so today we were told that our theme is listen learn and mobilize so i'm really excited to be able to start this dialogue and have this conversation with you all so i'm going to begin i think by telling you a little bit about what i am and sharing with you something that is on my heart and on my mind this morning so my name is kyle morris as you may have seen from the bio and i serve in the legislature in the house of representatives here for the state of vermont i come all the way from bennington vermont so if i get a little tired it's just because they only had one cup of coffee and i started driving at five am this is important it's all love love no complaints on that so what i wanted to share with you is a i feel it's central to the discussion we're going to have today about what activism looks and feels like in our everyday lives and how we can transform that into advocacy to get actual policy done that also impacts our lives i am a wife and a mother of a young son my son jim all six years old and as it is throughout the nation as it is throughout our country's history the movement of women the movement of black women into places of power of influence of leadership be it as a business owner be it as a teacher be it from a number of different roles is always fraught with oppression and as always matt with resistance violence and threats to your life to your spirit to your heart we know this to be true i don't have to give you statistics on that it's something we've felt and seen in our lives in many different ways so last year actually we can go back a little bit further when i first ran for office i decided to just take that step i'd already been working very diligently in the community came to know a number of people from court systems to the schools to our health care system and had been really encouraged to consider taking the next step of becoming an actual titled leader so to speak and i remember i had a campaign event we decided to make it a block party type of thing and i did it on a corner of a street that this particular block and a half is maligned in our community as one of those horrible places where all crime all the drugs are not surprisingly were all people color live and where poverty is high and the things that people don't know about that neighborhood is actually more of a neighborhood than most places in bennington vermont where the neighbors actually know one another and they're out on the streets looking out for each other's kids you know like how it used to be before you had five people on your street and didn't know any of them were but i decided to have this party at a live band free music we had child care kids activities all sorts of things and this gentleman came to the events and actually came up to my husband and was like i had to come today i had to come to supply is that because your wife left one of her brochures on the dresser i mean on the door outside of my house and one of my neighbors came over and brought that brochure and said can you believe the audacity of this n for office and he said i had to be there said i must come and i must show support so this is where this began and this underbelly this theme of racism has never left and it came to a glaring head for my family last year with actions from me and not only hateful person full of self hate but from his supporters from his compatriots in their mode of white supremacy a gentleman by the name of maxim issues grandmother survived the holocaust to say the least and t become a diehard neo nazi combat veteran bodybuilder who does a lot of steroids and reads a lot of for chan and places like that so he had a great opportunity to build up on all of his masculine pride and violence against his own wife he tried to murder her and decided to turn the target on me and my family so i'm sharing this story with you because last week we couldn't figure out what was wrong in our home we could not figure out why we were so distressed why we were arguing with each other why we were feeling like we were talking to one another but not hearing each other why we couldn't sleep why we couldn't eat and came to realize that it was the anniversary of the day that three men broke into our home at three in the morning with full intentions to harm us law enforcement was under no illusions that they came to steal actual items of value because they left those behind and instead took items that would be able to use to restrain us and to terrorize us if not for our dog who on that same night last week also awoke from a dream about that night barking and stressed out so these are the things that happen to us on a daily basis these are the things that we don't heal ourselves from these are the things that come inside of our soul and they try to come out of our voice but sometimes our throat is just caught and it is that pain and it is that anger it is that frustrate of seeing these injustices happen that drive us towards activism is an act of saying you're going to hear me you will fully understand my story because someone is not listening to my pain to the pain of my people to the pain of my community and to the very real things that are happening every day someone is not listening and they need to be made aware that is at the heart of activism to now that i've done that i could feel the whole room going oh dear god what do we do with this so i'd like to ask you all to take a moment close your eyes and take a few deep breaths so we can start to release this little bit you then some tranquility know that you are in a safe space you know that your pain is validated your pleasure is not ignored your with in these movements were lots of little actions that took place so large so small it made people play many different roles more to be able to make that happen so where is this activism brought  for that activism so we talk about activism we think of protests and traditions we think about letter writing campaign hunger strikes acts of civil disobedience protest requires it demands urgent response activism demands aryans without invitation activism shows the magnitude of people power need a school of our own that our kids can go to that safe that's clean and it's all things that are promised to us right through our educational was equal access to education and so they were promised funding to build a little these mothers said these are our children this is not a game and they went on a hunger strike isn't going to please our bodies on the line to save our children's lives and you're going to hear us  individual sitting across the table something from that decision maker from that policy maker on that task force to get that work done it may actually be the result of activists actually people coming together and saying you don't need to sell off our water it's a long term and this is for how to change the system to make the laws work and be effective and it works towards the answer of i heard you you were absolutely right a number of black kids going to one side is ridiculous it is repugnant so now i ask the question so now i'm trying to come up with an answer to that and it drives the implementation to ensure that the work actually gets done come back give us a report say whether or not we're pleased with the work that once we give you your charge to actually do it so you usually have someone or could be multiple individuals who are the champions for that work and they generally  sell a system that we have that is affecting our everyday lives in multiple ways so when i think about the fact i think about the term political are you doing these very things that are counter to making a thriving community into caring about the west so political courage also is about the ability to drive agendas