James Tracy

Lewis: [00:00:00] Hi, it’s December 3, 2018, and Lynn Lewis with James Tracy and we’re doing an interview for the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project. How are you doing?

Tracy: [00:00:15] I’m good.

Lewis: [00:00:18] James, I wanted to start the interview by asking you to tell us who is James Tracy? How did we get here?

Tracy: How did I get here?

Lewis: Yes.

Tracy: [00:00:30] Well, let’s see, if you want to talk about how we got here politically, how—you know, the origin story—I think my first sense of politics was when I was probably eleven I think it was in 1981—and I could be wrong about that date so double check it—but I wanted to be a paper boy. I wanted to throw papers, earn a little extra money and the newspaper of record in my town was the Vallejo Times Herald and they were on strike, and I believe it was my grandfather who was like, “You can’t cross a picket line and you can’t throw a scab paper.”

Tracy: [00:01:12] But the workers and the press people started their own newspaper called the Vallejo Independent Press which was actually a worker-owned cooperative. And so, my grandfather, “You could go get a job there” and drove me down there. He was visiting, so I got a job throwing papers for the strike paper and I think that I got exposed to a bunch of really radical ideas just through the self-activity of workers in the city I grew up with, you know, the idea that people could make a way without bosses, take care of their own business, make decisions.

Tracy: [00:01:51] But it wasn’t for about eight years later that I really—was politicized— in 1989. I guess in between that point I did—I was becoming politically aware in Vallejo because it’s a place of many different conflicts and antagonisms and getting involved with the punk rock scene and those ideas and, you know, cutting school and trying to find real information. But in 1989, the Nazi Skinheads came to town, and they tried to convince us white folks that we should turn against our Black and Brown neighbors that we had just grown up with because, even though Vallejo has a lot of problems, one of the great things is it’s one of the most integrated, diverse cities in the United States… And that we should blame other people for all of our problems. And this was a time when the Naval Shipyard was rumored to be shutting down soon. It didn’t happen until quite a while, but there was a lot of anxiety, and you know, we didn’t buy it, but the Nazi Skinheads were organizing this thing called Aryan Woodstock which was a white power concert. And I think that—I didn’t do anything particularly brave; I went to a few little rallies and hearings or something like that… But I think that was one of those moments where I started to really see some of the intersections between what was going on. You know, maybe when I was eleven, I started thinking about class and when I was nineteen, I started thinking about race.

Tracy: [00:03:41] So, when I moved away—not far, I’ve never lived very far away from either where I was born, which is Oakland or where I mostly grew up which is Vallejo—moved to San Francisco and become a truck driver for a thrift store. And what we found out, my partner and I, the truck that landlords were donating the belongings of people that they had evicted. So, both of us were—I was volunteering with groups like Food Not Bombs and Homes Not Jails and I think Mumia Defense at that time… But both of us were doing a lot of reading—he was a socialist, I was an anarchist—about the Unemployed Workers Movements of the 1930’s in Harlem and Detroit and so we founded a group called Eviction Defense Network that was all direct action against evictions. If your grandmother was getting evicted, we’d go find where your grandmother’s landlord lived and go bother them or where their place of business was. We would picket them, and I think we were pretty successful.

Tracy: [00:04:57] But because we were relentlessly independent at the time, and we were invited to work with—by—residents of Public Housing who were going through the HOPE VI process. And that was a really big learning experience. That was probably my third big learning experience, there… Was learning how to work under the leadership of some really amazing women who lived in Public Housing, learning from their history as many of them were connected in their families to either—to various People’s Movements, whether it was the Civil Rights Movement or the Black Panther Party or the Black Liberation Army. And in return for knocking on doors for them… You know, I always think about the time when it was, “Hey we want to be of use.” And they said, “Well, I can tell you how you can be of use. Most of the activists here are senior citizens and the elevators broke so we can’t go up to the third floor. Can you take these fliers up to the third floor?” Right? Just really, simple, tactical ways of being of use, you know? But on exchange for being useful, they would share their histories with us, right? They would tell us about the struggles that they had gone through, the organizing drives, both as workers in their communities and their various organizations that they had been attracted to over the decades, so I got a fantastic political education from these women.

