Elevating Resilience

Hi there, this is Nicholas Hatton with the Central Valley Gender Health and Wellness, and welcome to our podcast, Elevating Resilience. This is our little virtual home away from home, where we hope to bring you conversations that will inspire you into action. We only have one world, and we need your advocacy on a local and national level on behalf of our most vulnerable populations. Our chats aren't all serious, and yet we take the issue of equality extremely serious. This is episode two for us. For those watching the video version of our podcast, apologies for the odd camera angle. In episode two, our executive director, Simone Reyes, and I share how we parted ways with the Soundworking Pride Center. We hope you enjoy our second episode, and we look forward to engaging with you throughout our social media spaces. Enjoy. We're on now. Welcome to Elevating Resilience. Welcome to the Resistance. And it's time for some good trouble. Always good time for switch. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning, Simone. How are you, Joe? I'm doing fabulous. I woke up a little energized. I've taken the last few days to kind of just reboot and reset. So I've had a lot of energy. And I had coffee. Good morning. Oh, I'm good. That was a lot. Hey, I had coffee. I feel like I want one. Awesome excellent so what's been going on in your world this little past week or two well it's been a little hectic work is always um keeping me busy keeping us busy i should say um as we start to prepare for the the spring and summer seasons just getting ready for team on events um preparing for uh partners events that are coming up so just really busy honestly um but good can't go playing So the PrEP graph that we're working on, do you want to describe the public with that? Sure. So we were recently awarded a PrEP and PET navigation plan through the California Department of Public Health, Austin Aide, and what that allows us to do is to provide access to PrEP and PET, which is a, how do I put this? It is a medication or endopill that if an individual, okay, so let's say we're sexually active individuals, right? And so for those of us that have been around since the 90s, HIV and AIDS has been kind of at the forefront. And so it's always been kind of in the back of our minds as we decide to go out and be human, right? We go and engage and interact in relations. And there are times where we tend to not be careful, right? And to guard from those times, they now have medication that can help you prevent from becoming HIV. And then PEP, which is post-exposure, which is something that you take that if you think you've been exposed in 72 hours, you can then get medication to help circumvent any HNE that you may have been exposed. So the goal is to bring the accessibility to PrEP and PEP within the county. And not necessarily just a queer culture, right? Because we always think HNE is a gay disease. But currently, the upspike, especially in our area, is, excuse my phone, I didn't silence it, is... Cisgendered women, women of color, and trans men who have sex with men. So those are kind of our key target areas right now. Oh, wow. So historically, where has Salah King County kind of fit when it comes to age awareness and HIV? So historically, we've always been kind of behind the times, right? That's actually where I got my start in the 90s. that I think I mentioned in the last episode. And so we've... We, as far as education and prevention, have been stuck behind most other counties. But interestingly enough, and I'm only speaking from back in the 90s. I'm just not getting back into the year now, so I'm still working. But back in the 90s, we had one of the best ID oncology clinics in Northern California, outside of San Francisco, right? So at one point, we were kind of the premier area for Northern California for immunogenic medication. And we knew, I knew personally, a lot of people that were coming from Fresno, Sacramento, Reddy, Chico, even now to see the doctor coming out. And that time period parallels with when we had a gay work supervisor. From Lodi, he wasn't out, but he still must have made a difference in that respect. Oh, I'm sure. I'm sure. Because at that point, anything that we tried to do, I mentioned this a few times to you outside of this conversation, but in the 90s, the 8th Foundation tried to get an actual pride center going and the city said, no, no, we're not doing it. So I think the fact that we were able to get county funding the gay supervisor played a big hand. But behind closed doors. Yeah, obviously behind closed doors. There was no open, even just open discussion that they needed at that level. I think it was very rare. Yeah, I forget sometimes in my own past, I remember we would go to EOP, and that was like the only out activity for queer folks was the University of the Pacific. The Rainbow Group. The Rainbow Group, yeah, which was started by our friend Riley Donnell. Wow. Riley is the one that actually bought the, or not bought, he made the Pride Center's very first logo. Did he really? Yeah. Now, do you know that that logo is still up on their building? Yeah. A field building? Yeah. Yes. I think it says a lot about that organization, that there is still a sign there. And then that they changed the logo from one that was made by an authentic queer local bureau. And they went with the generic template that is found on the Tree of Life. That comes on every single app as a free logo. that he didn't use, you know, and it's unfortunate that that sign is not taken down. It's crazy. So one of the things that we unfortunately share is the loss of a lot of friends to HIV AIDS. And, you know, I don't, is that normal? What does that say about our community, our social service, that we're still losing friends to this epidemic. I think it's a couple of things, right? I think society as a whole has become complacent with HIV and AIDS. I mean, they see individuals like Magic Johnson who's had it since early 90s, I would say, early 90s, and