Good evening and welcome to Crossroads.
We have another great program for you tonight.
This is kind of a special event program.
Some of you may have read in the newspaper or actually gotten out on your two feet
and joined the Maui Women's March.
This was an event that happened on the 21st of January.
It corresponded with women's marches across our nation and across the world.
And we are very fortunate tonight to have three of the small group of women
that made this march possible right here in our beloved Maui Island.
So I, without further ado, I'd like you to meet three very special ladies
who've worked very hard for our community each in their own way.
And I'm going to start with Sarah Patton on my right.
Welcome to Crossroads, Sarah.
Thank you, Lizzie.
And can you tell me a little bit about, you know, from your perspective,
how this whole thing came together and then we'll introduce each person, I guess,
as they follow in the story here.
Sure, I'd love to.
Well, you know, I actually was not a big Facebook user.
I guess I really was the last year.
But somehow right after the election, I was in a state of despondency
and stumbled upon this women's march.
And I don't actually really remember.
I just saw someone had posted, we're going to do a women's march on Maui.
And so I said, yeah, I'd like to help with that.
And the next thing I knew a few weeks later, it was like, okay,
well, you get to work with Robin Pylis.
You two are nominated to organize this event.
So it was just scrambling from that moment on.
That was December 6th.
Wow.
That's a close turnaround.
Yeah.
And so it was like six weeks of intensive planning and trying to get the word out.
And we started with trying to figure out where we're going to do it.
And we, our first thought was we were thinking, well, you know,
maybe 500, a thousand people would come.
And so we said, what about, I said, I need to call my friend Jane Lovell.
She knows everything.
And I knew her from Cora's and theater.
And she was a former county corporate counsel.
I always get those mixed up.
But we need to, you know, we need to find out about permits and police.
She'll give the right title in a minute.
But I knew that she had worked for the county and she knew about having things be legal.
So we called her and we looked very briefly at having it right in front of the county building
where I had attended a walk-in before or an event.
And we, within a few days, well, I'll let Jane take it from there.
Okay.
Because then Jane pulled off the miracle of moving our venue.
All right.
Well, Sarah contacted me sometime in early December, I guess it was,
and asked whether I could help with permits and be the contact for the Maui Police Department.
Because I had worked for the county as an attorney in the Department of the Corporation Council
for a number of years.
So at first I wasn't thinking we were going to have 500 to a thousand people.
I was thinking we were going to have maybe 100 or 200 people.
So we thought about holding the rally on the lawn at the county building
and the mayor was very gracious and said, of course, we could gather there
and we could have our event there.
But very soon we realized we were going to have way too many people
and they would not fit on that small lawn.
And so then working with Officer Walwork in the Maui Police Department,
we, and also with Brian Motow, who is at the UH Maui College,
we were able to get permission to hold the event at the college.
And later on, Lee Stein at the college came on with two of her organizations as a sponsor.
And so that's how it all started.
Kind of just grew like topsy here.
It did, it did.
And of course, on the day of the event, we were overwhelmed and overjoyed to see people,
so many people there, beyond our wildest dreams.
We knew on Facebook, which is really, I think, our primary mode of communication,
we had about a thousand people who were saying they were coming, or even less than that.
And we ended up having more than 5,000 people there.
So it took more than an hour for people to get off the lawn
and out onto Kahumano Avenue, which is where we marched.
But it was perfect.
And so.
Now, how did Virgie come into this unholy trinity,
or actually it was more than a trinity, it was four or five people.
Yeah, there were five of us.
Well, I had had a knee replacement surgery on December 8th,
so I was very miserable, and on Facebook quite a bit.
And I remember checking off, yes, to a women's march on Maui.
And then I got a call from Sarah Patton, and she said,
Virgie, would you like to help out?
And I recall that Sarah asked, do you think we could get 30 people?
And I said, Sarah, I bet you we could get 60.
And then it kind of snowballed from there, from the thought of 60 to 200 to 1,000.
And the week before the march itself, we were guessing 2,000.