Lewis: What was it about your background that let you know that that was the thing to do—was to put yourself in a position of asking them for leadership? Because not everybody knows that and definitely not every young, white man knows that.

Tracy: [00:06:57] I’m not quite sure, actually. I mean, I can theorize a few things. I think that, regardless of all the malarkey that a Catholic upbringing gives you that people who—the Catholics in my CCD [Confraternity of Christian Doctrine] classes and my father—gave a pretty good moral foundation, right?

Lewis: Yes.

Tracy: They were far from radical, but they were Vatican II people. They weren’t reactionaries, they believed in a social gospel. They weren’t liberation theologists [smiles] by any stretch of the imagination. But I think that I’ve always just believed that if you have—that it’s good to listen. That you learn by listening, you learn by asking good questions, and you learn by checking your assumptions. It doesn’t mean that you have to be an empty vessel. As an organizer, or if you’re in solidarity, you can have your own ideas. You can have your own ideologies, but you should never just think about just being a baggage handler for the most oppressed, or things like that. But when you just stop and breathe and ask questions and have faith in human beings—you learn stuff and you can come to better conclusions. I’m not going to tell people in Public Housing how to organize their buildings, but I’m sure as hell going to be a co-conspirator with them and figure out ways to prevent their displacement, together. Honestly, I don’t exactly know where that came from.

Lewis: When you were growing up, you mentioned that you became aware of class when you were eleven and of race when you were eighteen and Vallejo was a very integrated place. Tell us, what was Vallejo like?

Tracy: [00:09:09] Vallejo gets a bad rap, even today, and then there’s lots of problems there, but the one thing that it provides for everybody is that you have to learn how to get along with lots of different people. Like I said, the diversity index there is off the charts, right? And even—I grew up both in a working-class neighborhood when I was a kid, and then a more middle-class neighborhood later on as my dad got a promotion. I went to a public school. My father became a public-school kindergarten teacher and refused to send—even though our Catholic family was like, “Hey, let’s figure out a way to send the kids to Catholic school,” as immigrant families are wont to do. My dad was like, “Nuh-uh. No. Our kids our going to go to public school. They’re not going to be around just one type of person, right? They’re going to learn how to navigate the world.” That’s not his words, that’s mine, but I think that’s basically what he was trying to get at. So, I think that’s really valuable. I think that we often times underestimate what a public-school education can provide in that way.

Tracy: [00:10:34] And you know, Vallejo’s a really vibrant town and in a lot of ways, it’s a very challenging town. It can be a very violent town, a very homophobic town, but there’s all these little… Also, in the eighties, had a really wonderful punk rock scene and a really wonderful hip hop scene so there was music and culture around all the time. And music and culture, especially for the types that I was attracted to at the time, had different ideas, right? It was transmitting… Growing up, we were getting ideas from the Rock Against Racism movement in the U.K., right—were being transmitted to us by vinyl. And around us, our friends of color were becoming DJs and we were importing all sorts of ideas through Black Power Hip Hop and things like that and there was a lot of crisscrossing.

I got to organize this series of concerts when I was eighteen at an old Masonic Temple and we would always try to bring together our peers, both Black and white, punk rock, hip hop. So music, I think, and culture—I’d later read [Antonio] Gramsci and get all intellectual and nerdy about it, but I think at the time, we were really just showing ways to challenge cultural hegemony and build solidarity with one another with what we were just doing every day which was just enjoying music, enjoying each other, and trying to find weird strands of commonality, even when it was hidden. That was certainly a political education in and of itself.

Lewis: And these kinds of things were going on when you were in high school?

Tracy: Yes.

Lewis: So, the high school was diverse? Reflected the diversity?

Tracy: [00:12:31] Oh, yes, extremely diverse and I don’t want—it’s easy to look back and just say, “Hey, there were great times, and everybody got along,” Which would be wrong, because not everybody got along all the time. But most people in my high school had friendships across the color line, you know, real friendships, people that they had grown up with forever. It wasn’t a forced thing. You might majorly click up with the people who are—and hangout with—people that are most like you, but you would have friends all over town, especially with the bussing and things like that. It wasn’t uncommon.

