Transcript – The Mindful Activist Episode 7 – Zhaleh Almaee

The Mindful Activist Episode 7 – Zhaleh Almaee

Matt Ready: All right, so welcome to what I believe is the seventh episode of The Mindful Activist. I’m the host of this podcast and we’re broadcasting live on Facebook and on YouTube. I am Matt Ready, I am the founder of the Global Consensus Project, the creator of the hive1.net activist social media platform, what else? I am also an elected politician. I’m a Hospital Commissioner here in East Jefferson County Washington. Today I am very happy to have a good friend of mine, Zhaleh — I’ve never said your last name.

Zhaleh: Almaee.

Matt Ready: Almaee.

Zhaleh: Yes.

Matt Ready: So a good friend of mine who I’ve never called by her last name.

[Laughter]

Matt Ready: Before I ask you to introduce yourself, I was going to introduce you in a way I’ve never introduced a guest before, which is with a little video introduction, which they’ll see a little bit of on our giant screen hire. This is a little video from the day I met Zhaleh, which was several years ago back during the Occupy Movement, and — I’ll see how all of this works. I might have to like — I’m not sure if it’s fair to them to really be showing, but — if you can see this, this is —

[Laughter]

Matt Ready: It doesn’t look like if they can see it very well, but we have Zhaleh in a police outfit, and at least it’d be good to hear some of it.

[Video plays]

Matt Ready: When this is spliced together, it will actually show the video on the screen, you’ll be able to see it well. This is a performance of the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble, which you were participant that day in that performance, and we’ll come back to that. That was when I first noticed Zhaleh existed in this universe. Then, after that — it’s a terrible shame this video doesn’t show up. Maybe I’ll just show the pictures. No, they won’t see that either. There’s a big, if you could see this, there is a big tent in front of Bank of America and a bunch of people here outside protesting.

Zhaleh: [Crosstalk] That was a really great action.

Matt Ready: It was.

Zhaleh: Yeah. For those who don’t know Port Townsend, it’s a pretty small town on the Olympic Peninsula, and there was a really big turnout to basically occupy Bank of America, and the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble—which I’m a member and trainer of a program of the Mandala Center for Change, which I’m the co-director—we showed up to do a public performance known as a Forum Theatre Project, which essentially invited people on the street who were watching to come and step in and replace the character they saw struggling, and the little play that we did, which was just about 5 minutes long, was essentially a play about police brutality. Some protesters peacefully singing in linked arms, and these two police officers—myself being one of them—kind of going overboard, quickly resorting to violence and arrest specifically of the man of color who was there, even though all the other people were white, he was doing no different than anyone else. Even as I’m talking about it, this is a couple of years ago, but it feels like even more relevant now than before. Not that the number of, especially black men but black people in general, has not — the number of black people who are incarcerated and the level of police brutality that they’re met with on a day-to-day basis has been happening for a long, long time, but now mainstream media has caught on and amplified the awareness, which is different now than it was even just a few years ago when we did this action. I was really proud and honored to meet you, because you were one of the key organizers in that event, and so it was sort of the first union of grassroots organizers meeting, and I consider myself a theater activist, and so that was my world kind of colliding with yours. You had been doing a lot of work with the Occupy Movement here locally, so it was a really nice exchange and a great turnout for a small town! Do you remember the numbers? There was well over 100 people there!

Matt Ready: Probably. Through the course of four hours, it was very surprising to me. It was sort of a magical moment because after the performance, we did this march—and I was going to show that video, but since it’s not coming through, I’ll splice it in—but we marched with this giant tent, and with bagpipes, and drums, and the whole Poetic Justice Theater Ensemble joined, and marched through the main street of Port Townsend, and through a bank drive-thru and brought it back to Bank of America and put the giant tent right in front of the front door. Then people went and laid down in the drive-thru. During the march, which was like really one of the most inspirational moments of my life, just like carrying — we didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know if we’d even get — if it would be like three of us marching into the street, you know? It turned out to be a huge crowd. So I’m carrying the tent and I have my phone out and I’m taking pictures, and I turned around and I took that picture.

[Laughter]

Matt Ready: And this, I’m flipping through my pictures afterwards and I’m like —

Zhaleh: I would like a copy of this picture. For those of you who can’t see it, it’s me in a faux police uniform with a very smug grin my face. I chose to keep the police uniform on ’cause I felt kind of like a badass, you know, I’m exercising my power there. I had my teenager’s faux leather jacket on. and then as a theater artist we had the police hats and yeah! I liked actually messing with people’s perception that maybe there was a cop in the mass that was part of the action, do you know what I mean?

Matt Ready: Yeah.

Zhaleh: I mean it was kind of pushing the edge just a little bit, and I loved that. I loved it. I loved the idea that people could — yes, I might have been misrepresenting, but not really, ’cause I wasn’t acting like a cop. I was just walking with the hat and the coat on, so no official anything but it was great!

Matt Ready: I don’t think you actually broke the law impersonating an officer [laughs].