And the Maui News called it at 5,000, and I am going to accept that number
because someone who counts for the max as the max amphitheater holds 5,000 people.
And I bet the number of people that we had at UHMC could fit at the amphitheater.
You know, I just remembered something that I think is an important thing we would have might have forgotten,
is I remember how I thought of you.
Of course, you're a dear friend.
But I had been looking at the few comments that had been made by people that wanted to volunteer.
And Robin and I hadn't gotten it together yet.
One of the person on there was Kaniella Ng, and then another person on there was Leo, who ride her.
And in her note, she said, Virgie Cantorna, do you know if this is happening?
And I was like, ah, ah, we gotta get a hold of Leo, you know?
And so that was how I then, she was the first person I reached out to
and invited her if she would be willing to come join us and give us an opening blessing in Pule.
And so then from there, Virgie developed a big program, but that was a beautiful, beautiful.
And we were each assigned tasks according to our bliss and forte.
So I was assigned the task of doing the program, which I dearly loved.
And so many people volunteered to be on the program.
What a great program.
It was wonderful.
So varied.
Yes.
You know, we had Marty Dredd and then Omar and Leanna Walk and Katie Vincent and Gary Levitt,
you know, from the cast of Jekyll and Hyde and just all of these people.
It just came out.
We had kids on the show and everything.
So it was wonderful.
And Sarah's forte is finances and accounting.
Yes.
And Jane was logistics.
And then we had Gillian Soleil, who was in charge of volunteers.
She worked miracles and recruited over 100 volunteers.
And of course, Robin Pylis was our fearless leader.
Yes.
She worked with the regional and Washington organizers.
So for the t-shirts and all these kind of stuff.
Well, the t-shirts for sure.
But there was a constant development of this event.
For example, probably two or three weeks at the most before the actual event, we learned,
oh, we're going to have one moment of silence where it's going to be at the same moment,
depending on time zones across the country.
And Gloria Steinem, I think, was leading that.
I don't know how you lead silence.
But then the app came out and people had it on their phones.
And so just staying in communication with the event itself was a full-time job.
Robin went to bed with her phone and her glasses on.
So none of us got a whole lot of sleep during those six weeks of planning.
But it was all well worth it.
She and I would have conversations at 12, 1 a.m., 2 a.m.
That's events for you.
Yeah.
No, I think, do we have the video to run back there?
Could someone give me a sign from the heavens if we have our memorial video that can be run?
Maybe we could just refresh ourselves with the feeling of this event.
There's a really nice little four-minute video that someone you guys know put together.
Wonderful.
It just kind of shows the signs and the people and the faces and like that.
So supposedly they have downloaded it and they're going to play it.
Okay, good.
Whoa, there we go.
There we go.
There we go.
There we go.
There we go.
There we go.
There we go.
There we go.
There we go.
There we go.
We invited everybody to take action to not stop with the march.
It's great to march, but if it ends there then it was for naught.
We invited everyone to use the march as a launch to action, whatever that looks like for them.
We asked them to pick a cause and to work for any existing organization, whether it be to donate or write letters or volunteer.
There's a lot of things that people could do.
I sense that people are overwhelmed right now, so I think what I want to say is just pick one cause and work for that.
Yeah, that's very well said.
I agree.
There are so many issues and just, of course, this march was the day after the inauguration on the 21st and today it's January 31st.
It's been a very eventful 10 days with every social and economic issue almost that's been threatened or shattered.
I think for me it's a real discipline to stay informed because I don't want to have my head in the sound and any of the major things that are going on.
But at the same time to really limit my exposure to that.
Someone made a suggestion, we had a little debrief last night, just read the headline in the first couple of sentences.
That's all you need to do. Don't study into it.
Maybe you need to take a couple of days off when you don't do that.
Getting back to exactly what you said, Virgie, look at what your passion is.
And for me, mine has always been the environment.
And you can even get overwhelmed with the environment because within the environment there's water, there's animals, there's trees, there's air, there's land use, there's oceans, there's the climate.
And so really even within that, just pick one of those.
