jay inslee

Dylan Moore of Irida TV interviews Semi Bird who is running for Governor in Washington State for 2024 on the Republican ticket.

Dylan and Semi discuss hot issues in Washington State, the details of the path to victory, and the nuance of how to actually run the State from the governor's seat once you're in charge. An in depth interview that really gives Semi the opportunity to express himself and his solutions that you don't want to miss!

Notes:

• Semi Bird for Governor: https://www.birdforgovernor.com/
• Find more of our content: https://irida.tv/

Your weekly news recap for the week of 4/22-4/28/2023 as well as movie line trivia with some special guests!

Akuyea Karen Vargas: source (https://www.tidelandmag.com/articles/2022-03-a-warrior-for-peace)

(photo credit:  Nora Phillips)

"Vargas may be small in stature, but the 59-year-old mother of three is a towering presence in the West Sound’s African American community. An army veteran, community activist, arts educator, youth mentor and historian, she has been a tireless advocate for the young and underserved, and for healing racial divisions in our communities for over 25 years.

After growing up on the East Coast and serving in the Army, Vargas arrived here in 1992 when her husband was assigned by the Navy to the Bangor submarine base. Raising her three Black children in the overwhelmingly white Bainbridge schools was a rude awakening, Vargas recalls. Advocating for her own children in the school system led her to start advocating for other children of color. Eventually she joined the district’s Multicultural Advisory Committee, which she co-chairs to this day.

Through two programs she founded in 2003, the Living Arts Cultural Heritage Project and Living Life Leadership, Vargas has taught cultural history and life skills to hundreds of youth throughout Kitsap County, including many of the young leaders who spoke at those demonstrations in 2020.

Recognizing her contributions, Governor Jay Inslee bestowed Vargas a 2021 Governor’s Arts and Heritage Award in the new category of Luminaries, honoring people who “stood as shining lights for their community during the pandemic.” Commenting on the award, Sheila Hughes, executive director of the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, described Vargas as “a trusted advisor… as well as a great friend who has a genuine laugh and a huge hug just when you need one.”

Multicultural Advisory Committee

 Living Arts Cultural Heritage Project and Living Life Leadership

2021 Governor’s Arts and Heritage Award

Danielle (00:35):

Welcome to the Arise Podcast, conversations on race, faith, justice, gender and healing. And as many of you know or aware, I mean it's election season. It's election day. And whether we're voting today, we already voted. Maybe some of us cannot vote for various reasons in our communities. This is an important time in the nation and it has been an important time for many years. I think back to 20 16, 20 18, 20 20. And now we're in 2022 and we're still working through what does it mean to exercise this right to vote? What does it mean? What is impacting our communities? What things are important? And today I had a Coyier, Karen Vargas of Kitsap County. She is an elder. She is on the Multicultural Advisory Committee for our county. She is living arts cultural heritage, founded the Living Arts Cultural Heritage Project and Living Life Leadership. She has taught cultural history and life skills to hundreds of youth throughout Kitsap County and including many of the young leaders who spoke at demonstrations in 2020. 

Ms. Vargas is concerned about the impact of what Covid did. She is deeply invested. And in 2021, the governor of Washington, Jay Insley, bestowed on Vargas an arts and heritage award in the category of luminaries honoring people who stood as shining lights for their community during the pandemic. And someone that commented on the award, Sheila Hughes, the executive director of the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art, described Vargas as a trusted advisor as well as a great friend who has a genuine laugh and a huge hug for just when you need one. So as you think about listening tune in and hopefully keep an open mind to the conversation. 

So it's just an honor to join forces 

Akuyea (02:51):

, what we need to be doing. We have done tremendous work together for many years back from the Civil Rights Movement and even before we were working in a collective collaborative way to address the issues that affect all of our communities. And so the more we can do that, the more we can cultivate that, I think we can begin to do some impactful work that will move things forward. 

Danielle (03:24):

And I love the way we got connected. It happened at church. Yeah, I saw you at a couple events before that, but then you were speaking to church and I saw the post on Instagram. I was like, I told my family we're going to church today, 

I know. So we showed up and we made this connection around youth and mental health. 

Would you be able to speak to that a little bit? 