Zhaleh: I did not! But visually, if a passerby was walking and they saw me, I think they would, without really looking closely, it did look like there was a police officer moving with the action, and holding a sign, and chanting in like really participating. Even just the idea of what that might imply to others was enough for me to keep it up. Yeah.

Matt Ready: Yeah. It was quite a day, and that was the day that I met Zhaleh, although it wasn’t until I got to know some of your work. I’ve seen you perform or interact many times with the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble, which does these incredible cutting edge activist theatre, interactive activist theater events, which is often giving audience members opportunities to become part of the scenes which are often basically — I mean the group tries to come up with the most intense, relevant, controversial type of scenes and subject matter that we could, as a society, possibly be wrestling with, and challenges the audience to come and interact. I’ve seen you be a part of it, I’ve seen you get up and participate, and I’ve facilitated groups with you and helped with the process so… One of the most impressive people I know.

[Laughter]

Zhaleh: I’m very humbled.

Matt Ready: Before we get into some other subjects, or deeper into these subjects, is there anything else you’d like to say about introducing yourself to the audience?

Zhaleh: Sure! First of all, thank you for inviting me into this conversation and participating in this very multimedia way. It’s really cool. This feels like technology at its best, to create forms for exchange and dialogue, and that’s really at the center of all my work, so it’s connection, and exchange, and sharing stories and the power of narrative, especially as it relates to social movements. I could talk more about that in a moment, but by way of introduction I would say, my name is Zhaleh, and I’m an Iranian-American Jewish woman who is a theater activist and a mother, and the co-director with my partner Marc Weinblatt, of the Mandala Center for Change. One of our programs includes the Poetic Justice Theatre Ensemble, which you’ve been referring to, which is unique in its ability to do what’s called “Applied Theater” and are techniques focus specifically on Theatre of The Oppressed and Playback Theatre, which are under the umbrella of Applied Theater but operate very differently. Where Theatre of the Oppressed is very focused on solutions, solution-oriented in its most popular format, which is Forum Theatre, which is what we’ve been referring to here with this action; and Playback Theatre, which is way more focused on building community through the sharing of stories and seeing those stories reflected and growing, and connecting through the reflection of personal stories, not specifically focus on moving towards solutions. What makes us unique in this work is that we combine them, which is not happening in any significant way that I know of. These bodies of work are practiced around the world, and in fact, Marc and I are teachers and facilitators to train others to do this—Marc especially is world-renowned in training in Theater of the Oppressed—and we host an annual training here in Port Townsend, now 24 years strong. So a number of international community come here to train in that methodology specifically, and we’ve started to tack on like a day-long intro to play back, which I lead and teach. I come from a playback theater practitioner-trainer background, ritual theater artist, so that’s a little bit about that world.

I have two teenage sons, stepsons, 15 and 17, and one of my own, Darius, who’s 3 and they are profound teachers and are profound motivators in all of my work as an activist. When I lose sight, I just kind of come back to my kids and all the kids that they’re connected to, to say, okay, now I remember why I’m doing this [laughs] and what it’s all for. I don’t just say I’m a mom flippantly. It’s not like, “I’m a mom, and I’m really proud of that,” or “I am a mom and I’m stressed out and frazzled,” those definitely come with the territory, but it’s actually parenting conscious children who have a social consciousness, especially young men, but women too, and so far, who knows who these children will become? Yeah, having them be good allies and strong advocates to work as an ally to marginalized populations and have a sense of the world outside of their own little American bubble. These are important things to me, and they are a guide and a Geiger counter for me in terms of my personal work and my work in the world. That’s a big piece!

Matt Ready: Yeah. This is where I’m like, “Ah! You opened a couple of interesting threads and now I have to choose which one to chase down!”

Zhaleh: Yes! Let me just say, props to anyone out there who is a parent, and props to all the aunties and uncles and grandparents, ’cause I do believe it takes a village, so I see us all in the picture. I’m just naming my own piece in that introduction. Okay, which thread?

Matt Ready: Well, okay. Let’s go with the youth, young people power thread.

Zhaleh: Let’s do it.

Matt Ready: ‘Cause that really resonates with me. This is my impression of the way our country has sort of been since the 60s, but it seems like during the 60s, at least college-age youth, college-age young people were more engaged in the massive activism that was going on around the Vietnam War. I feel like something has really changed in our country about the level of engagement of youth and high school, and college-age. There’s massive disengagement of all demographics, but it seems like when you were talking about how important it was to you that your children are — I don’t know how you said it —

Zhaleh: They’re engaged in the world around them.

Matt Ready: Yeah, and allies. That was what really drew me ’cause it’s I feel like the youth of our country are so incredibly powerful, if they knew. They just don’t know how powerful they are, you know? I really appreciate the work you and Marc do in sort of really engaging youth and young people. Just today, a big —

Zhaleh: Youth Empowerment Project

Matt Ready: Yeah, Youth Empowerment Project.

