was spilled out of steps. I can't cry because I was in such a shocking moment. I was like, now
they got the wrong person. I went out there and all I could see was smoke, then I've seen a whole lot
of man. It was like they had all costume with a healer in front of them with their guns in their hand
pointed at us.
[02:49:47]
Then these are also other testimony from youth. One of the testimony was a young man doing a
praise dance because he didn't want to talk. Before some [02:50:00] of the things you see on these
images is we did these little cards. I wanted this activist group called The Art of this, put them all
around the city and the hair pop-up art space where youth filled it out and gave messages about what
they wanted to see happen. This one brother right here, Damon Davis, created a mural for the whole
truth-telling like this particular session of hearings. Go ahead.
[02:50:38]
Jump really quick and come into here. I was teaching in Northwest New Mexico, Gallup, New Mexico,
and came back once the Truth Telling Project had begun. We met with Navajo [02:51:00] organizers
and activists who I knew when I was teaching in New Mexico. One of the things that I want to tie into
the earlier conversation here is the cultural relevancy of how we do Truth Telling. The stories that
were told were recorded by another Navajo filmmaker in very small private spaces. Some of the
women wanted to tell their stories about missing persons, sexual violence, racism in Gallup, New
Mexico. They wanted to tell their stories in their Hogan or to find their own sacred space where they
go to for their peace well-being and to tell their stories there. Also the other piece that was really
important to mention here is that before we had permission to use the stories, [02:52:00] they had to
be, approved is not the right word, but acknowledged by the elders of the community. Very different
setting than being in a public space, in a church setting, at a podium upfront. So the cultural
relevance of with whom the stories are being told is very important, and I think that that speaks to
some of the chastity, where you had mentioned that earlier. I'm going to just zoom ahead really
quickly to just give two super-fast case studies in the state of Maine where the Department of Health
and Human Services identified issues [02:53:00] with ICWA, the Indian Child Welfare Act, this is the
state of Maine and the indigenous communities in the state of Maine invited them to come together to
better understand what their concerns were and help here. Where are we?
[02:53:27]
Just do like this, use this.
[02:53:29]
Yeah, and discovered the amount of tension and mistrust that took place between the state and and
the tribal communities. From that, they created the state of Maine Wabanaki Child Welfare Trust and
Reconciliation Commission, and brought tribal people throughout the state of Maine together to tell
their stories, which is well-documented in film and documentaries, [02:54:00] and we're going to
provide those resources for you. The reason why I am sharing this with you is to show the institutional
mechanisms that took place from first identifying an issue and then reaching out to the communities
and addressing the mistrust that exist, and from the Truth Commission came a permanent
commission on the status of racial indigenous, and tribal peoples throughout the state of Maine.
Another example that I want to share with you real quick is, in New Mexico, two women from the Zuni
and Navajo tribes were invited to tell their stories about the ways in which the public education
system was not meeting the needs of the [02:55:00] indigenous students. New Mexico is one of three
states where there is an Indian Education Law. They sued the state of New Mexico and found in fact
that the state had been in violation of not in compliance with Indian education law, and as a result of
that, people came together in truth-telling peace-making circles, and we don't need to go into the
detail of that, but through meeting with superintendents and academics and hundreds of people from
throughout the state, were able to propose how to bring the state [02:56:00] in compliance with the
Education Act. Yeah, I don't think we're going to have time for this one, but what I want to say here is
that there needs to be, once it gets to that larger institutional level, ongoing connection with the ways
in which the acts are being implemented, and it takes the scale is much larger when you're working
with the state and the feedback takes longer. It's not an overnight success, but at least the processes
get put into place. I know that I'm just rushing through that, so we'll have enough time for there to be
dialogue.
[02:56:50]
I will add one more thing. Some of the activities is possible, [02:57:00] we created a podcast, we did
all things for our community, so that community can have a chance to engage. In addition to having
silent protest, all of it. Whatever communities wanted to do, we tried to do something. That's why
outreach is so crucial, and you're only going to get buy-in if you're doing what folks in your
community wants you to do. Also one of our overarching, guys, is we always say this is what we did,
you don't have to do it. We just sharing what we did and how we did it and why we did it.
[02:57:48]
There's one final thing I'd like to say here is this was not a Truth and Reconciliation formal
commission. But I was in Bolivia in 2000 [02:58:00] when working with amongst the Quechua, and
they were addressing gender inequities in their communities, and the way that they would do that
was using their own traditional media, guitar, song, dance, to replicate the dramas that take place in
their communities. What was interesting is the young girls, who were invited by their parents to take
care of the babies while the adults were working through all this gender stuff. The lasting effect was
rather than the parents being able to maintain a shift in their cultural attitudes towards gender. It was
the young girls, the 12-year-olds who were babysitting the little kids that eventually made decisions in
their life to not get pregnant at 14, [02:59:00] to leave the rural areas, to get education, and then
ultimately to return to their villages, to continue to give back to their community. Go ahead.