And then there's the globe and there's the state and there's your neighborhood.
And so I think each of us have to look inside and say, where can we, you use the word bliffs, where can we engage and still feel, not get overwhelmed.
I've spent a lot of my life sort of dabbling in causes that I feel very deeply about and then I get discouraged and burned out.
And I walk away and then I just give money because I can do that and not be exposed to homeless animals, for example.
And that probably will always be true in that particular area.
But just know yourself and find something that you can do that doesn't break your heart and also limit that time.
So if you work full time, maybe it's five minutes a day.
I mean, that's actually what I've been doing because I've got so behind in my work.
And it's like, okay, I'm going to do, you know, I want to make some phone calls.
I'm working with the federal and also federal, our senators, I should say, very specifically.
Of course, very supportive of the things that I think we all now we mostly agree on, you know, human rights and the various issues.
I don't want to name them right now.
But, you know, it really does take three minutes to call both offices.
Say what you'd like to thank them for, continue supporting.
They're very nice.
And then you can do something else.
Yesterday, I figured out how to submit written testimony to the Hawaii legislature.
And I got registered and literally, and then I had another action item from, I think I got it from a few places,
but I may have picked it off.
I'm not sure which one.
It might have been the Safe Farm Alliance or something.
So these bills are being heard on Monday.
And so I went in and I literally, I literally cut and pasted what the bill was about.
They're one sentence.
I've looked it up, cut and pasted my testimony, I support those, sent.
And I did four of those in eight minutes.
It'll probably take me less now that I've done it.
And all those bills passed their senate hearing yesterday.
A bunch of people, the pesticide, there were all the, it was all the SB, there were four of those.
So, and so just to conclude for me, for me, it's about having a boundary, pacing myself,
and then doing it first thing.
And I, for me, it's like working out.
It's like, and it takes a lot less time to do this than to work out.
Just, you know, get my coffee, have one cup first, and then just go.
Don't get, don't get mesmerized by all the headlines.
I do it at home, and before I start doing anything else, you know, work or anything, just do it.
It's a discipline.
So I'm going to jump over to Jane.
Now, Jane, you have something in front of you that looks kind of prepared.
And is there a way that people working together, I mean, I've heard that each person should find their own passion.
But is there some place where we should all sort of be hoolie up here and going in one direction to do some things?
Well, obviously, there are many already existing groups that you can find and join.
You don't have to reinvent the wheel.
And here on Maui, we have a lot of people who are involved in all kinds of good causes.
But one of the things that we have here with us today is a guide, which is entitled Indivisible.
It can be downloaded off of the web if you want to paper copy.
I happen to have one on my phone that I carry with me at all times.
And it's called Indivisible, a Practical Guide for Resisting the Trump Agenda.
And this is a wonderful, wonderful how-to book.
This is kind of like political advocacy for dummies.
Step by step.
It does.
Step by step.
And on page four, there's a one-page summary that just, if you don't have time to read through the whole thing, you can just read this one page.
And it says one-page summary, doesn't it?
It does say one-page summary, so it's easy to find.
And this guide was written by people who formerly worked for Congress, for congressional representatives and senators.
And so what they are telling you is what works best.
If you want to make your viewpoint known to someone in Congress, the best way they suggest is either to telephone.
And again, you can just load the phone numbers into your phone and just be able to punch them right up.
Or you can go to their offices.
They all have district offices and so forth.
You can go to any meetings that they hold in the district.
You can go alone.
You can go with a group.
You can tell the Maui news that you're going.
Yes.
Or arrange to talk to the press after you've gone and so forth.
So this is truly a wonderful, wonderful guide.
But for myself, what I've decided to do, very similar to what both Vergi and Sarah have suggested, is to do just a couple of things every day.
And I get my coffee going early in the morning.
Coffee seems to have a lot to do.
Coffee is huge.
And while still in my pajamas, I can be influencing what happens in Congress or the state legislature by just being organized, having the phone numbers already in my phone.
I can read the paper.
I can educate myself.