Zhaleh: Using Legislative Theater, which is a different type than what I was talking about before —

Matt Ready: A fourth type of [laughs].

Zhaleh: Yeah. It’s all in the vein of Applied Theater. Legislative Theater would fall in the umbrella of Theater of the Oppressed, and with youth specifically it’s policy-making legislation, Legislative Theater. It essentially invites into the audience, the decision-makers, the policymakers, in that Community related to the topic that’s being explored, to witness and engage in different ways, so that at the end of the evening there is actually a voting that happens with the audience members to generate proposals and vote on proposal to actually make a change with the topic being explored. In that instance the Youth Empowerment Project was specifically exploring schools, and the education system—which we could probably spend the whole time talking about-the failure of schools in this country and the disservice it does to our young people. That was a really powerful and potent time.

Marc and I are also very active in the community. He is a teacher at Jefferson Community School, we’ve set up Rites of Passage Programs for both of the older boys, a lot of mentoring, just really trying to keep the pulse on what’s needed and what’s missing, and how we can help fill the gap based on our time, willingness, and skill to share and offer. Although I did want to respond to what you were saying, because to me there were two things that were coming up to me. One was, it’s kind of like, where do you put your attention? One thing I’ve become profoundly aware of, is just the children who are being born now. It is a next level of who’s coming in, and this isn’t like the full mainstream picture. This is like a percentage, a portion of children who are coming in with these amazing capacities for compassion, for empathy, for learning, for knowledge, for this like deep inherent wisdom that they’re just being born into the world with, and sure one may argue all kids are that way, but I’m talking about like next level. People put words to these kinds of kids, and I don’t know about all of the rhetoric. Some of it kind of tips on a New “Agey” side, which I get a little weary of but —

Matt Ready: Do you not want to mention those words?

Zhaleh: Well, I don’t even know some of them. I mean, I’ve heard titles like, I’m trying to think of one now, Indigo children for example.

Matt Ready: Yes, yes. I knew — I’ve heard of it.

Zhaleh: Cristal kids, and I think it’s referring to a consciousness, so if you’re able to ride that New Age line with your social justice lens [laughs] in check to say, where is the truth here? How does that relate to what I’m doing in the work in my community? I think for me, even just bringing it up, for me what it means is that I’m working to see that piece in every young person that I interact with, and like investigating like where is that gift. I’m not specifically a youth worker. I wouldn’t call myself a youth worker, youth activist, or anything like that, but it’s like without the children, then for me I lose a huge driving force and center point in the work that I’m doing, like that’s who it’s for, I’m trying to create a better world for the next generation. In indigenous wisdom, you’re looking seven generations out, right? So yeah. I forget the other thing that came up, but there’s a lot to be said on how we hold our youth and what more can be done. It just depends on what angle you’re coming out of, education system, or… you know.

Matt Ready: Yeah. I just see them as — well, what really rocked my world was when I went to Hong Kong, and the Umbrella Revolution that was going on there. It was youth-lead. It was so clear, you know, I would just go these protest sites and you’d see these high school kids and they were blocking the streets, and they were sitting under these tents, and in this one Mong Kok District, a very crowded district, and they’re blocking these 4-way intersections, and it’s only like high-school-age kids inside, around it! You just see the older generation just standing at the edge, and I just took photos of them and they just are like staring at the kids. Some of them, I mean, the older they are, I perceived even more levels of fear, but also you could see like this mix of fear and admiration, because I mean, they’re messing with China!

Zhaleh: I love that you’re bringing in the world view, Hong Kong. It gets me thinking about Standing Rock, and the youth who ran literally to DC, the thousands of miles, you know, and the number of youth currently at The Sacred Stone and Standing Rock camps, who are infusing the historic movement with their leadership. It’s not just their energy, but like the kids you’re talking about in Hong Kong, they’re putting themselves in positions that one might say, in harm’s way, because of the clarity of passion, and when you look at Standing Rock and this movement that’s happening currently in our country, it is in that cultural setting the elders are listening to the youth, right? Which sounds a little different than your experience of the fear that you saw in some of the older people in Hong Kong. To me there’s such a disease, an unhealthy quality of mainstream America’s way with the youth and elder relationship that is so severed, that it just is this huge, vast chasm to have to bridge. That takes a lot of work in and of itself, and so dialogue, creating forms for us to come together and exchange ideas, and supporting young leaders, and you know —

Matt Ready: Because the youth in the United States, if you look at the way power, the power machinery, it’s almost as if it’s been structured to force, keep youth power in this bubble, and then it’s like as you —

Zhaleh: They’re dangerous, man! They’re powerful! The [unintelligible 00:24:42] government is freaking scared of them. That’s a powerful force. If there’s any young people out there, you better [laughs] listen up man! You’re a powerful group and the government is scared of you because of how powerful you are. It’s [crosstalk] structured, it is a power structure that says power over, and everything goes into that, which is brilliant for something like Forum Theater to show a slice of that, and then ask people in the audience to get up and try solutions, so what do we do? What do we do? You know, and in a case like that, if we were doing a show, we might even say to the adults in the room, you’re making guesses here, ’cause you’re not youth, you don’t really know what the reality is, but go ahead and try if you’ve got an idea, you know, and then the dialogue continues is that what’s the impact of that? That’s an interesting part of the Theater of the Oppressed, also referred to as TO work as after someone gets up and tries something, to then have a couple moments to debrief it, analyze it. It really engages the critical thinking, which — you know, the other thing we haven’t mentioned really to youth is, and I believe this is part of the power over structure, is media and technology.