Akuyea (03:50):

Yes. Our children are not doing well, let's just start there. Our children are having a difficult time. They're dealing with trauma, they're dealing with depression, they're dealing with anxieties, just dealing with life and they don't know how or what to do. In 2019, I had one of my living life leadership students take her own life and it devastated me the way she did it. She ran in the middle of a highway, sat down and allowed car to run over her. And what I still mean, the actual act devastated our students, our parents, her friends, the school. And we have to address some of the issues because we knew before that time that she was struggling with her mental health and with depression and all these things. And so what do we do when we, when actually know we are aware that our students have social and emotional stuff and trauma and stuff? 

Pauses. Because she was struggling with her meds too. She said those medications made her feel all wacky 

And then she was telling me some of the medication that she said would cause depression. I said, Well, why you on medication? It's gonna cause depression or anxiety. And so we need to have a conversation. We need to be talking about it. And we need to be talking about it from multiple issues, not just with the parents or the students or with the schools, but for the health and wellbeing of that young person. Should we be prescribing all this medication? They don't know the chemical imbalances. I'm not sure. That's not my field . But to be able to help them to process some of all of this , we really need to be talking more about the mental health of our young people. We have to do it. 

Danielle (06:43):

I mean, first I'm stunned and not stunned because death of young, of the young is always shocking. And I'm aware that it's also I'm angry and sad that also it is not surprising. And I think you named the year as 2019. So this was even before a pandemic. 

Akuyea (07:12):

Before the pandemic. So I know that we were dealing with this way before the pandemic. And only God can tell you 

The depth of all of that during and even now the results of the pandemic in the state of our young people's health, mental health, especially their mental health. 

Danielle (07:40):

I think one thing that struck me when I spoke to you after that church service was the fact that I began to tell you stories of my own children at school. And you were like, I got into advocacy because of my kids. And it's not that I wasn't paying attention before I had kids experiencing it, but it becomes heightened alert, heightened awareness, and just even watching the depression cycle through my own family cycle, through my friend's kids on multiple levels. I mean from depression to anxiety to suicidal ideation to self harm, to just the lack of ability to pay attention or find interest like you described the hopelessness. And so just the heightened awareness. And then we were talking about schools and this and we are now post 2020, George Floyd, the murder of George Floyd by police, the multiple other lynchings that happened in that year. And we're back. We're actually talking on election day and the impact this has on students of color and their mental and frankly white bodied students too. 

This is not just a one section of society's problem, this is a larger issue. 

Akuyea (09:05):

And the role of social media plays in their isolation and just being focused on what I call the device and not engaging and not having those healthy social skills and not being able to sit down in a room and just have a conversation. Being in rooms plenty enough time that our students are talking to one another, sitting right next to one another. And that's about, they don't want us to know what they're talking about. I know what that's about too. Let's not play. We don't know what that's about too. But when you ask them to sit down and just let's talk, they act like they don't do it. They don't know what to do. . And I think we are losing how to engage personally and how to have healthy relationships personally. One, we were doing some conflict. I can remember we were doing some conflict resolution and someone had advised, and I won't say the name, someone had advised, Well let's do this on Zoom. 

I said, Wait, wait, wait. , you know, can be brave at a distance, but you need to come into a circle . And you need to be able to look the individual in their eye. . You need to be able to see their body language and to be able to feel what's happening in the environment. . I said there are elements that when you are moving to do conflict resolution or healing and peacemaking, that that's done in a , intimate in an environment where those can come together. . And I understand Zoom has been a good tool in everything , but I also know social media and zoom, give your balls that you don't have when you sitting in front of somebody and you got to be accountable for some harm that you have done. , you feel safe because you know what, You can say what you want to say and you can do all of that. Because you know what? I'm just on a zoom , I'm over here , I can be brave over here. 

Could you stand before the individual and confront some mess that go down 

But if we're going to get to a place of healing and reconciliation, you have to be able to step into that 

Because the bottom line, if I got conflict with you and you got conflict with me and we can say all we can be on social media calling each other, boom, bam, bam, bam, bam. When, and this happened with some of our students too. , when they confronted each other, one of them stabbed the other one to death. Now all of that hostility was allowed over the social media to be able to do all that. Building up, texting. I'm coming over, I'm gonna kick your tail. And 

Danielle (13:19):

I think you bring up something that I'm thinking about Aku, which is not only do we need to, we can't intervene on our students behalf unless we as caregivers, parents, community members, adults in the community are willing to do the work first. 

Gonna smell it a mile away. Yes. They're gonna know if we haven't done the work ourselves. 

