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AT: So with that JACL experience, have you ever had resistance to kind of what you're doing or, just any sort of, kind of counter to the things that you're doing in your activism?
GG: I guess like where? Or just in general?
AT: I mean, I guess, yeah, it's kind of a vague question, but just like, with what you do in JACL, has there ever been a time when people have disagreed with what you are trying to accomplish? Or, I guess...
GG: Yeah, I would say... well, I just ask because I'm like, is this internal, within the JACL community? Or like, external? I mean, I think internal, it's been interesting, because like... so Kyle and I worked on the anti-Blackness stuff together. So I think that I have been involved in some of those challenging conversations within our own community, with the rise of Black Lives Matter of just like, all of us kind of confronting -- many of us confronting what it means to be placed on this pedestal of "model minority" and coming to that realization in our families that we are reaping the benefits of white supremacy. And that we are also settlers here and what does that mean to be complicit in settler colonialism? So I feel like I've been -- internally, that's been really interesting to be a part of those really difficult conversations, but it's also been really fortifying in a way to embark on those difficult conversations with people like Kyle and in a very inter-generational group. So that's been nice, I would say... I would say externally outside of JACL, I don't feel like I have been... I think, very surprisingly, I feel like I've often gotten a lot of support for the work that I do with JACL. Probably because JACL has such an impressive and strong history being like one of the, one of the oldest and largest Asian American civil rights organizations in the country. I think a lot of people don't argue with that. I would say working at an opera company for eight years, there was definitely sometimes resistance to the activist lens through which I saw the world. Not necessarily at Seattle opera, but just like in the industry itself. Because it's a, it's an art form and industry that still routinely practices, like, yellow face and blackface and brown face. So, I think I actually got pretty good support at Seattle opera for that activist and JACL perspective, but I would say the art form as a whole, still really -- and the arts as a whole -- things are really changing, but I would say it's still often very normalized. It's very normalized to still other us. So, yeah, I guess does that answer your question?
AT: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2021 Seattle Chapter JACL. All Rights Reserved.