You can’t have this conversation without including media and technology as the main sources of control, and unless you’ve got a really freaking empowered youth who can at least see that as their engaging with it or make a choice not to engage with it, or engage to different degrees in their peers, they become one of the flock, and are controlled by the media, the messages all the conditioning. It’s a sick and twisted world, and how can we remove ourselves from the paradigm that is created around us to create a more healthy and vibrant world for ourselves and the people around us. That’s happening all the time all over the place, but if you aren’t looking for it, or connecting to that, it’s so much easier to get hooked into all the dysfunction and crap that isn’t working, and that will just take you right down. It’s almost impossible to keep your heart light when you’re really literally being dragged down with messages that say, you’re not enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not slim enough, you’re not bulked out enough, you need to buy this, you need to buy, you know, whatever, whatever, whatever, on and on and on.

Matt: Let’s talk a little bit about the media. You touched on that. I see the media is one of the huge power arms of the machinery that keeps things the way they, and it keeps power structure the way it is. This sort of ties to something you mentioned earlier about why violence against black men in particular may be coming more to the forefront. I don’t know that it’s escalated. I think what’s happened is media is becoming more and more free and democratic, so it’s basically these — we carry these cell phones everywhere, that now can do like what we’re doing now, live video stream the moment something horrible is happening. This is a big chink, it’s a big weakness in the armor of the power structures that hold everything in place. Places like China is well aware of the danger of a really free media, and again, when I was walking around Hong Kong, whenever something was happening there was just like cell phones, it was just like nothing but cell phones around, and they’re just crossing their fingers hoping the Chinese aren’t going to like kill them anyways, because they, you know, still could do some pretty brutal things over there, and I was the whole time worried it could happen, but it’s just like in Occupy. The same things happened in the US during Occupy events. The cell phones came out and people, when something brutal started to happen, people would chant, The Whole World Is Watching, with this hope and this sort of like belief that if we just open our eyes and see what is happening, that will in itself cause — it won’t stop what is happening necessarily, but it might feed the energy that needs to be fed to get us to change things.

Zhaleh: I absolutely agree, and I think it really goes back to the narrative. We all, youth and elders, and young people, older people, all of us, have—I love the way you talk about it as a chink in the armor, you know, a vulnerable place like that little belly of the dragon, that place where if you’re going to shoot an arrow it better hit right there between the folds of that armor that the dragon wears. It’s not just cell phones, you know, we do, I agree that we do have more ability, although to a degree, you know, so I have heard plenty of stories of things getting shut down on Facebook. You think that it’s free until you get shut down. Plenty of people on YouTube who have a great time going until they get a little too much attention and they get shut down. So for what it’s worth, big brother hasn’t disappeared, right? I mean, we are — again, it’s this idea of freedom and I think we have to exploit it, we must exploit it because we know that we will be the people who televise the revolution. It’s sure as hell is not going to be on Fox News that does that, and yet, one reason I really love the Global Consensus Project is because it’s working outside of a paradigm, in a way you’re still part of the World Wide Web and we’re all vulnerable in that way, but things like Anonymous come up to me, like there are ways to manipulate the system. That’s interesting to me. Personally, I haven’t gone down that path. I didn’t even know there was a dark web until my 17 year old woke me up [laughs]. If people don’t know this exists, it’s a very important if you haven’t seen it —

[Laughter]

Zhaleh: And the dark web, I don’t know much about it other than it’s like where all of the dark stuff happens; the selling drugs, and people, and pets, and weapons, and pornography, and pretty much anything and everything. I can’t really say anything more than that other than I didn’t even know it existed until about a year or two ago. I feel like it exists to exploit the freedom on our behalf, and also to recognize that we’re still working within the paradigm that has been created for us, and so it’s a both and, and I think we have to take it as far as we can and examine the risks that are involved when doing that. I think any passionate person who collects an audience and is either good at tech or has a team of tech to really be strong and get a message across, at some point will be shut down and so strategically needs to know how will they avert and keep going to find the next avenue to keep going, and keep going, so every time they’re shutdown, they find here is the next place to pop up. Given that, there is a tremendous amount of resource being made available to all of us because of something as simple as a cell phone.