seems to lead a life where he's UU, right, undetectable. And all of that comes to from crap and pet medication. But I think society as a whole seems to think there's a cure. So they're starting to lose that education aspect of it where we have to remain vigilant and be safe for ourselves. Again, we're in a phase where we now can offer medication, whether it's monthly, every six months or, you know, once a year to help circumvent and prevent that. But I think a lot of that is really two layers, right? We're losing funding rapidly for HIV prevention education. That's because of Trump, right? Correct. Currently, that is because of Trump. And as we go, as the year progresses, we'll start losing. I was just reading that his goal is to, by this time next year, to cut like 70% of HIV and AIDS funding. So we live in a community where, and it's brown and black boys, brown and black men who are still dying for mates. And what people need to understand is that, um, While there is medication that prevents a lot of people from dying from it, you usually have a dual diagnosis. And so you have an individual who may be not taking care of their diabetes. And when you're HIV positive, when your T-cells help drop, you know, then that is been out. Yeah. And then you have more, you're more open to opportunities. Yeah, or the mental health illness. And I know that that was one of our friend's cases where he just wasn't taking care of, taking his medicine for his mental health needs. And when you're not in a healthy mode, you're not thinking, oh, my prescriptions are lifesavers. I need to take them because you're in such a manic state. You're not taking care of anything. You're not showering. You're not combing your hair. You're not brushing your teeth. Not because you're a bad person or because you're doing it to. Harm yourself you just that's you're in survival mode and those things just are second are second correct you know your your main goal in that in that in that frame of mind is generally one moment is next right, you're even going to get up out of bed to do your daily do's right, yeah it's interesting and then you add in the layers, then let's take it a step further, right? Individuals that are suffering with substance use disorder, mental health issues. Now let's add in housing and security. If you don't have a house nor food, the last thing you're going to worry about is taking your medication or making sure that anything else, anything beyond that is taken care of. Yeah. So, yeah, we have to, we here as an organization, that's kind of most of the ladies we try to deal with when we're dealing with our clients. I like that. And we say that we're meeting people. Where they are. Where they are. Most definitely. You know, I've worked for nonprofits since 1990. And one of the things that always bothered me were the barriers. If we're truly here for the community, I believe in low to no grace. And that's why I always push you guys. I don't necessarily care if they have insurance. Let's get them what they need and try to get them where they need. Meet them where they're at and provide them with the service that they need. Once they're ready to move forward, they'll come to us. It's building that trust. So um what's been going on in my world i wanted to share a real interesting conversation that i had with uh pat one of our colleagues um where she was sharing a little bit about her her family's history and i saw the one to share and i shared with her um the time that i visited my grandma virginia foster um at the only time i ever wanted to go visit her as an adult uh and she made me lunch and she talked about um the fact that her grandmother told her stories about being a slave, and i think that for far too many people in our community um they feel that racism is something that happened in our country and happened in our city in the past but the first episode we talked about francis um quivers and how she had to fight to let her daughters or black daughters um. Attend Stockton public schools. Well, that fight still goes on. We still have, you know, redlining that has taken the place of, you know, redistricting school districts. But there's a reason why there's like six school districts in the city of Stockton and why our city keeps failing our youth, you know? And yet for so many people, they think that, no, this is, these are problems that we saw in the 50s and the 60s now and you know you know it's still. And the wounds are still so fresh that my grandma can tell me about you know and this happened in the 90s um but for me it feels like it happened just yesterday to know that you know your own flesh and blood, um put in that situation you know where they were owned by other human beings uh you've got a long way to go you've got a long way to go and in particular in stockton with this history of racism um if you were any color if you were black brown yellow you could not go cross cross down freeway so prior to that being a freeway it was made thoroughfare for the city and everybody knew if you were a person of color you could not go north of that barrier you know we have a freeway that represents you know the boundaries but um but again though we. You know, up until the early 80s, still had legislations on the city of Arnuff City, the school district of Lincoln High School, had until 1985 language in their charter that said that if you, the only way that your student who was black could go to Lincoln Unified is if you were a driver or a maid. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. 1985 that was still on there and not that it was being honored but it's still symbolically that tells you a lot yeah, and talking about the Crosstown Freeway as kind of that line that you couldn't cross I mean let's talk about what the city did in creating that Crosstown Freeway erased an entire neighborhood Little Manila And the community has to rise up and fight to keep what little space they have of that former neighborhood. So this city is a long history. This county has a long history of trying to erase anything that isn't white. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately. Okay. So for the next segment, we're going to talk a little bit about art. Sure. so you know what art has inspired us or either you know recently or not recently the one that I'm going to talk about this week is a play called Passing Stranger you heard of it? I've never heard of it so it was a Broadway show the same year that Hamilton came out and so Hamilton won all of Tony except for one best book and Passing Strange won best. And the author of the play, Stu, is also a character in the play. And he's the one that wrote the book and the lyrics. And he and her partner wrote the music together. And so they won Best Book, which I think is even more important than the Best Play sometimes. But it's the story of a young black guy who goes from not South LA, but LA. He's suburban. This kid comes from middle class. And he moves first to Amsterdam and then to Berlin. And it's his journey as a punk performer, you know, as he grows up. And then his mom is always a constant thread and she's always trying to get him to come back home. And it's just a beautiful story about the importance of art, the importance of love, and the importance of your mother and your life. In one of the lines of the play it says you ever wonder about the fact that you. That your life was predicated on the decisions that you made as a teenager a stone teenager. Right? right? you are going to harm because of that teenage self, You have to It's got rock music It's got soul music And so the band Is, They're in pits on the stage. And so when they're performing the songs, the band actually becomes characters in this play. And so that is a very interesting dynamic. I will say I begged my mom to watch this. And my, yeah, my mom, just my mom, not my mom number two. But my mom and my aunt Esther, you know, rest in peace, they both were like, yeah, no, I didn't really care for this. Because of the genre, right? So it's not a straightforward play because you've got the band in the middle of it, and they're interacting with the characters. And it's done so awesome. The movie, which is on Pluto, is directed by Spike Lee. And if you've ever seen School Days or even the beginning of Do the Right Thing with Rosie, Rosie Perez, you know he's got a good eye for recording dance and music. And so it is, I think, one of the best Broadway plays of all time. And the fact that it's on Pluto 24-7 told me that there's an audience that's appreciating it. I think I posted on my social media that passing change is the new good times. I think that we all down, down, down! We all have a fondness for Esther Rol. We all have a fondness for her. I think that the mother in this plan will go down like Esther Rol, like Felicia Rashad, one of the best black moms in art. So what do you got going on? So I think for me, art-wise, I've always appreciated local artists. And it's interesting that we're sitting in the stream talking about this. So for me, I've always been drawn to local artists. This painting here is actually a good example of it. This was painted by a local Black artist, lesbian artist, Catherine Dukes. They refer to her as the Black Picasso at the Cintia Valley. Right and so i've always purchased and found myself supporting um local court artists that was painted by um dry queen lodi i'm so bad with names please excuse me i'm so bad with names um, It skips me, but I'll get it to you so we can put it in. But anyways, so for me, art has always been about finding local queer artists and then highlighting my house. Again, with the same pieces for local queer artists. On top of that, though, outside of the art, for me also lately is culture, right? Cultural art. More so music. I am rediscovering Latino music. As a child, that's what I was surrounded with, right? In my home, I grew up with nothing to Spanish music. My parents, my mother's Spanish Christian music to my dad's, come the music that we'd listen to growing up. And as a child, I was like. So I forcibly listened to whatever else was on the radio. But as I was sharing with you yesterday, learned after my father passed away, his oldest sister and the last sibling passed away last year, And so connecting with my cousins and just sharing stories, learning things about my family that I didn't know, has kind of opened me up to rediscovering the music. And so for me, I rediscovered Yolanda del Rio, you know what I mean? Celia Cruz, La Sonora Santanera, Los Burkis. Just listening to what my parents, growing up, taking me back to my childhood, I guess is what it's really doing. Because listening to what my parents listen to at home and rediscovering that music. And so for me, and you know, you'll come to my office and I'm just blaring the music. And for me, when I did that, when I walked into your office, I expected the smell of Cartier. Yeah. Because when that music was playing in the kitchen. It takes you home. Yeah. It takes you home. Going on. Oh, I'll never forget watching Talk to Her, which is Pedro Amalwar. Yes. And he's Spanish, not Mexican. Um which you know there's so many similarities, i'm going to take a whole another episode so i will never forget a comedian said that like we hope to have that respect in the spanish they took over and just fucked all the women you know. They didn't segregate themselves and it's interesting because if you look at like the east side of Mexico. Most of the people on that side are very light in Spanish. And further west, you get basically. Interesting. Wow. So we're watching talk to her and the song Phenoma. Yeah, Phenoma. Yeah. Phenoma. My grandma just... I'm soft. Well, back then, music was music. Yeah. It had meaning. It had a story. So when Linda Ronstadt, the concern of my father, came to Stockton, do you know who your parents was? I don't think so. Because my grandparents were saying. So Linda Ronstadt was, I think, after my parents' generation. So they listened to the more older... But the