Lewis: Did you go to a school where kids were bussed?

Tracy: Yeah. I mean, I actually had a really weird experience where… I had very slight learning disabilities and was originally going to be bussed into Special Ed and then I tested really high and then got put into a Gifted Program so [laughs] I literally was on both busses and things like that, so… But, yeah, there was that.

Lewis: You mentioned being from an immigrant family, so tell me about that.

Tracy: [00:14:00] My great grandparents, my great grandmother who I actually knew, and she actually came and lived with us, she was from Italy, and she spoke five different languages. She was from a little town called Mede. She could hardly read one, and the reason why she knew five different languages was because she… Back in the day, poor families would often times lease their daughters out to these kind of labor brokers and they would be sent to France or sent to Germany or what not. And I remember that story being handed down quite a bit. And I remember that my Nona could talk to just about anybody, no matter what, especially Europeans, but was never shy about talking to anybody. And so, there was always—within that experience, there’s a very progressive strand and there’s a very reactionary strand that gets handed down to you at the same time, right? The respect for hard work can sometimes become, then, the scapegoating of people who don’t have work, right? But the respect for hard work is pretty progressive and the scapegoating of people who don’t have work can be very oppressive, so you get that.

But my family was always very, very—my dad’s side was always very, very proud of their immigrant roots. And one of the things—while some people in my family were _extremely _reactionary because of it, my dad always tried to—I don’t think he even could articulate in this way, but he never thought that made him better than anyone. He would just always, “Our family went through a lot of things. We worked really hard. Other people are going through that now. We should respect them.” He would never use words like we use like solidarity or things like that, but he was one of the least racist people in the world. You can plop him into any area in the world and he’s making friends and I think that really comes from his interpretation of the immigrant experience that was handed down to him and his working-class experience. Before he went—he was the first person in the college—was that he wasn’t any better than anyone, right? He would never use words like privilege or white skin privilege, but I definitely would hear him say, “We got better breaks,” things like that. I think that was his way of articulating a sense of—an analysis even—about privilege... Things like that. Which, I actually think breaks are a lot better word than privilege, anyhow. [Smiles] I think that’s a very common-sense way of talking about it, about that phenomenon.

Lewis: Since I’ve known you, you often describe things in common sense ways and why is that important to you?

Tracy: [00:17:36] Because I think language is really important and we can use language to build bridges, to explain what we think, to ask people what they think and I’m not anti-intellectual but in the least bit, right? I think that it’s a really good thing. One of the things that human beings can do is theorize and analyze and stuff like that. But I believe that _everybody _can do that, but if you use a bunch of jargon without—you know, you can use big words, but you have to break it down. You can use big concepts, but you have to break it down. Like Malcolm X would always say, “Let’s break this down in terms that everyone can understand” You know? I really believe that everybody can be an intellectual whether they have a G.E.D or a Ph.D. And it’s not—if I use a bunch of jargon, it’s basically there for my own benefit. But if I explain or use language conveying the exact same concepts in a way that’s just plain spoken, then I’m giving everybody in the room the respect. I’m not just throwing out my big words. That’s not to say that people can’t… You know, people that might not have access to formal education or the same Marxist books or what not can’t grapple with big words, can’t use them, and shouldn’t use them. I think there’s a time and a place for everything. But it’s really about intent, you know? Like I said, there’s a time and place for everything. I can nerd out on Marx and Gramsci and all that and really enjoy it, it’s fine, but I’m not going to use that to try to elevate myself above somebody else. That would just be wrong.

Lewis: You sound like the way you described your dad.

Tracy: [00:19:54] Yeah. The scary part of growing is older is realizing that even though you may have gone in different directions, how similar you may be to some [laughs] of the people that raised you.

Lewis: I’m turning into my dad, into my mom.