We know, for example—I’m just going to go back to Standing Rock, ’cause that’s something I’m very connected to right now to support and stand in solidarity with our indigenous people and tribal nations of Turtle Island—we know that the dogs who were there first for unmarked, unknown security, didn’t just show up to instill fear in the hearts, but actually did damage to people. That mace was in that kid’s eye, and we saw it go in, and then we saw a picture of it. We saw it happening in the moment, so I love that chant, The Whole World is Watching, and I would love to resurrect that from the Occupy Movement to be more of the norm, and I’d love to learn more and support more, especially with young people who are constantly, many of them empowered with a device, to know how to use it, and to know their rights. That’s a key piece. We actually do have. I don’t know where the constitutional rights live, but that information is out there and I’m all about it [laughs], even though I don’t know all about it in this moment, I’m totally support it.

Matt Ready: Yeah. I love your focus on narrative. I had another person sort of really talk to me about that, and there is such a power in the narrative. Who controls the narrative, the story of our country? Of any event? It’s like this contest to control the narrative that gets into the mass media, but you’re not going to win that game. We are not going to win the game of controlling the mass media narrative. You’ve got to play that game, you’ve got to do that, but what the weakness is that we flood the airwaves, the internet with the narrative that we want to tell. Anyone that feels that their voice is not being heard could be heard, could start a podcast, could start a YouTube Channel, could go on to now — there’s YouNow, it’s a video website that anyone could go on and start a channel, and start talking about whatever they want to talk about, and Facebook live and —

Zhaleh: I think getting more resources shared of alternative media outlets is also really helpful. Someone just turn me on to the Unicorn Riot I didn’t know existed until quite recently. It’s a very radical outlet for news and so far in my fact-checking seems accurate, so I think sharing resources can be really helpful. I think my only devil’s advocate in listening to you say what you just said, is there’s this really fine line around, in terms of alternatives to narrative, of people putting out skewed narrative where, I don’t know what the motivation is but I’m going to keep referring to Standing Rock ’cause it contains so much of my focal point right now, is on Facebook and social media, I believe Twitter as well, there were some pictures circulating from two music events; one was Woodstock many years ago, and the other is Burning Man. These pictures went out with trying to make it seem as though these were pictures from Standing Rock, of the camps, of the number of cars, of the number of people, and it totally legitimized it for whoever read it if they did not fact-check it, right? So yes, we have to create a new narrative and, man! Is it a piece of work to do that fact-checking and not just believe! Like it’s fine to say, I’m going to be opposed to mainstream media and just focus on alternative media, but then there’s an extra piece of work included on that, and that is the fact-checking, and that is the resource checking, and that is the — just because it’s alternative doesn’t mean it’s true. Who’s putting this out and why? Who’s backing them up? You know what I mean? I don’t mean to get all, what is it called when you get worried, suspicious or whatever, but I think you have to use caution, you know, for real. Especially when it comes to social movements, there’s always going to be an opposition and so even if it looks like a positive message, it’s good to refer to the gut and the intuitive mind, and then do the little bit of extra work if it’s something that’s anything to you — is this true? Is this really true? Is anybody else saying it’s true?

Matt Ready: It’s pretty good advice in general.

Zhaleh: Yeah! Totally! But we don’t all take that time. I don’t take the time, everything I read I don’t fact-check, but if I care about it, then I’m going to do the extra rabbit hole to find where is this leading me.

Matt Ready: I find another critical way of getting closer to a reasonable truth about anything is just the closest person you can get to that is close to the events, you know, just speak to — if you want to know anything about what it’s like to be a certain type of person in this country, talk to a person [crosstalk].

Zhaleh: That person, right? [Laughs]

Matt Ready: Yeah. It just opens up — when you ask a person, “Tell me about your world,” you’re just so flooded with information and understanding that you don’t get if you ask somebody else that, you know, is in your bubble already to tell me about what’s going on over there in Standing Rock, or tell me about what it’s like to be scared of the police in our country.

Zhaleh: I definitely agree. I think that’s what I love about theater, is it puts people in touch with each other, so that we’re not making guesses about what does a marginalized person—and when I say that that means anyone outside of a dominant social group rate—so whether you like it or not, some systems might put you at the top, you know, white male CIS right? Your gender matches your presentation in the world, CIS male.

Matt Ready: CIS?

Zhaleh: CIS, it’s a terminology used to recognize your presentation, does the body suit that you have match the gender presentation? Do you present as a man? Do you follow the binary? Do you follow the cultural, I was going to say cultural norm, but the cultural norms are changing. I went to a doctor appointment this morning and filled out male or female, and I told the lady, “Wow! You’re form is really out of date!” and she said, “Really?” I said, “Yeah, the last form I filled out there were at least four options on gender,” ’cause there’s this huge movement around the whole attitudes and beliefs. I mean, the bathroom, the signage, just as one little piece as in our ethers right now. Gender non-conformity, and that’s a whole other level of educating ourselves, but you want to know what it’s like for someone who is trans or operating outside of the gender norm? You sure as hell going to make a lot of guesses until you actually go to someone and ask, “What is your story? What’s life like for you? I just love storytelling for that reason. I love bringing people together in a forum where there’s actors in service, it’s that little bit of a bridge that happens when maybe there’s a little social awkwardness to ask a certain question, or whatever it is, you know, we’re all in the room together and we have questions about each other and we’re all carrying these vast life experiences and wisdoms, and you get a prompt at the top of a show, for 2 hours, you know, a facilitator puts out a prompt, someone answer is it, and then that leads to another reflection. Then someone says, “Oh, that makes me think of this in my life,” and they share, and someone listens and says, “Oh, I relate to this piece in their story,” and it brings that story. It’s just one after the other, and in Playback Theatre, we call it the Red Thread, that thing that starts to connect us. It’s the humanity. It’s like none on the planet escape the need to be seen and heard. No one!