Casino de Valdes was her recording her father's name. Correct, correct, correct, correct, correct, correct, correct, correct, correct. And so I don't believe they went at that point. And then who was, is it Jose Fernandez? Is he the famous Mexican performer that would always tour California? Vicente Fernandez. Yeah! Let me go to that. Yeah, he was, until his last, I think he died a couple of years ago just recently. He toured up in this area up until then. Wow. It was last tour and passed away, like Ozzy, right? Passed away a few months later. And it's so, like, I'm glad that we're sharing this because I think the Mexican culture that comes from Stockton is very unique. And we all seem to have the same coloring, you know, and the crayon box. So it's nice to talk to somebody who has that similar and it's right it really is because we're from the same area you can encounter individuals Mexicans from Mexicans in like New York, I didn't even know until I went to Mexican. Heritage dinner I didn't know um, The Dead to the Dead? What is it? The Dead to the Dead? Yeah, I didn't even know about that. Yeah, because our family was more, well, they were the first generation Americans, my mom. And none of them even know how to speak Spanish at this point. So they're very Americanized. Sure. And it's not even being Americanized, it's columnized, right? The Dead to the Dead is considered more of an indigenous celebration. And when Spain came, they brought their religions, like Catholicism, which took over most of the country now in Mexico. But as we start to recognize Spanish colonization, occupation, and trying to reclaim our roots, we start bringing up the old practices. So I think that's where that came from. I think that's why the movie Coco came out. But, you know, we're still kind of—Mexico seems to be in a—first of all, I have to give kudos to Mexico as they elected their first woman president. Okay, she keeps kicking ass down there. I mean, there's obviously rumors and mumbles about stuff, and who knows how—but as far as what she's doing, highlighting and uplifting women throughout her entire tenure so far as president, it's amazing to me. And then announced that as of 2027, there will be universal health care for every Mexican in the state. You're kidding me. Now, why is it Trump for raising that? That's huge. That's huge. Because for a lot of people who came across the borders, employment, but also health. Sure. So, wow. Because then there's less incentive now. Yeah, most definitely. Most definitely. I think the only thing that's drawing people here is somebody. And it's also funny. let's talk about this, right? Since you deal with substance use disorder. It's interesting how the American government is quick to sit there and blame the Mexican cartels and Mexican government for the influx of drugs. Right. But two things. All the guns that the cartel used in Mexico come from the American side. Right. And it's all military grade. So it's coming from U.S. military. No. Two, there's not a fentanyl or a drug problem in Mexico. Really? Let's be very clear about that. The problem is here. So if we could control the issue here, there'd be no supply and demand. Wow. Yeah. They don't have a fentanyl problem down there. It's kind of like racism where Americans didn't realize that we really invented modern-day racism. And it was Hitler who studied American history to get his blueprint for what he was trying to do. Wow. For the original church community, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. That's crazy. I think you're trying that. It's interesting just the way we... Well, and it goes back to our educational system. We talk about this all the time. This country's educational system was never created to create leaders. It wanted workers and people that are going to listen and not necessarily go to. Well, I mean, it's very evident in the way that our system is trying to run states, schools within the states. So, something to keep in mind, right? Yeah. They want us dumb and broke. Yeah. And fighting each other and not paying attention to what they're doing is what I get. And which I'll get into a little bit later in another segment, but we're reaching the point in our economy where AI is going to drastically impact you who works and who doesn't work. And we're not talking about that right now. We need to because we're talking about years, not decades. We're talking about years. Years away. Yeah. Yeah. And so that conversation of universal income needs to come into play because AI starts taking these jobs. Yeah. And kudos to former mayor Michael Tufts for introducing that universal healthcare program, very first in the country to do stuff. And so that we now have data so that we can make an informed, educated decision on where we stand with universal income. And everybody in this country is at some point going to be asked, is this something that you want? And it's either that or we go into a dystopian future, you know, because there are not enough jobs for the number of people in this country moving forward. That's just the reality. AI has said we don't need a huge swath of our economy. So we have to start talking about this stuff. What's that? All right welcome back so now um we're where we normally will have a guest participate um today we're going to be those guests and we're going to talk about um our leaving bulk that's several times so um so i'll go first and then y'all that's the order that. So if you Google my name, you will get a lot of stuff from 209 Times, which for those people who don't know it, 209 Times is a local social media presence that argues that it's news media and that they have the right to talk about public figures. And who those public figures are. I never really considered myself a public figure, did you? No. Yeah, yeah. So who gets to determine who's a public figure and have their life just spread out all over social media apparently is up to the fake news people that come up with this stuff. And so that's how I referred to