Tracy: [00:20:10] But, two people in my family that I don’t know if I’ve really talked with you about that have actually had that… You know, my grandmother’s brother, my Uncle Bud, he’s actually Milton Hendrick. He was a sailor, and he was a dyslexic sailor. He was a dyslexic, gay, socialist sailor [laughs] and the stuff that he told me—this is a man who struggled to read, but he would—even though he was dyslexic—he would read the newspaper from front to back every day with this little three by five card that he had a little cut-out window in the middle of it that he would just take down the newspaper to try to confine the text because he so much enjoyed it and being someone who had sailed all over the world, he could break down the global economy. He was an economist, right? He was a working-class economist… And for a while he was in the Socialist Workers Party even though he quit over their homophobia at the time. And learning from them—and my Auntie Dawn, who was in the Communist Party and was in the—she was involved with the first—sorry, she was involved with the campaign to reopen the Rosenberg case and the first test case of the Freedom of Information Act. You know, these were the people that actually—they were just working-class reds. One a product of the thirties, forties and one a product of the sixties, seventies. But they were always plain-spoken, right? They never talked in an off-putting language. They were just like—you could sit around and talk with them with ideas. My Uncle Bud passed probably about twelve years ago. My Aunt Dawn is still alive and everything. She always says she’s still a little bit red, you know.

But they… Walking around San Francisco with my Uncle Bud where he’d point where they tore down this building or where this strike happened—scholars would call what he did, his little walking tours—"psycho geography” or some fancy word around urbanism or what not. But he could really break down power and place and things like that in a really engaging way. I think those two taught me a lot.

Lewis: When you were growing up, do you remember a time when they said something or broke something down for you that taught you a lot?

Tracy: [00:23:09] You know, both of them. I think that… My Uncle Bud would just always talk about labor history once he realized I was interested in it. He never talked about that, but he knew the labor history of San Francisco because he had lived it. And he knew economics because he had moved the capitalist products all over the globe. I think that… One of the things that always struck me was that he didn’t take much scratching. He always seemed like a really quiet guy in a lot of ways, but if you gave him a chance to be an intellectual and to theorize and talk about history, he would just jump at it. On my twenty first birthday—he had been in his seventies at the time, I can’t remember exactly—but he invited me over and we went to a bar, and it was obviously a gay bar. And he was like [imitates accent], “I want to tell you something. I’m gay.” I was like, “Yeah, everybody knows that in the family.” He goes, “Well, how do they think about it?” I was like, “Well, they love you, but they don’t want to talk about it, but that’s their own problem. It’s not yours.” And we got into this long conversation just about his class background and coming up and keeping, you know—such an important part of him on wraps around people that he loved and never being able to talk about that openly or bring a partner home.

I mean, that taught me more about intersectionality than reading theory about intersectionality in a lot of ways. My Auntie Dawn—I can’t point to one thing there, but it was constantly, just constant lessons, just constant lessons around politics, how to be a good person, how to treat other human beings—she was a Shop Steward for her job for many years… How to take responsibility for the common good, things like that. Most of it, I mean… They weren’t, both of them weren’t very comfortable with always talking about themselves, but they set really good examples just by the way that they acted and what they did through their lives.

Lewis: There’s a lot of folks in your family who were in unions?

Tracy: [00:25:46] Yeah. Up to a point. So, yeah, my grandfather was a Teamster, my uncle was in Sailor’s Union of the Pacific, my Auntie Dawn was in SEIU [Service Employees International Union], my dad was in whatever teacher’s union was in Richmond at the time. He became a principal later on, or what not. Yeah, there’s operating engineers, you know. It was just a part of life. So, my immediate family—my mom, and my dad—weren’t in unions for the majority of my growing up, but just about all the cousins and the uncles and everybody were. And so, you’d hear—I actually had two uncles that were named Uncle Bud and one of them would always talk about the glory days. He would always tell his strike stories over and over again. Most of them were true. [Smiles]

Lewis: So, what brought you into housing organizing?

Tracy: [00:26:53] So, I mentioned the truck, right?

Lewis: Yes.

