could you please give the police department the grandmother give them the salaries and the pensions in the city vehicles but make them please a vintage corvette jaguars and cadillac with white leather interior diamond in the back on both top and big in sea with a gang filling let the cars be bad you could hear the old school jams like patti labelle anita baker and al green you would hear sweet honey in the rock harmonizing on we believe in freedom will not started with c forty one years ago with just a small group of people who wanted to make a response to the vietnam war and to bring people together in a celebratory way and it's just grown and grown and grown since that time every year may day has a different theme black is sacred is something that really came through that and after we decided that that would be the theme layers and layers of discussion again until the black is sacred emerged as a core image as a core words that would be said that we would see with incredible vibrant images that unfolded with that i grew up and community and which a huge world renowned theater performance work was created and it was i feel like an opportunity for i think people who may not necessarily have to go to a museum to be connected with some really powerful a deeply puls work and i think the heart of the beast theatre is really powerful in that it's been consistently a part of the community and wanting to bring issues to the table through art so i feel like for me just growing up in south minneapolis it certainly was one of the many things that influence kind of my approach as an artist and that i really like to do work that includes a community that intersects with the community that engages the community like your favorite means is political  social is cultural but it's also a psychological affirmation tool a collective identity of people who knows that they're genuine what human is is a sacred space for them so but black is sacred  and black lives matter kind of connotes on the same affirming stance politically it's declaring it's a voice in a perspective from a marginalized group of peoples declaring that in this country we are valuable and not only are we valuable we're going to forge larger institutions and a dominant culture to recognise our value and i worthiness so i think it's speaks to a lot of respectability politics  neighborhood and in society we're claiming our space and making it clear that not only are we a sacred people and we have a sacred space that is a respected by a lot of different institutions and efforts and movements and people money i provide criminal defense attorney i also am the president of the minnesota association of black lawyers a lot of times very frustrating to be african american and work in the criminal justice system because  it's kind of sad to see so many people who look like me or similar to me who are of african american heritage having to struggle their way through the legal process as far as being discriminated against yeah that happens to i mean sometimes you get followed in the store or you don't get a job that you think you're qualified for and sometimes you don't know why it is and other times you believe that it's because it's racism or prejudice so even though my skin is fair or if i am around all caucasians i stick out i'm a chagrin an organizer with black eyes men or minneapolis i was charged as being one of the organizers of the event at the mob america and getting charged actually was really it wasn't really scary to be honest ritu it was kind of funny because i knew when they charged me they just didn't have that much to go off of when i heard about sandra boy and i think it i was scared but i also just realized that it made things a lot more real and apparent to people because i think for a long time they always thought it was only a certain type of black person that was being treated poorly by the police but now we have this case of this woman that had been like covered up really well and she was someone who a lot of people that a lot of people can identify with and a lot of people like know people who are like her so i think it like put a lot of stuff in a perspective and made police brutality like more real t i feel like there ways that we can feel free and there are part and times i feel like as i don't know maybe we're always free i don't know i feel like there's a part of us that like is enticing to different times in this country where we've always felt like we've been bound and confined but i think that in our minds we've always been free i think i'm free i'm certain moments i know that those things that homey back but i also know that was really true is like those moments when i'm dancin and i'm not worried about what anybody's thinking about me or when i'm with my people and we're singing songs for no reason just because we want to those moments like they can never take the stuff from us you know i'm saying they can never take our culture our history they can never take our people our ancestors they can never take the love they can never take the memories so at the end the day  free i think of myself as free i live this world in this reality how i see it how i view it so of the united states of america into the republic for which i stand when they sa the nation one nation under god