AKuyea (13:46):

Let tell you about our young people. They are the best hustlers learners. And they, they're watching us 

And they say, Oh yeah, they ain't about it. They ain't about it now. In fact, they're learning from us 

We are their first teachers. . They know when we talk trash and they sitting over here. That's why all of this stuff is coming up in our schools. You've got all of these racist ideologies coming out. The students are listening to their parents in their home talking yang yang and saying, Oh no, we ain't doing this. Yeah. Them negros in, Oh this, that, all of that racists ideology at home. And when the students, they're ear hustling, they say, Oh no, my parents, no. And giving them the green light, they come to school and guess what? They feel em bolded and empowered to say and do what they want. Because guess what? Those parents have modeled it for 'em and modeled it for them very well. . And they feel like they can say what they want. Their parents got their back 

Even the teachers come to school with racist ideologies, . And it pours out on students of color. When you got staff and teachers calling students the N word and it's okay, 

going on, something's very wrong with that picture . But yet here we find ourselves in 2022 

So we've got all kinds of dynamics happening, but popping off in the schools 

Danielle (15:51):

So we can't be people as community members, adults, people that wanna see change in progress from whatever lens you're coming from. We cannot be people that say, Hey, let's have peace. If we're not gonna be willing to have that conversation in our own homes, 

Because our kids will go into schools which they are doing and they will enact what we're doing in our private lives. 

They'll continue to perpetuate it. So we have to be people about what we do in our private lives is what we do. What privately happens is publicly is publicly congruent. 

Akuyea (16:34):

Oh, I'm glad you said that. Because what's done in the dark will come to life. 

Danielle (16:39):

It will. 

Akuyea (16:40):

And it does. And it manifests itself. We look at the attitude and the behavior and the character of our young people . And we're saying, Okay we're dealing with some stuff. And I hear me say this, I pray and I commend our teachers. Our teachers have to deal with whole lot of stuff . But when they were looking at the condition of the learning environment in our schools and they understood that they had to train their teachers with having trauma, they have to train the teachers to look at diversity, equity, and inclusion. They have to teach our kids. So when they started introducing social emotional learning, I said that was social, emotional and cultural learning. Why in the world did you take off culture? 

Culture is an ideology as well. . You bringing in these cultural elements and cultural, what I said, behaviors, 

It's not all just about, They said, Oh no, we don't wanna, That's a race. I said, No . What culture we have in our schools. The culture that we have in our school is very unhealthy. That's an unhealthy culture. . And what are the cultures that are manifesting in our schools? 

There's a culture of what I would call hatred going on in our school. . Oh, culture of bullying. They did a whole thing for years of bullying. Well, what culture were you deal. You have a culture of unhealthy behavior and bullying going on in your school. 

They always get all squeamish and fear all culture that has just to do with race. 

And I come from a culture and you come from a culture and everyone that steps themselves into those environments come from a culture 

Danielle (19:17):

I love what you're saying because don't get me wrong. I wanna do this work of anti-racism. Yes. I learned from the president of my grad school Dr. Derek McNeil. He said, Anti-racism is enough for us to say, Hey, stop that. Stop the harm. But where we find healing is within our cultures, 

In our cultures. 

You got Mexican culture, you got Irish, you got I'm 

You got African culture, there's a lot of cultures we could be learning from to bring healing. 

If we change and we try to operate under the social 

Akuyea (19:54):

That's right. Because think it European Western culture here in this United States. 

Danielle (20:01):

And if we operate under the idea that no, it's just a melting pot or we're just whitewashed, we miss the particularities that cultures can bring us that also don't bring harm. They also bring healing. 

Akuyea (20:14):

One of, you know what, I'm glad you said that. It's not a melting pot. The United States is not. One of the things that Bishop Lawrence Ray Robinson taught us is that we are a salad bowl. We come in with distinctive things within that salad. The onion is the onion. It doesn't lose itself in there. The tomato is the tomato. The lettuce is the lettuce. The broccoli, if you wanted to throw it in there, is broccoli. You know what I'm saying? How I'm the peppers are the peppers, the olives are the olives. Very distinctive. But they come together to have a beautiful, wonderful salad . And each of them bring a distinctive flavor to that salad bowl. . Now when we think of a melting, we're talking about what are we a melting pot? What does that even mean? ? We haven't even examined our own terminology and our own languaging. That can be very confusing. Cause a melting pot means everybody gotta assimilate in that pot. 