Tracy: So, that was a really big thing because even though I was already an activist and always doing things and volunteering… Just seeing how—I feel like we got a sneak preview on that truck of what was going to happen to San Francisco, you know, with all the landlords donating the belongings of people... So, forming a direct-action organization against evictions, we had to learn very quickly about housing policy kind of from the grassroots. We were extremely arrogant. You know, the young people that brought Eviction Defense Network together, we thought that nobody had done anything good on housing before we got there, right. [Smiles]  Which is why I’m really tolerant now that I’m forty-eight and I meet kids that were just like that [laughs]. Like, “Okay, I get you because I used to be you.” So, coming into housing organizing through a direct-action perspective, but then learning that direct actions were totally necessary, but not enough. That we had to support leadership of folks that were already taking leadership. They didn’t need us to give them leadership, they needed us to support and enhance what they were already doing in their communities—which is also a form of leadership. So, like I said, we would go to landlords houses and places of business and be rude. We were really inspired by ACT UP. We wanted to be the housing ACT UP at the time, just using those tactics, that sense of morality, you know? The morality of the sit-in and the blockade, we were really moved by that movement and that worked for a long time. I can’t say that our actions ever harmed the fortunes of the people who were being evicted. Sometimes, it would stop the eviction. Sometimes, it would just make the landlord say, “Okay, I’m going to give you a better relocation deal,” but direct action definitely got satisfaction most of the time.

Lewis: Uh-huh.

Tracy: [00:29:22] But it was, like I said, it was the people in Public Housing that really taught me about organizing and the histories of resistance. They would, they… They were really just really generous with their time and taught us what they had been through, what they had been connected to, talked to them about sit-ins in the Civil Rights Movement, talked about dodging police or organized panthers or what not. And one of my big mentors—and that was Malik Rahim, who was a New Orleans Black Panther who lived in San Francisco for quite a while—and we became fast friends because I met him at a Mumia rally, and he was passing out fliers and he had been framed up by the Housing Authority for doing organizing. It was in retaliation for organizing around the HOPE VI process. So, I was instantaneously connected with him. I didn’t know him. He could have been a cop for all I knew at that moment, but I instantaneously believed him and thought he… Helped form his defense committee to raise funds for his legal defense and did a few rallies and pickets of the Housing Authority and he got his charges dropped. I think they probably—the charges were so flimsy, they probably would have been dropped sooner or later, but that was the beginning of a long friendship that exists to this day.

Lewis: And so, when we met—sorry—when we met, you were working at the Coalition on Homelessness, the San Francisco Coalition on Homelessness, as a housing organizer.

Tracy: Yeah.

Lewis: So, what was that work about?

Tracy: [00:31:13] So, after Eviction Defense Network died after about nine or ten years, Paul Boden at the [San Francisco] Coalition on Homelessness, he had received some grant to just write a report on housing alternatives. And so, he hired me to come over there and just look at what other people—what other alternatives were there around housing besides traditional non-profits. And Paul was one of the founders of one traditional supportive housing—they were called Community Housing Partnership—but was always looking for other ways and I was always attracted to the Community Land Trusts and the various cooperative stuff. So, he basically gave me a year where I get to go fly around and go to Chicago and go to New York and see what other people had done in the past, do some studying and we wrote a report that later became the foundation of the work groups and the networks that then became—the San Francisco Community Land Trust sprung out of, which now has thirteen buildings, not enough.

Tracy: [00:32:23] So, that work was that. We worked on… We passed a really great policy giving residents of transitional housing actual rights to grieve their evictions because they’re not seen as tenants. They were seen as clients and they could be denied, the housing wasn’t their right, it was a service so they could be denied service and then we put out in a matter of days. So, we did a really fantastic campaign. It still gives people due process to appeal denials and things like that. And we also worked on a surplus property campaign. San Francisco is different than New York, like San Francisco does, has some vacant housing, but is not anywhere near New York’s vast amounts of vacant housing. But, it had a lot of properties. San Francisco owned a lot of properties that it’s still not utilizing properly, but we did a campaign to pass surplus property legislation at the Coalition which was fantastic in a way that we brought together direct action and taking over buildings and also policy work, kind of like what Picture the Homeless has done only Picture the Homeless has done it way better, than we did.

Tracy: [00:33:49] But, we did get two buildings out of it, brand new, new construction—actually, three now—came out of this legislation, far less than the twenty-one buildings that we had thought we were going to develop out of it, but one in North Beach, part of San Francisco, and in South of Market. And so, it’s always nice to walk by those buildings where all that taking over buildings and all those hearings and all those mobilizations and marches actually got some human beings inside, far less than our goals. Like, we really theorized that we could get two thousand people off the streets and, probably, it’s more like two hundred that we actually did. But it set a good precedent.