Matt Ready: Does anyone escape the fear of being humiliated? [laughs]

Zhaleh: You know, man, I don’t know about that! I mean, humiliation comes with the territory sometimes. I don’t know. Playback Theatre is not always deep and serious stuff. Life has to have the happy light beautiful, memorable, enthusiastic, joy exuding out of all your pores moments, to put into context the deep dark despair. It wouldn’t be right without the full range, and even when we struggle in expressing the full range of our lives, that’s still nowhere to be. I mean the humiliation might be an internal thing, I don’t know, maybe as — I can’t say [laughs]. I believe you’ve just got to — I just accept folks wherever they’re at. It’s not my job to judge. We all have a journey that were on.

Matt Ready: Well, maybe you can answer this question I’ve been wondering about all my life.

Zhaleh: Wow, no pressure [laughs].

Matt Ready: Whenever I do something that I find really humiliating, and I’m usually lying in bed thinking about it over and over again, I tell myself, other people are laying in bed thinking about what they did that humiliates them. No one is sitting around with a notebook of my humiliating events —

Zhaleh: [Laughs]

Matt Ready: — and they’re not like all replaying it. Nobody cares! Is that true?

Zhaleh: You’re your our own worst enemy.

Matt Ready: Am I telling myself the truth, nobody’s paying attention? And am I ruining that by videotaping myself and sharing it with the world?

[Laughter]

Zhaleh: We are our own worst enemies, that’s a platitude that has some truth to it. I certainly am not tracking your most humiliating moments [laughs].

Matt Ready: You’re not? Okay.

Zhaleh: And I’m also not spending time laying in bed thinking about the humiliating [laughs] moments of my day. I do reflect on what could I have done differently, pretty much on all things of my life. Humiliation is a funny, that’s a funny thing.

Matt Ready: It may be embarrassment is a better word. I look back and I’m just like, “Oh, did I really say that? Or do that?”

Zhaleh: Yeah. I’ve learned to be really gentle with myself ’cause I’m going to mess up a lot, especially, well, no especially, I’m going to mess up. I mess up so many times every day, and I think it slows me down. Unless it’s a really big mess up, the little mess ups I’m learning and affirming of myself how to take it in stride, to notice the learning integrate and keep moving, and not let that slow me down too much ’cause I don’t feel I have time. I feel the urgency of the world around me, and I want to respond to it from a really grounded place, and so if I get too head-trippy on myself, it takes me out of the process and then I get kind of, it’s easy to spiral out for me. I think having good people close to me that can reflect back, who I can check in with, “Hey, I said the stupid thing, can you give me some feedback on that?” in a way it’s a great segway to talk about allyship ’cause if I said something that was upsetting to, for example, a person of color, I want to check in on that. There’s a little thing popping up on the screen.

Matt Ready: [Laughs] That was a text message on my phone.

Zhaleh: Okay. I want to reflect on my actions, my behaviors, my words. I want to reflect on that, whether the person is going to call me out or call me in, this different way of being, calling someone out in a public setting, “Hey, that’s not okay” or calling in privately saying, “Hey, something happened, and need to process with you.” If that never happened but I have that little niggly like, “Huh! I wonder… was that okay?” I have a practice of taking initiative and circle back and with that person if I can, or at least someone else to say, this wasn’t feeling right and can you give me some reflection, ’cause we need each other in that way. We can do so much reflecting for ourselves and ultimately I think we really — survival depends on each other to survive and thrive. I like to focus on the thriving part, but the baseline of survival is putting myself in a circle of people who I trust, I admire, who I can learn from, and also share my gifts with, who I create enough trust to be able to go and have these, like, share a humiliating moment and actually get some honest feedback. Embarrassment, humiliation and jealousy, those are strong teachers, and so I want to slow down, and reflect and integrate when those things circle around.

Matt Ready: Yeah, I hear you. You’re reminding me — it’s kind of a strategy I’ve been using with this Podcast. I’m starting with a circle of allies, and friends, sort of to build up my momentum and my confidence as I —

Zhaleh: Expand.

Matt Ready: — yeah, expand the conversation to, eventually, to include every voice I possibly could include in this conversation, this dialogue, and trying to figure out how do we make the world a better place. A lot of those voices and a lot of people are very challenging and draining, for myself at least sometimes to —

Zhaleh: The people you don’t know, outside of your ally circle.