Danielle (21:35):

. So I think about this and I think it comes back to our young people. They're smart enough to know what we've been doing isn't working and they're also picking up on what we're leading by example in 

They're doing the same as us or they're trying to do something different. But I think what you and I were talking about, we need some other frameworks here. This is a crisis. Oh 

Some action steps. Let's have some frameworks for our community because we are not trying to have a school shooting here. Right? 

Danielle (22:14):

We are ripe. And that is very alarming. We hear about all of these school shootings and atrocities that's happening across our nation and all of these things that are popping off and other countries and everything. But honey, this Kitsap County, I have always said, let us do some intervention and prevention because we don't wanna be on the national news for the atrocities that could be committed in our community. And I can say this, we are no better than any other community. And it can happen here. It can happen 

Anywhere else. . And that's real because guess what the signs are telling , What is popping up and manifesting in our communities is telling and the unhealthy behavior and activities that have been manifesting is really alarming. And we should be paying attention. 

And our community is only gonna be as healthy as we are and we're not. 

Speaker 2 (23:33):

Right. There's a high level of depression, a high level of anxiety high level of despair across our adult communities in the area. There's a great 

Danielle (23:48):

There's a great amount of actually division in our community. And I don't think that that division is necessarily wrong. Now listen to me because It tells you where you're at If you say, Oh, we're so divided, let's just come together. I have to say, Wait a minute, let's find out why we're divided. 

Maybe there's some good reasons. And once we know the reasons, then there's opportunity to tell a more true story about Kitsap County. And through the true story, hopefully we can move towards some reconciliation and understanding. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's gonna benefit our youth. So I don't think it's like, Oh, just throw your kids in mental health therapy. No, you need to be doing the work too. 

Akuyea (24:38):

Yeah. Yeah. I'm glad you said that because one of the things that I've been just kind of thinking of is, what does that even look like? What does truth and reconciliation even look like? And I said, Well, you can't get there if you're not willing to acknowledge 

The history, acknowledge the culture that's here in our county that has been prevalent here for hundreds of years. Kensett County is a very racist county. Very. 

If you're not willing to say that, that's a problem. If you're not willing to look at that history here, cross-bar, even lynchings even, you better understand when we talking about the history, the taking of land, all of that. If we go back just to the late 18 hundreds early 

In this county, we would better know how to move equity forward in our community. But because we're not willing, Oh, everything's tucked under the rug and things that have happened, Oh, those things have been erased. . I can remember that back when I first got here in the nineties, it was a lot of work going on with Raymond Reyes and with Jean Medina and Theor. There was a lot of racist behavior with a lot of ill behavior a lot of what I would call racist ideologies in our school districts at the North end that was manifest. But it was at the south end too. It was in the Mason counties. It was all over. But we were dealing with it here at the north end, the SaaS drive and kids at school district, the Banbridge Island School District they were coming together cuz they had to deal with all the stuff that was popping off in the schools. 

. And I can remember they formulated common threads and once Jean Medina retired, it was like all those years of work just went away. Bam. And it came straight back. What did that say to me is that racism was alive and well and has always been alive and well in Kitsap County, . And if we're not intentionally addressing it and calling it out, it will continue to manifest and grow. We have to begin to hold the schools and our community accountable for the behavior that, because otherwise what I see is you just give them a green light. You give these young people a mind that okay behavior that that's acceptable. Oh, I can go to school and say, Oh, because that's the culture that breeds here. 

Danielle (28:19):

Right? I mean, you reminded me of some of the history. I actually have a friend who grew up as a child in this area on La Molo on the waterfront, a Japanese American family. They were removed from their house prime property and they were deported to a internment camp and they lost their land right on the Molo. And now when I drive by that piece of property, it's worth millions of dollars. 

Akuyea (28:50):

All I'm saying, right, The removal. And she's not the only one. The removal of native individuals off their own lands, And not, let me say it like this. In the 1920s, they held one of the largest in Seattle. They held a lot of their meetings right here on Bay Bridge Island on Pleasant Beach Back in 1992. When I got here, they were all up in the uproar talking about why did the clan target island? Well it wasn't until I did research later that I found out the history. They have strongholds here. They have headquarters camps all over Kitsap County, . If you do look at Chuck's report, he works with the Human Rights Council. He has done research about the entire region here and the headquarters and where white supremacists and Klan members and all of them set up their headquarters and kids that . So we need to understand the history that has thrived here for over a hundred years , and understand that that culture is alive and well. in Kitsap County, 

Danielle (30:46):

Cause if we tell a false history, we can't actually heal the wound. 