Lewis: Were there actions as you talk about this that really stand out in your mind?

Tracy: [00:34:49] Several. One, Picture the Homeless, when you guys came out you brought some of your early cadre out and we did a big sleep-out where we built a little shanty town in Civic Center—Pink Houses—fake Pink Houses and got a bunch of people to sleep out, to demonstrate. And that was really wonderful meeting Picture the Homeless and seeing how the organization in its—I wouldn’t say infancy, but maybe toddler [laughs], you know, very early years.

Lewis: Do you remember when that was?

Tracy: [00:35:44] I don’t, but I have a photo of it. I want to say ninety-three, but I can’t tell you for sure.

Lewis: I think it was 2002 or 2003.

Tracy: [00:35:45] Oh, yeah, yeah, God, it wouldn’t be—yeah, ninety-three. Yeah, it had to be 2003, that was just a mistake. I transpose numbers all the time.

Lewis: What were some things about Picture the Homeless that struck you at the time?

Tracy: [00:36:04] Several things and not a lot that you might think will—well, first of all, I liked that everybody had a sense of humor [laughs]. A lot of times on the left, we repress our senses of humor and everything and Ritchie and Emily [Givens] and the crew—you know, you could be ready for the cops to show up and you would be laughing all the way through. And that, it was… Picture the Homeless, from the beginning as the name implies, has always been very centered around self-activity and self-determination for homeless people and leadership from below and that was obvious, even in the early days. That wasn’t something that came up later, that was pretty foundational. And the willingness to just experiment with different ways of making those values happen because it’s never perfect. You know, you can never have perfect self-determination, right, because it’s the way that power works in society, but different ways of trying to model that in an organization and ways of being really fierce and combining really practical public policy campaigns with really fierce direct-action approaches was pretty inspiring.

Lewis: When you met Picture the Homeless, you were in the Coalition office?

Tracy: Yes.

Lewis: Do you remember what that was like?

Tracy: [00:37:55] Well, okay, so I may be wrong, but I think that the very, very first time I came in contact I believe that you and Chino [Garcia] came and visited and kind of sussed everything out and then determined that you could send the crew out. I don’t think you sent people out right away. It was a little bit after that. But, yeah, it was… Everybody fit in really well because basically the Coalition on Homelessness and Picture the Homeless were working on the same things in different cities in different contexts, but it really felt like we were just branches of the same organization in a lot of ways. And I don’t think there was any friction at all, as far as bringing those two crews together for however many weeks you visited.

Lewis: We came out, six of us came. I don’t remember whether Chino and I came first or that happened.

Tracy: Yeah.

Lewis: [00:39:06] Anthony [Williams] had already come—

Tracy: Yeah.

Lewis: — once and I think Paul [Boden] allowed him to sleep in the Coalition office.

Tracy: Uh-huh.

Lewis: He came for a North America Street Newspaper Association conference and then six of us came and then y’all came for the RNC [Republican National Convention].

Tracy: Yeah.

Lewis: So, what was that like?

Tracy: [00:39:33] So, the Republican National Convention in 2004… I had just had a little book out called the Civil Disobedience Handbook so in the nine months or so before the RNC, I was going all around the country training college students how to get arrested properly to protest the RNC and I remember visiting Picture the Homeless and actually being asked by Sam Miller and, I think, Jean Rice, “Could you lead a discussion on how not to get arrested, but still participate? How to keep yourself safe, how to escape, how to keep people together.” So, it was a vastly different thing from giving a training to young, radical kids at UCLA, to people who didn’t want to get arrested, but still wanted to be part of this really exciting movement against the Republic National Convention in New York where issues around immigration, around being connected with the system—the prison industrial complex, having child protective service breathing down your neck—that was the type of conversations that happened around that. And I like being invited in to just try to help people theorize about that. I think it was Sam that was like, “Hey can you help me out? Can you help me facilitate this conversation?” And it was great! We all went down to protest, nobody got arrested, everybody got out on time, out together I think, and it was a really powerful thing.