And then when I see something that I want to either compliment one of our senators on for having done a good job, or perhaps I want to disagree with something that they have done, or I want to send a message to the White House.
I can just do that.
It takes a couple of minutes.
And I'm done for the day, but I really have accomplished something.
So do they suggest that people call senators who are not their own, who are key committee people, so forth, too?
They discuss that in here.
And what they say is, of course, is that members of Congress listen most closely to people from their own districts and people who are going to vote for them.
Because as they say here, the most members of Congress are fixated on being re-elected.
Not surprising.
Not surprising.
So we are both blessed and cursed with liberal representatives who, for the most part, follow a very progressive agenda.
But I think you can, of course, contact other people on key committees.
For instance, last night I contacted Senator Dianne Feinstein by email because it was very late and I knew no one would be answering the phone at 4 o'clock in the morning in her office.
So I sent an email commenting on a couple of the nominees for Trump's cabinet.
You can also, you can even contact the White House.
I've done it both by phone, by email.
You don't send tweets?
I don't tweet.
No.
That probably would be effective.
We should have our own tweet squad, obviously.
We should, probably.
Yes.
That might be something for one of your viewers to do.
I'm sure there's some folks out there that do tweet.
Yes.
Yes.
So those are some of the kinds of things you can do very easy.
But I think it all comes down to educating yourself, reading newspapers, whether in paper form or digitally, to be informed about what's happening,
making sure that you're not getting caught up in fake news, whether it's from the right or the left, dealing with reputable sources, getting your news from more than one source, maybe radio, TV, and a newspaper,
and then spend just a few minutes every day contacting someone in authority to let them know that you're paying attention.
So I'm wondering, we're all kind of the same generation where we read newspapers and we make phone calls.
For Generation X, millennials, everything happens on those phones and not necessarily just making phone calls.
It's usually electronic kind of communication.
Do you see, because there were plenty of young people at the march and at Washington and all of the human gatherings all over the planet,
so do you see like a new media surge too?
And is there a place that people are turning to or are there Facebook pages or someplace where people are getting the update?
What I find with young people or young families is they're so busy with their own lives, they need kind of like the instant version of things in order to go,
yeah, that's important, I'm going to take a few minutes out and post something or send a message or take an action.
Have any of you noticed that, that there needs to be also this other sort of engagement platform?
I think we have to make it as easy as we can for them. So to say, call your congressman, I don't think that's enough for a millennial.
I think we have to say, this is your congressman and this is the phone number and this is the time zone difference.
And this is your script. This is actually a question that Robin could be most current on answering.
She has been our social media guru and activist from the beginning and she's basically, she built the website for, she'd never done that before
and she learned how to, she was an admin of our Facebook event page and she is still doing that and it's transitioning into the next chapter.
And so if you go to our Facebook event page, you will find every day, that's what I've noticed and I haven't talked to her about it,
but she will have at the top, this is what we're doing today. And so she's pulling it from, you know, it's a concerted thing between, again, the national and the regional
and then she's making decisions too, I'm sure.
We have some sort of a title that has at least some of the wording of the Facebook page that we can run during the show in case people just don't want to Google wildly and find, you know,
It's www.women'smarch.
That's the website.
Women'smarchmowie.com.
But there's no link on the website to Facebook.
No.
Lots of websites have that link.
There isn't. So, and I wouldn't go there first because that's not being updated. We were using that to register walkers and things like that, but
That's passed on.
You can go there to order t-shirts still for commemorative t-shirts, but the place where all the current news is on Facebook.
So Robin Pilis is administering. It's called, it's an event. It's a Facebook event and it's called Women's March on Washington, Hawaii, Maui, and you kind of have to dig down.
Once you've done that the first time when you enter it up in the Surgeon Gen, it'll fill it in for you.
There we are.
It's easy to get back into it after you found it.
And then I know you did another page, but just to stay with this one, this is the one that Robin is really working on all the time.
And people are sharing a lot of the current info so you can go there and get some pretty top of the day headlines there.