Akuyea (30:50):

It won't be able to. You gotta know your history, good, bad, and ugly. You got to know your history. And let me say this, there are regions that have deep history. If you go down to Mississippi and Alabama, Oh those are strong holes. , Virginia. And guess what? This northwest got stronghold too. . And we act like, oh no, not here, But that's a false narrative. when they left the south back after slavery, they came here to formulate a new frontier. 

A new frontier in Oregon and in Seattle in this north, deep roots in this northwest. And if we don't even know that history, we are just, we're fooling ourselves into thinking, Oh no, not here. Not in the northwest. We're not like Alabama. I said, But after the Civil War, they came and set up roots here. Strong roots, You don't think so. You better check your history. 

Danielle (32:30):

And I think we can be lulled to sleep because people will say, Well you got a democratic governor and you got a Democratic senator and you vote unquote blue. But we both know that being blue doesn't mean you're telling something true. 

Akuyea (32:48):

Honey, let me tell you what one of the Klan masters said he was taking off his, when he left, it was a split in Oregon. And when he left Oregon and came to Seattle, he said he was taking off his hood and he was putting on a suit 

He went and got those jobs, started setting policy, started working in government, law enforcement all over. So don't think just because they don't have the hood that they're still not working in those ideologies. 

Danielle (33:36):

, I mean as you've named in Kitsap County, the idea of manifest destiny has been repeated over and over. And we see it in some of the ways that even the county commissioners have ran and used. I'm thinking of one county commissioner that owns land that therefore wants to create housing resource. And the danger of that. And 

Danielle (34:05):

If you don't think it's entrenched and institutionalized, you better think again. If you don't think it's in our systems, you better think again because those systems were created by those individuals. 

We have to understand the legacy of that as well. , we've got a lot of work to do. I, I can tell you, I don't know everything, but I'm sure willing to research and learn Oh no. We never move out of hopelessness. We are people of hope. We are as human beings. We are people of hope. We always hope for the better. We hope for the son to shine. We hope that we have a good dinner tonight. We are steeped in hopefulness . And for us to operate out of hopelessness is, we ought not to even perpetuate that 

Because hope is in our dna. is part of our being. You hope your children will do well. you hope you find a good husband. you hope you find someone that can love you the way you wanna be loved. No, we, that's in our DNA to be hopeful, . And when we start being hopeless or working hopelessness, what happens is we start to decline depression and all these other things begin to come into our lives. And oh, it filled with anxiety. When you remove hope from someone's life, then you know what they spiral to that place that they commit self-harming and harm others as well. So no, we don't wanna move outta hopelessness . And we wanna talk about that need. You have to empower our young people to understand we don't move in hopelessness, 

I even tell a kid, you hope you get an ice cream. Oh yeah, they want that. Yeah, , we can build hope, we can cultivate that. We can begin to push back on hopelessness 

Danielle (37:05):

And I think the way we do that is, it's this funny thing. If you're from a dominant culture and your culture wins by not telling a true story . And it can feel that if you tell the true story or what's behind the curtain, that you will be plunged into despair. And let me say this, you should grieve and be sad and be angry at that history behind the curtain. That is not bad for you. It is And then that will enable you to take small steps to help your young person with a white body Be able to learn to hold history and hold making change. 

Akuyea (37:52):

And what when we continue to perpetuate lies and perpetuate harmful history, we have to do some self examination going on with us that we wanna keep holding this harmful history in place here. What? What's going on with us as human beings that we would want to perpetuate harm on any individual because they're different than I am. They come from somewhere a different, they have a different culture. They talk different . Why do we always go to that place? 

Danielle (38:56):

I think we can learn so much from what happened in different places in the world and how they subject and no one's done it perfectly. Cuz there's not a perfect way to do it. It's messy. But I think of my friend from Germany who's talked about learning about the Holocaust and her family's involvement in the Nazi regime. 

Family has worked with their own shame and worked to change their attitude towards the Jewish peoples there in Germany and the fighting of that nationalism. And then I think of the conflict in Rwanda and how yes, now be currently neighbors with someone where hoot season and Tutsis that they were formerly enemies. 

Blood enemies. So it's not that this hasn't been done, but in both those spaces you see that there's memorials to the harm that was done in Germany. 