them as the fake news site, 209 Talks. So they did about a 10-page Expose against me In collaboration With staff members Of the Southwark Youth Pride Center So I want to, Tainted picture of what was happening at that time that this happened. I, as the founder of the organization, found myself in a really awesome space where a lot of organizations and foundations were supporting us, and they were supporting us with capacity support. And so we had a few, like six months maybe prior to that, participated in the capacity-building training, the ACEs. Was there six months or a year maybe? Maybe like six months before that. And so part of being a trauma-informed agency requires that you look at your internal practices to see, are you being consistent? So is your advocacy being consistent for the employees that you are having on your team? And so it was a big wake-up call for me. And there were a lot of capacity building that I needed to participate in order to be an effective leader. And we were taking that path, going down that direction with the support from foundations and also the state of California. And the state of California was splitting the bills for all of this because we were participating in their releasing disparity from that. So... The problem arise when the state of California changed accounting practices and went with a whole new firm to handle their accounting. And we started getting our checks inconsistently. And so that ended up impacting our payroll and employees were not getting paid. And I wasn't as transparent as I should have been because the employees got so upset, they decided to retaliate and collaborate with 209 Times on a hit piece against me because they thought that I was knowingly either one, I guess, stealing money, or two, was intentionally not paying the employees on time. And the problem is to the public it looked as if a lot of the complaints that they had had already been resolved and i think um chrissy ireland the board a board member was very public about that and saying you know the legitimate problems that were in that 10-page expose um those problems the board was aware of uh management was aware of and the employees had signed off through HR that we had handled and managed and grew our capacity as an organization and myself as a leader. But. I was already working towards being less involved with the organization on the basis. And I was looking to do more statewide and national advocacy. And so when this incident happened, I was pretty comfortable with just saying, okay, you know what, it's time for me to go. What I didn't know was that there would be an individual who was aligned with two or nine times that would then use the organization for their own benefit and then later on eventually terminate your role. So you took over for the Pride Center after. Correct. And so my question to you is, did I steal anything? No. When we did audits and reports that came out, there was no funds that were misappropriated or misspent. What it looked like was, it appeared to, on our end, and again, this is all what we could come up with, right? Because obviously we weren't allowed to communicate with you. But what we could see is it looked like at some point or another, funding ceased or stopped coming in regularly. And that's where the buildup came. And then I think the last biggest thing was the app that we released. That ate up a big chunk and once that was gone the state wasn't. Sending the reimbursements in on time which caused the delay and let's be real honest that still seems to be a problem with CDPH in there but no there was no, nowhere in time did we find any type of misappropriation or anything illegal because obviously they would have moved to file charges because they're very good at that and all of the employee complaints on. Was there anything from your perspective that I was egregious with or that I, I don't want to say this matter, that I manipulated or undermined? No, I wouldn't say there's anything that you manipulated or undermined. I mean, I think we all, especially during that time, and we had this conversation just yesterday. When we are, as leaders, when we find ourselves under a lot of pressure and stress, we may be a bit aggressive or a bit rough. I found myself, on Friday, I found myself snapping in a couple of staff rooms. I thought, okay, you're under a lot of pressure right now. You need to take the day and step back. But other than that, no, there was nothing where I thought you came out as inappropriate, rude, disrespectful. And then let's address that real quick, that elephant in the room. Um that complaint wasn't signed by two other people on that staff right myself and then the person that was the office manager at the time when i was approached and asked why i didn't sign the format i said because i never had those issues i've known nicholas for 102 000 years i said and we understand each other we would never he would never cross any lines with me understanding my background and understanding one i said but i no i've never personally initially um experienced it so no no um most of whatever the staff was always things when i was out of are supposedly right um and i would always come in and they'd be like oh this is, job but yeah well that and implicit bias right of course and that was a big wake up of me realizing that um the public responds in a way that um is racist but they don't realize it because they're not racist people but implicit bias kicks in and you are racist you know so um that's a big conversation i think that that sound king county and the state of california needs to have because people seem to think that racism is a problem and yet they.

Join social justice leaders Cymone Reyes and Nicholas Hatten of the Central Valley Gender Health Center as they discuss their hometown of Stockton, CA, pop culture and wellness. Episode One also features Hatten discussing his developing bipolar 1 during the COVID pandemic and being falsely accused of a crime by local gadflies 209 Times.