It seems like, you know, each taking an individual action certainly adds up, but keeping this kind of community discussion going seems a very important part.
I mean, I heard so many folks at the march itself just talking about their lives, talking about what they could work on together.
There's something that seems to be rising, and many of the speakers refer to it as well, that, you know, I didn't realize that, you know, the thing that's really important for this group of people that's going to be affected by these decisions are made.
And also very important to me, even though I might not qualify, you know, I'm not a woman, but women's issues are very important to me, you know.
I'm not gay, but, you know, we don't want gay people to be at risk of being, you know, really having their lives become very threatened or their very existence being threatened or not accepted or implications at work.
You know, I think all of us, by standing together, this is what I heard at the march anyway, by standing together, we are all so much more.
So I think we need a place for that community to continue. Do you see any, like, on the ground continuations of, you know, the coming together of the march itself, like, you know, a monthly get together for green beers or something,
and then talk story or would someone else have to organize that?
Well, one thing I know that's in the works is we have, I think it's March 8th is International Women's Day.
And I know that Robin and Lee Stein at the college have been in touch with each other to hopefully put together some kind of event for International Women's Day.
So I think then, of course, there's Earth Day in April.
So there are already events happening.
Really, there are events happening. Again, you don't have to reinvent the wheel so much.
There's also a march on, I believe, April 15th.
Trump, show us your tax returns day.
Yeah, and I just heard about and really got excited about April 29th is Climate March on Washington.
Sierra Club is one of the sponsors. Yeah, I'm not sure if they're the only sponsor.
No, there's many, many. It's multiple sponsors.
And I already signed up. I said, yeah, I'll do that. And then I'm thinking, well, I don't know if I will, because that kind of crowd is, they could exceed the women's march.
The women's march in Washington had half a million people. They were expecting 200.
Well, it looked like it.
And now the climate march is three months away. It's a little more late time.
And I think a lot of people are pretty, pretty passionate about keeping our treaty and all of those.
Washington might be very nice then, too, the cherry blossoms.
Cherry blossoms.
Yeah, April.
The question is, I think I said at one point when we were getting close to the event and everyone was like, well, what are we going to let people leave with?
And I'm like, you know, we can't organize the island. It's just too big.
But I think we did want to keep momentum. And I think Robin actually might be a really great follow-up guest for you to have her in a couple of weeks.
We'll have a lot more information because the women's march and all the sister marches, cities, they're just still working full time together.
And she has a finger on that.
That's her job. That's what she's doing. That's why she's not here today.
And so I think she could answer that.
And then in the meantime, I would say, look around what group is doing the work that you want to support,
whether it's Sierra Club, Maui Tomorrow, whether it's Women Helping Women, or Vergie's Safe Kakey Project,
whether it's, you know, I started listing all the issues this morning.
I mean, so many people have something to express that can be a unifying message and also make people feel like we are not, you know, we're not alone.
We're powered.
In fact, it was the arts that brought the three of us together.
Exactly.
We were all in Les Mis in various capacities.
Together, we have all sung in the same choir.
Together, Vergie has been the president of MAPA, which has brought so much wonderful theater art to families on this island.
So that's another way that you can build communities.
And federal funds for the arts is very threatened.
National Endowment for the Arts, National Public Radio, all of that is being threatened.
Yeah, it's somehow the new president's agenda has something for everyone to hate.
Yeah.
So that's great for organizing, though, because it's like everyone has something in common, like, wow, I've lost something important.
Yeah, let's all work together and have something better.
You know, we can all agree.
I mean, when you sort of boil it down, we can all agree.
And I think on the basic things that we want, I mean, we actually all do want just common decency and freedom and all the things.
If you look at the people who did vote on that side, I don't think they were really voting for racism.
I mean, I think maybe there were a few people, but that wasn't why they were voting for him.
They wanted change in our government.
And I think we can all pretty much agree on that.
There's some changes that are needed.
So hopefully we actually are now this will really be a unifying event and that we will all realize and we can get narrow this bipartisanship that has been growing so steadily over the last 50 years
and get back to, you know, reaching across the table and saying, what can we agree on?