Matt Ready: I just — well, you know I’m a politician, so I interact with politicians, huge egos, not just on the board that I sit but we interact with Representatives and Senators —

Zhaleh: I love your honesty, Matt.

Matt Ready: — [Laughs] and they are — it is a weird thing interacting with people that believe they have power in the world, and they are important, that their opinion’s important, and they feel comfortable talking down to you, or raising their voice to you, or just being incredibly rude in other ways, and that is just not what my community is like in this world. That is not the type of people that I interact with, other than my dad, [laughs] but you know, that’s a lot of politics. Everyone’s acting like my dad [laughs]. Yeah, don’t we cruise through the time!

Zhaleh: Yeah?

Matt Ready: Yeah. Are we at five past?

Zhaleh: 2:05.

Matt Ready: All right well I have to — can I ask you one more juicy question that I’ve asked previous guests?

Zhaleh: Juicy question, yes! Here comes, juicy question.

Matt Ready: It’s about the power of violence and the power of violent communication, or the thread of violence. I’m just curious how are you when you encounter violence, whether it’s just anything from raising a voice to try to pressure you one way or the other, change your behavior, or anything beyond? How do you react or what are your tactics with that?

Zhaleh: That is a juicy question, especially in the times we’re living in right now where there is such a threat of force and violence at all times when we step out to take action for what we believe in. I’ll respond in two ways. The first way is that if you had asked me this question two years ago or three, two, three years ago, two and a half years ago, a little differently, so one-way I’m hearing this question is, you’re asking how do I react to it, but I’m also thinking of this question of would I resort to violence if it came down to it, because a couple of years ago I would have said, yes. I think it’s interesting to self-disclose in this way, because it’s been a real journey to recognize—and this is kind of going back to your question—the effect and impact of violence on me, mostly indirect but in some direct ways I’m talking more about social movements and activism right now. I mean I’m luckily not a domestic violence statistic, although I’ve experienced that as a child. I feel safe in my home and in my community, so I’m not facing violence on a daily basis, and I recognize the privilege that I have in that way, but I have traveled in places where it’s been not safe to express myself or be passionate. Also, being SIS female, I’m in a very different category putting myself in certain situations then someone like yourself, who’s a big tall guy. I’m bringing in these other contexts to say, these all play in to my response to violence, including just my heritage, my ancestry. I know genocide in my ancestry. I know in my Iranian lineage what it means to be persecuted for your beliefs, your religious beliefs. So something exists in my DNA in my molecular body that says, it’s not safe to be too passionate or too vocal, because of the threat of violence, -so you have a text message that you want to check [laughs].

Matt Ready: No, I just wanted to clear it. I don’t know if it interferes with Facebook live. I don’t think it does actually [laughs].

Zhaleh: So there are important things to consider because my story, and my heritage, and my bodysuit, are mine, but everybody has their own unique identity that informs a response to violence, so having said that I have been on a real transformational journey the last couple of years, which is maybe another podcast [laughs] —

Matt Ready: Yeah.

Zhaleh: — some other time, but one of the threads has to do with non-violence, and so armoring myself with a deeper commitment to non-violence, and this is a toolkit, it’s not any one thing, it’s lots of different things, including training of what are my rights as an activist in a protest, or in action, how do I pray by myself, how do I pray publicly, how do I surround myself in a prayerful way—when I say pray, I essentially am referring to my ability to create a space in my heart and a space around me that calls for a good energy, a higher presence to be with me, to protect. We all pray in our own way, and some of us, atheist who don’t pray, that is totally valid too, but I have found prayer as an action is extremely powerful. So my commitment and remembering of both the old ancient ways of my Iranian and Jewish lineage that I mentioned that had the fear, and the deaths, and the violence in them, also are held with tremendous wisdom of how to survive, how to thrive, how to protect, how to connect, how to build a vibrant community. Those are things that I’m now more focused on in terms of my response to violence, as essentially related to those tactics and strategies. There’s probably a lot more to say about that, but it’s actually violence in general is escalating in this country, gun violence specifically, you know. I can’t say that I don’t feel worried when I go into big public spaces, or that I avoid certain places because it doesn’t feel safe to me to be at a stadium seeing just because, you know. So I try not to let — it’s a very fine line for me, I try not to let the possibility of violence keep me from living a full life, and at the same time, for me personally, I feel like I need to be more aware of it in my response.

It’s moving with a warrior heart really, it’s having my defenses up, but not having those defenses limit what I can still take in, if that makes sense. It’s not an armor that’s impenetrable to love, to connection, to story, to friendship, that kind of stuff, but building an armor for myself and then sharing that armor when I see someone who doesn’t have it need it, and that’s another piece of the work, the exercises that must happen for all of us to feel secure and confident in our ability to take good care of ourselves and then extend, however we do that, whether it’s prayerfulness, or throwing your body over somebody, or having a good lawyer on speed dial, you know, or whatever. Maybe all of those and other things too, There’s a lot to say about it but I move very humbly through the world in a general way and with a lot of compassion for those who are coming from a place to act violently. It’s a tremendous amount of compassion because I know, no matter what anyone debates me, that person is struggling, and there is a place where an origin of the pain that I may never know, and that’s fine, but I believe that the origin of that pain exists in them, and my response to that person’s or that people’s violence will affect their next action, you know?