Akuyea (39:53):

That's exactly right. That's exactly right. They moved. And that's important. They move their nation into addressing the harms that had been perpetuated and those atrocities that had been done. And they had to move their entire nation and the globe into acknowledging and moving those families into a place of healing And that work that was deep work But we've not done that deep work here. 

Danielle (40:35):

No, we haven't. And then we see our young people in despair and acting out the same fights. 

And then we have the gall to say, Well what's wrong with you 

Akuyea (40:51):

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And we've gotta take a pause and look at ourselves because we've gotta examine ourselves in this . We can't point fingers. We have to begin to be accountable for the harms that we have done here in our own country. , we wanna always say, Oh well that was Germany and oh that was Africa. That was over in Asia. What about what happened on this soil? 

You exterminated the entire indigenous population. . There are tribes we'll never see again. Think about that. And have we even addressed those atrocities, All of the souls that was lost during the trans-Atlantic slave trade that didn't even reach the shores. And if the sea could give up her dead, she could tell a story. 

But yet we don't wanna step into that harmful history. We don't wanna acknowledge that harmful history. We don't wanna talk about, Oh, don't teach my child how in school this critical race theory thing. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no. Don't dig that up. Don't bring that up And I said, Well what's the pushback on telling whole history 

Danielle (43:02):

And I think from a Latino Latinx perspective, there has to be the acknowledgement of the anti-blackness in our culture.

Affects our sisters and brothers in the communities of color outside of us. I hate from Latinos. And what's interesting, all those mixtures are part of what makes a Latino 

Akuyea (43:31):

Thank you. That's why I said, Oh, we have to understand we're where we come from our history. Cause that's where the work begins. 

Danielle (43:41):

And then the xenophobia Cultivated. And I think what is important about knowing this history for me, because then I have to say, and I'm Oh, I'm gonna die in shame. I'm some shame. But it's a way for me to say, how do I build connection with you then 

Akuyea (44:03):

I wish Carrie was on here because we work with our equity sisters and we've worked with our Kitsap race and for a whole year we were doing aging our voices and speaking truth together with our Kitsap serves. Those Europeans showing up for racial justice and all of us. And coming together, it was the coming together to be able to talk about some hard things and for them to be able to hear and for us to be able to hear, for us to be able to share our experiences and our voices and be able to put it down and be able for them to say, I'm feeling like Harry would say, Am I in denial here? Is this implicit? Buy it, what's going on? But to do that self, that type of self evaluation and be able to stay in that space when it was very uncomfortable, to deal with some hard history 

And so those are transformational, engaging opportunities and experiences that we've got to bring to the table. That's real truth and reconciliation, . That's the layer of foundation to be able to move forward and be able to heal and be able to reconcile and talk about how we gonna reconcile it. What will we do? How will we begin to build a healthy way of engaging with one another and build in a relationship. Now the relationship might not be tight. I might not be come away being old lovey dovey fu fu fu. But understanding one another and being able to speak peacefully to one another. being able to say, You know what? I agree or I don't agree. And stay in that space where we can work through some of the challenges that we have and some of the difference of opinions and ideals we have between one another. 

Danielle (46:29):

And I think our kids are just waiting for us to pass these tools to them. My daughter was part of a meeting and part of what happened with my daughter who's Mexican, is that she heard a classmate called the N word and then spoke up about it and then was sharing that story. And then one of the Latino students was talking about , how another Latino student was talking about being told to go across the border. And my daughter shared that the African American student presence said, I don't want that to be like that for you. That doesn't happen to me. I wish I knew so I could say something before they got there faster than I've gotten there. 

Akuyea (47:13):

But you know what? And I can say this, and this is not taking away back to where you came from. This ain't your country. And I'm like, how did we be an enslaved and brought here in chains? You be able to say, you need to go back to where you come from. I didn't come here , many came. But most of the Africans that are enslaved to these Americas, they come here on their own 

He knows, he knows. And we have to talk. I mean for us to sit here, whether we're black, white, Asian, Pacific Islanders or Dominicans or Puertoricans or we have a understanding of who we are, 

Where we come from, our ancestral history, history of our parents and their parents and their parents parents, . We carry all of that in our dna 

We understand in a way that we should be able to have some healthy conversations and not feel bad about who we are. But many of our children have been forced into force assimilation in this nation. , they got to lose who they are in assimilate to be accepted, which very unhealthy they made the native students, you either assimilate or exterminate And the same thing with a lot of the enslaved Africans that they brought here. I don't call myself a African American. I come from an enslaved people brought to a stolen land. An enslaved to this America. I'm African I'm an African woman who's ancestors were stolen and enslaved to these lands. They've gone over, What do you wanna call yourself? I call myself black. I'm black. 