You know, Barack Obama was a master. That's what he did, I think.
Lucien is another one.
Not everybody saw it that way.
Well, and, you know, I think one of the important dialogues we all have to have as a community is how do we have conversations with people we don't really agree with?
Yeah, I think it's very important.
And honor their humanity and find some common purpose.
I mean, I've sat down with people that politically are, well, they're my family members and politically they're 180 degrees from me.
But there are certain things that we can all agree on.
So we talk about those things at first and then when the other hard stuff comes up, well, we agree to disagree, but it's not screaming at each other.
And I think our country has kind of gotten polarized and there just needs to be some way to bring back the human level of conversation.
I think that this movement has, I mean, that's what I heard at the march, too.
I heard so many people refer to Aloha, refer to the fact that we are fellow human beings.
So, Virgil, I mean, I know you really work with humans and humans in great need.
But where do you think that that conversation starts in our community?
Well, it starts from within.
There was a song that was sung in the program, Peace in Our World, Peace on Our Streets, Peace in Our House, Peace in Our Hearts, and that's where it starts.
And for me, my passion and my cause compelled me to create a foundation called Safe Kiki Project.
And I created it last year because I worked on a case in which a four-year-old girl was sexually abused and was returned to the alleged perpetrator.
And so, I started this foundation.
And it has to hurt.
Yes.
If you're the worker involved, you feel me a lot better.
And so, when Trump said, you know, he felt free to touch women's privates, I was incensed and became more dedicated to the work that Safe Kiki Project is doing,
which is to protect children, particularly from abuse and sex assault.
So, that's the cause that I'm working for.
And those are some difficult conversations to have with those who may share different values.
We think, oh, well, everybody would have the same values, but they don't.
No, they don't.
I mean, to say that boys will be boys and that's just locker room talk, that just riles me.
And, you know, I think we're going to see a rise in sexual assault and sexual abuse because it's modeled as OK.
It's modeled as OK, exactly.
So, where do we have the conversations, those people who are going to feel it's OK, you know, the frat boy type of image?
We have this in our culture.
How do we start a conversation where instead of just wagging a finger, there's the heart to heart?
Because this is somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's, you know, somebody's family member.
And I like that you said heart to heart because when I was the emcee at the March program and before the March,
I asked people to think about the feelings that were bubbling inside of them.
And I asked them as they march to think about what is at the heart of the matter for you?
What is at the heart of the matter for you?
Why are you marching?
Think about that.
Reflect on that.
And people were crying.
People were angry.
People were confused.
So, really, we have to dig deep inside and look at ourselves.
What is our part?
You know, it's not all them.
What is our part in causing this?
Because we had a part in this too.
That's the toughest part.
I mean, it's so easy, whatever side you're on, to say, well, if only those people would agree with me, everything would be wonderful.
I know you have something to say here.
Well, I was just going to follow up on what Virchi said.
And that is I think we need to have heart to heart discussions with the people who we love,
starting with family members and close friends who happen to be on the other side of the political divide.
And we need to stop villainizing and shaming and blaming each other.
And we need to be open.
We need to let people know that no matter how much we disagree politically, we still love each other.
That there is room for a lot of different viewpoints in our community.
And then to find one thing we agree on.
And I'm sure that over the course of a family dinner or an afternoon at the beach,
we would be able, with most of our friends who have strong opinions or who are perhaps strong Trump supporters or whatever,
we can maybe start by asking what was it about this candidate that attracted you?
Why did you vote the way you did?
What are you hoping for?
What are your hopes for this country?
And just keep the dialogue going.
Let's not divide ourselves into the sheep and the goats.
Let's try to work together where we can.
And yet it is really important to have a voice saying that these certain things are not taking our country in the right direction.
And we do need to express ourselves as people, but it's not about putting down the people who feel differently.
It's an interesting balance to walk.
It's kind of like the Buddhist yin and yang.
It's like, where does one end and the other begin?