[02:59:19]
Even similar to that, something that fed into the way we thought about it in Brazil, if you look at
police violence in US is similar, except for at a much elevated pace in Rio, in Brazil in general. As a
graduate student, I worked with a researcher and we study what communities did in order to respond.
One of the things they did was they put up posters and pictures, images of people who had been lost
by police violence, decoded a mural or pain. It went from [03:00:00] Favela to Favela throughout Rio
and was also part of museum project as well. People are using these ways to tell truth, to heal, and
also put it in people's face of what's happening, so that truth is not deniable, and people have a place
to go.
[03:00:28]
I think one of the biggest things that we hope you all will take away for the evening is, and even these
three days together, is that it's your world. It's so open to how you address the three aspects of this
resolution for yourselves and for your communities. [03:01:00] The amount of creativity comes from
the diversity of bodies and beings who are in the room. Even from the examples that are given, yes,
you all have a resolution that City Council passed, but you're not beholding to only the resolution. In
Ferguson, the community was we're going to do this, state not sponsored. Even as the state wants to
"support", and when I say state, the governmental mechanisms, we reject your support because that
is not the truth that we want to engage with. There are a multitude of ways that you all can think
about the work that's ahead of you and what is going to best benefit you all [03:02:00] as community.
[03:02:07]
If folks have questions, we'd love to share. Just naming like as we switched over and Melinda talked
about indigenous truth-telling, that was one of the major conversations we had. How do we share
what we do without imposing? Obviously the community was not imposing, and this is what we're
going to do. We like your ideas, tell us what you did, this is what we're going to do. I appreciated that.
[03:02:35]
Then coming back to working within BIPOC communities, the indigenous peace-making circles that I'm
engaged in in New Mexico really are working on the reservation, are working with agencies in the
state and have not worked cross-culturally with others. That's a huge [03:03:00] area and a request
for cultural competency, tools and skills, because even amongst the peacemakers, there's lack of
experience in working with diverse groups. You may find that here. We're really eager to learn how
you're going to navigate those waters. You may not have answers tonight because a lot was shared
once again, but we would like to close out this evening with you all just again, if anybody wants to
share their reflection on any part that was offered tonight and just how you are leaving the space on
this evening.
[03:04:00] [03:04:04]
I once again go. I loved everything that you guys had and I feel like each one of those can be used. If
we can split things up and start working in those directions, I feel like that's the best way to route.
Theater, I'm a theater guy myself. I've been a part of that and I know how much it can bring
everybody together, is the one thing that we all do, that's a universal thing. No matter where you're
from or who you are, between song, dance, everything along those lines, I believe that is the right
way and I loved the ideas you had about even dropping off the cards at the restaurants for afterwards
and everything. That is exactly how you get the conversation rolling and get people to really
understand. After good shows, depending on what you're doing, it can really resonate and it really
can push [03:05:00] forward. I appreciate your thoughts. Looking for the rock and let's go.
[03:05:14]
Thank you, facilitators. I'll call you facilitator, since yesterday beginning your work and continuing to
give us clarity on how we are supposed to be the point people for our community as we navigate the
mandates. Today, [03:06:00] for me, Larry, you began with the why and the what. Eduardo, you came
in and you took us through the mandate. It was interesting for me, it was even sounding as if I've
never seen that resolution. Thank you for taking us back there. Also even how it came about and how
we were all part of that, and how we begin to get to this point. As I leave tonight, I'm excited we're
here because each of you have given us all those examples of all those other commissions that have
been where we're going. [03:07:00] Also, you being part. Eduardo, you being part of Peru, you guys
being part of a song. Seeing where you have walked and appreciating your sharing that not once.
Keeping on sharing such that it continues being clearer what is ahead of us, and all the various ways
that it has been done. At one point somebody said, there's even the things that are going to take
place and the ways that are going to happen that even all of us in this room [03:08:00] are not aware
of, because this is Iowa City. It is local, but at the same time, it's not just national, it's also global
because we are dealing with something that is beyond our city. Stephanie, you ended up with
reminding us, it's ours the commissioners who are leading our communities and what has been
offered here, it's a glimpse of what has happened elsewhere. But it's a heart with its own life
[03:09:00] that we are part of. What is, is going to determine sometimes how we go about it and what
we do. Not forgetting that our communities are leading us, like in some of those examples you've
given us. Stephanie, you've just spoken last, you mentioned what are called cultural sensitivity. As
they think of that, I'm thinking early on I use the word irrelation. The first time I had that word in
connection with Iowa City, there was an African-American student who had been excited to be
admitted to graduate school at the University of Iowa. I forget her [03:10:00] name, but I do know she
wrote in the Daily Iowa, she wrote an essay in the cultural section It was some time back when I was
also going to grad school. It has stayed with me and especially that what a irrelation because it
captured my opinion, the state of Iowa in Iowa City, exactly 20 years. That's how she said she came to
this University of Iowa and of course, it's our university. It's in Iowa City.