Danielle (50:18):

As we're wrapping up here, how do folks are at listening? It's voting day. We have all the charge of the events. I think people are gonna hear the passion in our voices today. 

I wonder in Kitsap County, how can folks connect to you? How can I think, I wanna encourage us to have more of these restorative circles. How can they get in touch with you? How can they support what we are trying to do in this community? 

Akuyea (50:52):

Yes. Well, you can always get in contact with the work with Kitsap Erase coalition, with the work that we do in our schools with our multicultural advisory council, with Living life leadership, with the Living Arts Cultural Heritage Project. I mean, I'm accessible in our community. I try to make myself available for our parents, for our students, for community members. We like to work in coalition . We understand that we can work in silos and we can work alone in our agencies and our stuff. But I'm more concerned about the collective collaborative work that it will take all of us to do to transform our communities . We have to be able to learn how to work together with one another as human beings. So yes, if you go on Kitsap e Race coalition, you'll be able to connect with the coalition because we want us to be able to cultivate working together. 

On. No, you ok girl. . No, we wanna be able to work together and if we got is let's talk about our issues and together and see how we can have a healthy relationship with one another. 

Danielle (52:35):

We are one place, but this is the work we need to be doing across in small conversations like this across our country, which can lead. 

Akuyea (53:11):

That's right, that's right. And hear me say this, we have a unique opportunity to model something not just for our children, our families, our community members, our schools. We have the unique opportunity to model for a nation how to do the work in your own community to bring about change. 

Danielle (53:37):

We do have that opportunity. 

Akuyea (53:40):

And to me, that's inspiring to me. That's what gets my juices up and flowing in the morning. 

In this episode we talk to Dominic Frongillo, a young climate advocate, politician, and teacher from New York State. Dominic was the youngest person ever elected to serve on the City Council in Caroline, New York, and one of the youngest deputy mayors in the U.S. He is also the cofounder and executive director of Elected Officials to Protect America—an organization whose mission it is to create a safe, prosperous, and healthy planet by supporting and mobilizing “elected officials and civic leaders to protect the environment, and fight climate change.” In our conversation, Dominic helps us understand that real change can happen when courageous individuals help motivate whole communities around the common cause of environmental and social justice—at the local or the global level.

Upcoming event:  live webinar with Brian McLaren on May 17th, 7pm PST. 

To donate to the relief work in Ukraine being done by a trusted friend of ours, 1. go to https://www.missiondispatch.org/tanya-vasiko-machabeli 2. click the “TO DONATE” button 3. choose “Tanya & Vasico Machabeli — Nehemiah” from the drop down of options

Guest: Dominic Frongillo - executive director of Elected Officials to Protect America
Former council member & deputy Mayor of Caroline, New York.  

Mentions:  
UN climate negotiations - Bali, Indonesia (2007)
Forrest’s cousin, Washington state governor Jay Inslee
Costa Rica - deforestation history
Dr. Katharine Hayhoe
Greta Thunberg - climate activist
Island of Kiribati - climate change threat
Naomi Klein - book: This Changes Everything
fracking 101
NY state fracking ban
Study on dictatorships unable to stay in place when just 3.5 % of population is actively resisting
Vladimir Putin - example of a fossil fuel dictator; Russia supplies 40% of Europe's gas; 
Elected Officials to Protect America

Find us on our website: Earthkeepers
Support the Earthkeepers podcast
Check out the Ecological Disciple

Learn about the latest in local public affairs in about the time it takes for a coffee break! Brian Callanan of Seattle Channel and Kevin Schofield of Seattle City Council Insight discuss the expected "rollback" to Phase 2 in King County as the state tries to emerge from the COVID pandemic, challenges with the City of Seattle's "shelter surge" to combat homelessness, and a report on ethics you'll only see in SCC Insight. Plus: we turn up the heat on the debate over baking cookies vs. bars. If you like this podcast, please support us on Patreon! 

Episode 208: Chuck talks with West Virginia Insurance Commissioner James Dodrill about his first NAIC meeting and how things are doing during his first months on the job.  Plus, AOB Reform heads to the Governor's desk, but not before one Florida lawyer's last-ditch effort to game the system.