I want to say that one of the things that Vergy really set up and I think set the stage for is everyone that came to the march
came with what they do want, a positive sign.
I think this was true globally.
There were a little bit maybe more biting, angry messages.
There were some of that.
But I think that we're deeply spiritual.
Vergy and I also have a common bond in unity.
So believe in, I can't speak for Janna, no.
Well, I do too. I'm a former, well-loved person.
So the idea, and I think Maui can hear this, the woo-woo island.
You should hold up some of these posters.
Well, I was just going to do it.
So that your words matter.
And so you want to talk about what you do want.
And so what I want to say, and I don't think I can do two things at once.
I can hold up some posters.
What I want to say, well, this is my favorite one.
And I made these posters.
I never even had time to put them up.
I just got into the whoosh of selling t-shirts and stuff.
But mine were all like, this is what I'm passionate about.
Oh, that's so sweet.
Oh, you just boosted our ratings there.
Which one?
A cute kitty.
Yeah, this is a rescued tiger.
And then this is actually from a United Society of the US Magazine cover.
And you recycled making these posters.
Of course.
No, I had all these stacks of, these are the annual reports, actually,
from places I support, actually, financially.
I had my favorite ones.
They'd all sent me magazines and annual reports at the year-end.
So they came out of here.
But what I want to say is that I think really, in a way, this chaos.
And this was an ad hoc sign, I just made, because we actually had,
people are really, really riled up right now about,
are they going to take away our health care?
And so this ties in.
It says it perfectly to me.
We do need to use care.
And I think this may be an intentional, it's a new political paradigm
of creating chaos.
And it's like the shell game, you know?
And it's like, that's going on over here, so this can happen.
And unfortunately, we've become so sort of celebrity fixated,
that we, and ADT, because there's so much stuff going on,
that I think this voice, this man, captured ratings.
And he got all kinds of ratings.
Because he was able to just say things, you know,
that there was no thought behind them.
And the things he said, sometimes were okay.
So my point being, we need to really, really make sure
that we don't mirror and react in that chaotic way.
That that is actually the device of force.
And it could actually be the strategy.
So bring care, not chaos to the situation.
So we need to be in unity.
We need to, and which is what you were saying,
we need to find what is true and common to us.
And I saw an amazing video.
There's so much great stuff on social media now.
And it was shared, I think it was from another country.
But it had a room full of people.
And they just came in, they seemingly weren't
had anything in common.
And then the facilitator started asking,
well, who is a step parent?
I remember that once.
And they all walked over.
Who, I don't know, has a meaning.
Who has been bullied?
Thank you.
Who has bullied?
Thank you.
And suddenly, just that exercise,
no one even said anything.
People were bonded.
So how can we do that here and find what does bond us?
Because deep down we're all humans that are vulnerable.
We all just want love.
We want food, shelter, water, and love.
Really, even the terrorists, they're just hurting.
So we need to keep going higher.
Keep going higher.
Jay, do you feel that having a woman's perspective really
makes it a little bit easier maybe to listen
to your fellow human beings and so forth?
Or do you think that all people are just
moving in that direction?
Or what do you think?
Well, of course, women are half of the world.
And there's lots of variation.
But I think generally women tend to be better listeners.
And women have traditionally at least been given
nurturing roles, at least in our society
and in many societies.
And I think it's pretty interesting that three million
people marched in a woman's march and there were no arrests.
Yeah, that says something, doesn't it?
That does say something.
And I think women of our community, women of our state,
women of our nation can bring the skills that they've learned
by being moms or grandparents or aunties.
Or office managers.
Office, that's right.
Almost like being someone's mom, except you get paid for it.
Yeah.
We can bring those skills, I think,
to trying to heal some of this divide.
Well, I think that we have our work cut out for us
and it's going to be a very interesting time.
I mean, I'm a student of history and it seems like
some of the most memorable political shifts in our nation
were very, very chaotic.
The Civil War and Reconstruction, extremely chaotic.
Not too kind to many individuals, no matter which side you were on.
People were horribly wounded and injured.