[03:10:42]
She was very excited. But she had to transfer out because she felt in irrelation as an African-American
young woman. She felt she's [03:11:00] there, but she's not seen. She's not even it's all white and she
was in a relationship with that. I said, okay, that's really the word that I've had with the city. I was
coming for just two years to do my masters and go back with my three daughters and my two sons
and my now ex husband. But it didn't happen that way. We here and that word, even as Stephanie,
you talked about cultural sensitivity, this word came back again. We are different cultural groups and
for me, we are in irrelation. [03:12:00] For me that is sitting there and working with that feeling of
irrelation. I'm leaving this room today, excited that we're working. We began to work, but yes, we are
working. But it's heavy and especially when we get out of there for the last, almost now going to three
years. For us here, we are different in our own ways. But we've worked into ourselves into a working
group. Easy. We've shared and expressed that it's not been and it's not getting any easier. Now when
we finally already [03:13:00] it continuing to have a life of its own if we even look at the numbers and
they're going to be more. But for me the irrelation still stands there and therefore what you've just
said, cultural sensitivity, being aware. What do we do about that?. How do we use that or not use that
to work with our different cultural groups and whatever other beautiful differences that are there.
Thank you.
[03:13:38]
Thank you.
[03:13:45]
I just wanted to say that I really appreciate all the knowledge and experiences that you guys have
brought to the table. You've shown such a wide range of different ways to make this happen and
given so many [03:14:00] different examples. For me, it's given me a lot to think about and it makes
me pretty excited like, my gosh, we could do this in so many ways. I really appreciate the knowledge
and experiences you guys are bringing in. Thank you. If no one else has anything, I'm going to move
to opening to public comments. Thank you so much. I just wanted to say thank you for all the
presentations that there's anyone online that would like to speak, give a public comment on what we
just spoke about for the last couple of hours. Please raise your hand. If there's anyone in the room that
would like to address us. Now is the time you can come to this microphone over here and give us
public comment.
[03:14:55]
I commend you all. All individual and altogether. [03:15:00] I've been living in this town for a long
time. I've never seen this much color together at one time.
[03:15:12]
Thank you [APPLAUSE]. Well, there's no other public comment. I'm going to move to adjourn. If you
would like to come up to the microphone?
[03:15:22]
Yeah just have an issue with that maybe on the presentation.
[03:15:28]
If you could go into the microphone so we can hear you, either one, whatever one you want.
[03:15:33]
I'm really bad at this. I'm sorry. I've seen your struggles here and the presenters, our experts have
told us different forms in which information has been gathered. I know maybe this was not but it's not
a time for maybe to talk about this, but I would want us to include this in our storytelling later in the
documentation. [03:16:00] This is an aspect of the struggles we are going through. Because it's a part
of the process because in itself that run is a form of I would call it poor relations and discriminations
in a way. We might be talking about ourselves as individuals, but we have to also cover the
institutional, bigger picture of how the frustrations you are getting. Those are forms of discriminations,
injustices that must be documented initially as a preamble so that's one aspect. The other aspect is
on the different form of truth-telling. You've covered very well other forms. The other aspect that I
would probably see, I don't know whether the capacity is there is to mind the city. By that I mean, go
into the documents of the city these are the surveys they do take about police brutality, commissions
and other [03:17:00] things. See, there were lots of recommendations done. Have there been
implemented or is this just a formality done every two years? We have all kinds of commissions, city
commission, police, airports and other things, human rights. We want to look at those commissions.
What is in there? Are these things just done as a formality and we bury them in the book somewhere.
If that capacity is there, maybe somebody somewhere might want to dig into that. Because this could
be just at a repetition of what has been happening, those other commissions and that one is
something I don't like. Because at one time I attended the Human Rights Commission and they were
awarding grants to different groups. One thing they didn't want was fact-finding. They were telling us
you can apply for this grant for this and this, but has nurses should have nothing to do with the fact
finding something to do with research and that really annoys me. I felt like, wow, you don't want us to
tell the truth but you want to give us a [03:18:00] little money in here to start a project without
knowing that. That actually is one reason why I was very motivated to come to this because that's
something I follow very much and I would want us to work on. Thank you very much.
[03:18:11]
You have laid the ground for tomorrow morning. I mean, tomorrow and Larry is going to start with
fact-finding.
[03:18:19]
Thank you. Is there anyone else in the public that would like to speak? If not, I will move to adjourn.
[03:18:27]
Thank you.
[03:18:28]
Thank you.