Matt Ready: Yeah.

Zhaleh: Do they pull the gun and actually pull the trigger? Or do they just pull the gun? You know what I mean?

Matt Ready: Yeah.

Zhaleh: And the difference between the first pulling of that gun and then actually pulling the trigger has this little moment of what is my response to it. Is it a place of fear or is it a place of passion? Is it a place of humility? I’m not surrendering, like “Oh, okay, shoot me!” but it’s like I see you suffering, even if I never say those words, it’s a response to violence that comes from a place of compassion. That was a very long-winded way of saying that, what I just said [laughs].

Matt Ready: You’re bringing lots of images to my mind, and for some reason I’ve had this image of me being in a situation where someone just totally has me under their control, pulls a gun on me or something, or is threatening violence to me, and I’ve had this, I don’t know if it would really happen, but this image of me meeting with compassion, just saying to the person, “Is this really what you want? You’re in charge, you could kill me right now.” I do think that’s — it’s not like I would personally give up on tactics. I’m open to tactics in response to violence, but the world is more powerful than me. It’s very easy for me to be a situation where I have no control over what’s going to happen, and I would hope I meet it with compassion. I think this could turn out better if we aren’t violent in the next few moments for both of us, you know?

Zhaleh: It’s good to rehearse these things. I would wish that we don’t, none of us, neither of us, I would wish that no one has to deal with this, but that’s not the reality. That’s far from the reality and also legislation, you know, to be in action around, making a difference with our voice, with our vote, making phone calls, writing letters, showing up, supporting changes to be made for how our police operate in this country, how guns are thought of and the I mean — NRA has got a lot of money, so we’re up against a pretty big beast there, a lot of deep pockets. If we just say well, it’s too big and it’s just a violent world, than that feels like a defeatist attitude, you know, and so I want to be both strategic but also realistic. I pray that I never get held at gunpoint and not may be the case for me as a light-skinned woman, but I know that’s not the case for most people of color in this country, will not have that luxury of not ever having violence acted upon them, whether it’s a police or not, it doesn’t even matter, you know. I think it’s important, like I was saying, to know how to extend protection and be active in our legislation and solidarity to change the culture of violence that we live in. It is a culture of violence. It has to change, and it must, and it is but we — again there’s an urgency there, that’s very, very key to the next generations coming, what we expose our children to I think is a huge low-hanging fruit of how we can affect change in the culture of violence. That’s something as simple as, what are you exposing them to, TV, movies, video game wise? What is the language you’re using? Is it filled with profanities or anger and rage? Those also could be considered violent. Starting where we can affect change and keeping sight of the work that needs to be done on the other levels, to both end. Yeah.

[Laughter]

Zhaleh: Just talking about the world today!

[Laughter]

Matt Ready: Well, we have cruised past the one hour mark pretty well. Is there anything else you would like to say to the universe before we wrap up our —

Zhaleh: Uh! To the universe! Well, it looks as if there’s a couple of people on that I’m seeing —

Matt Ready: Oh, we could check to see if there were —

Zhaleh: — on the side there.

Matt Ready: Indeed, one relative I believe of yours?

Zhaleh: Okay! All right!

Matt Ready: [Laughs] Very nice little comments, Kelly Grace and Rosanna. No questions have been posted.

Zhaleh: I’ll close with two things. One would be to give thanks to all my relatives and all my relations, so I mentioned some of my lineage and I just want to recognize that all of those who came before me are what helped me sit here now with you, and so I’m just giving credit where credit is due and I acknowledge all of those who came ahead of you to bring you to this moment, so I gives thanks there. I’d also like to say the Mandala Center for Change logo, which is pretty cool, [laughs] manadalforchange.com the little plug is “change the world and have a good time doing it.” That is what I’ll leave you with and just leave myself with, [crosstalk] and have a good time doing it. Not just fun, but a good time. A good time can be hard work, but have a good time. To me that includes take care of yourself, take care of each other, find ways to nourish along the way so that we’re having you and I and we, the collective, are having a good time changing the world. We have the power to shape and change, and we’re stronger together, so… let’s do it!

Matt Ready: Let’s do it!

Zhaleh: Let’s do it, all right.

Matt Ready: Now, everyone out there,

Zhaleh: Go change the world.

Matt Ready: Do your part.

Zhaleh: And have a good time doing it!

[Laughter]

Matt Ready: Then you come back and you can be a guest on the show. Tell us, you know —

Zhaleh: Yeah. Matt’s great. Thank you for holding space and your good questions.

Matt Ready: Thank you. Do you ever want to be a guest-host?

Zhaleh: I would love to!

Matt Ready: So you could be interviewed by me or Zhaleh.