People lost family members right and left.
People had their families divided.
People lost their land and livelihood.
And then, you know, some people, the enslaved African-Americans,
all of a sudden had their life shift and then it didn't really
shift like everyone thought it would.
So that was, you know, a very turbulent and chaotic time
in our history.
Abraham Lincoln was hated.
Grant was hated.
I mean, it was very polarized.
And yet, we look back now and go,
wow, here's where America, you know, really rose to greatness.
So I have some, I guess, optimism.
And I think everyone around this table does
that in spite of the fact that we can't see where everything
is going to lead right now, it has energized people
in a way that maybe just having business as usual wouldn't have.
So for whatever purpose that is going to serve,
I think also of the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
either you loved him or you hated him.
And he was an agent of change.
He really changed this country.
As was Eleanor.
As was Eleanor, exactly.
You got a twofer there.
And many of the people that they worked with, too.
So we have this four years ahead that many of us, you know,
are terrified by some of the things that we hold dear,
are going to be just on the chopping block.
And yet, those who felt the same way about the New Deal,
I think they lived to see it wasn't that bad.
And it's going to be very interesting.
I mean, I can't say that I agree with just about anything
that Mr. Trump has said.
However, I do agree that people haven't been heard.
And I think that that was the message of the election.
That, you know, the little people in the street,
and I feel that about Malli, I feel that, you know,
the people who live in my neighborhood,
who don't go to meetings, who are just busy working,
taking care of their families, taking care of their animals,
they're looking for justice.
They're looking for justice right here in our community.
Yeah, I think, you know, again, I guess my brain works,
I try to synthesize and kind of bring it back in
and what's gotten really clear to me in the last year
is that it seems to be a real battle
between corporate greed and people.
And that's not new.
It's just been getting worse and worse
as the political system has been overtaken by corporate.
And now we have the first president who,
that's his business, is corporate.
He's a corporate animal.
And with no soul.
And so it's, and it's here too.
And the microcosm of Malli, we're really at a crossroads here
where I can't agree with the no soul.
I think everyone has a soul.
No, the corporation doesn't.
The corporation only looks at numbers by definition.
The corporation answers to its shareholders
and is measured by its profits.
Now I will agree that there are very consciously run corporations.
In fact, that's an emerging phenomenon.
And there's books about that too.
And it's emerging because it actually works.
So then I stand corrected.
That's an older model.
And that in fact you can be profitable and do good.
So believe it or not, we're heading into the last five or six minutes of our show.
So this is the time for us to kind of synthesize
or take home message to our friends at home.
I mean certainly if you're just tuning in this is about what happens next
after over 5,000 or more women gathered, women and men
gathered at the Women's March in Malli feeling a sense of unity, purpose and powerfulness.
What happens next?
We have three of the organizers of that event here.
There are other organizers.
They couldn't make it tonight.
But each of them has shared with us some of the things that have just arisen
since the time of the march that they feel are going forward.
A very important one is just taking a small action every day
and arranging your life so that that becomes possible.
But we've also talked about reaching out to others we don't agree with.
And that's an individual process, but that's also a community process.
I mean what if there were a conference on Malli
where the large landowners and business community
and the people who are always saying you're not listening to us
were asked to sit down and talk story.
I mean would that be something that would actually benefit our community?
Yeah, definitely.
I think we need to use this time as an opportunity for teaching someone
an adult actually asked me last week, who is Putin?
Oh boy.
And then I had somebody say, I'm so glad Obamacare is being repealed.
I said, well, what's your insurance? ACA.
There's so much education that needs to happen.
And we start with that, I think.
I think that people also have to not only educate themselves
but also have to get out and vote because our voter numbers in this state
I must say are really dismal.
Nothing to be proud of.
And you know, we all have relatives who served in the military
who fought and maybe were injured or died to protect that freedom to vote
and the idea that we get comfortable and we decide to let someone else do it.
You know, democracy is not a spectator sport.
We really need to all educate ourselves and inform ourselves and then go and use the vote.