that may not be popular but are absolutely women of color this courage must work towards the eradication of issues around race gender class the rights violations that courage has to be centered on true social justice so how does that help build political courage and  way of thinking challenged directly by looking into the face of that parent that kid in a wheelchair and saying i i promise you it won't hurt if we do this policy when you know that it's not it is hard to hold that accountable so that's a little courage and something that's needed in order to truly even be an activist centered legislator to be an activist centered and minister so something that i do want to come to i think is really or you like bring it up if somebody says something racist or somebody says something massage or missed if i mean i think in a neutral sense it would be just that you say are you aware right you're breaking  but i think it has a negative connotation of that we're always tearing each other down we don't have a perfect understanding so what it is calling out or reshape thank you it becomes  tell you if you go to our white state website it's almost impossible to navigate figure out where anything is understand how these processes work it's a crash course when you get in there and you know office even understand where you drive off pieces of paper what you have to sign or don't sign  so we had this money set aside and within an austere budget where we weren't going to be able to get anything passed there were some reductions in this dedicated line at which most communities no power at all there are no dedicated line goes for clean up water and calling out our other allies according to sell outs for taking that money to be able to make sure people are homeless that we think a little bit differently about how that flows when they did the work that happened with the racial starts between a message that will be put out in the community and back to the community and what was actually happening in the building to the point where it almost killed the bill twice and that wasn't because of resistance within the building but it was because of people being called out that should not have been called out and again coming from a place of real pain that is absolutely valid but was calling a reactionism that was turning people away and sa say please don't stop protesting please don't stop with the writing please don't stop talking about is not what we need to do it's not about silencing voices but it is about understanding that there are different can each play within this movement to make things better and there are people who are very good at making signs for protests there are people that are very good at organizing people there are people who are very good at writing letters to the editor there are people that are good out so many different places and come from a good place and need to be able to get to work and we have to all work together on this so take your concerns as you see them happening work with agencies and organizations that you believe in and trust on some levels which it has to be or we get back to the trust that it is that there is a ship that we have to make in order to get things done because of her fine amongst each other happening that when she has something to say and she's angry about it we need to listen and accept and embrace her anger and so it kind of sounds like you're saying don't do  saying when you're in the political you know could you just speak to like them to know how those two come together i want to make sure that whatever your question correctly so essentially say you're saying that a previous workshop the message was delivered just say i have this place of pain i have this anger i want you here in your knowledge read and speak to the right and she said it in the context of other people criticizing her for the way she talks about her manners and so i don't imagine a someone story in her truth which is a very different hungered in calling out in the other person and what they've done in the time you know to people and i just think there are very different things and you need to be it when you're telling your story you've got to be able to tell it your way and does and some of that and some of the pain in the fear that comes through on that and that moment it's it's not invalid but it may not be accurate it may be speaking about something that's position charged to do but understanding that we also want to be able to make sure we're building bridges in the also not excluding ourselves from the circle so that people are saying i can't work with you but you just  a legislator if you could offer us any specific strategies or ideas because i think when coming more from the activist community and like what is the most effective way so we have all these people that are angry about something you know like what is the most effective way to get that to you without attacking other legislators are you know we we want to be strategic about it and i want to be really clear that i'm not advocating i don't know if there's a perfect strategy for it but i do know that there are really excellent people in the building next and people in this room who do this work every day and they can take that story in their pain and you can say i need to tell my story and they can even maybe get you in front of the microphone house and i often feel that i'm asking myself how to how legislator get that political courage and i feel like you framed it in a way that says we all have to come together to give you that courage to give you that support to have your back and one of the things that i think about is often being inside the statehouse but being left issues with violence against women  i i feel like i lean heavily upon the activists on the outside of the statehouse who are just rabble rousing like out there like screaming because i'm sort of more in in the system if you will in law and in so in that way i really love how you frame this because you're talking about it all having different roles and appreciating one another even though while we're on the same side of the issue we may be upsetting each other's apple carts you know but really in the end we're all on the same side of the issue and and there's an advantage to having someone out there screaming about the thing that i'm sitting there  g in order to have you be able to say i got all those people flip the paper and all those people and put the pig right all together backing you up and so i just feel like it's a really nice way of another appreciation for you when i was being an activist around racial justice work at the state house last year and there were several different streams of activists from different process i was apart from it who it was confusing about which what should i support own on and i reached out to hire and she was incredibly helpful so i would ancestors without women like these awareness i wouldn't even for you today i really everything i do i think about the sacrifice that they made in order for me to say and here's where you and i do not see that for granted one minute not one day these were some women who marched to washington post civil war us to talk about the all at the core they love you here and that it's not about them trying to prove me wrong and me to prove them wrong but how do you need to pay care of me if i think you know i'm not they've really care when they ask if you have will be encouraged by the work that you do and that ok if you have your eyes on the prize and you keep going towards your goal the next a different kind of that way that you find yourself in when people are saying you're going to run away of the season coming up and all the people coming from all of the world