Tracy: [00:41:23] And I think that even with people—you know, what I noticed as Picture the Homeless interacted with different—formations in New York, political formations, is that even with really, really enlightened people who care really deeply about social justice and a better world that the idea of homeless people being in an organization and doing it for themselves and being fierce and strong can still be a little bit surprising for them. Ultimately, most of them welcomed it, but at first, they were like, “Oh, wow! These people can speak for themselves.” [Laughs] I think that that’s one of the things about Picture the Homeless, the smaller impacts that are still really profound. I mean, you would even see the… I remember marching alongside the immigrant rights group with you guys, and you could tell that they weren’t used to working with homeless people or marching along with homeless people, but once people got over the initial cognitive dissonance about what they thought was possible, often times it was very welcomed. So, like making that space for homeless people to be part of a movement was something that was really evident out there. I think there was that coalition called Still We Rise—

Lewis: Yes.

Tracy: [00:42:56]—if I’m not mistaken, that you guys were a part of and there was all sorts of discussions and tensions and stuff, but just the fact that you made that space, Picture the Homeless has made that space—I’m sure it’s always contested space, I’m sure it’s always—it’s never easy, rather, but the fact is that a lot more people just accept as fact the possibility of homeless people to be their own protagonist in their own story is an impact, right? You can’t really quantify that on a grant application, right? More people think that homeless people are smart [laughs] because of that. You know, no funder is ever going to fund that, but the fact is that it’s a really great impact that it has because it not only—it improves things on so many levels. It improves the politics and perceptions of people who haven’t been homeless. It improves the self-confidence of people who have, and hopefully leads to better political…

Tracy: [00:44:20] You know, when people think about housing that it’s not simply a tenant’s right issue, even though tenant’s rights are enormously important. If we had better ones, we would have less homelessness in the first place. But the homelessness question is part of the housing question. And it’s just so weird that at the core, homelessness… Sorry, rather the word homelessness means you don’t have a house, right? It’s like home-less-ness, but it’s still really surprising how so many people—even really smart and compassionate and politically astute people—attach so much other stuff onto it. It’s like, yes… But it still comes down to the housing question, at its core. Yes, people’s experience of homelessness can be intensified and worsened if they’re also struggling with an addiction, right, or also struggling with a mental health issue. But to be boil everything down to mental health and substance abuse is really disingenuous when, really at its core… It’s the fact that every human being doesn’t have the right to housing. That’s something that Picture the Homeless reminds people of. Sometimes, it’s a gentle reminder and sometimes it’s a loud reminder.

Lewis: And when you came to the RNC, you came with other folks from the coalition.

Tracy: Yeah!

Lewis: Who are they?

Tracy: [00:46:01] So, Bianca Henry! Bianca was someone who… I believe that the Coalition on Homelessness actually met her through shelter outreach, and she actually became a really great organizer through Family Rights and Dignity and was one of the engineers of a big direct action that we did on Thanksgiving Day around taking over vacant Public Housing. She had grown up a lot in Public Housing herself. L.S. Wilson, who was a civil rights organizer, also formerly homeless, and Allison Lum came out. I forget exactly how we—we did some kind of fundraising to get us all out there, I can’t remember how we did it—got all the plane tickets together for it. But yeah, that was our—did I miss anybody?

Lewis: I don’t think so.

Tracy: I think that was it.

Lewis: So, what was the scene like when you guys got there?

Tracy: [00:47:08] It was very tense because you knew that the police and the dozens of other security organizations, their presence was all around New York. It was as close to a lockdown as you could possibly get. Maybe, a lockdown is an exaggeration, but you—couldn’t walk down the street without being—especially, the closer you got to the RNC place of—being reminded about what was, you know, constant potential violence from the police. And so, for that reason, we very rarely ever travelled alone, even if it was just to go enjoy a beer. After one of the events, people always stuck together closely. I remember going to a rally on the courthouse because—of course, the police, you know, as police often do, one of their first steps to preparing for the RNC was just to clear homeless people off the streets and off the subways and y’all called a rally out in front of there. So, you swept us up into action, pretty much right off the plane.

Lewis: I was a civil rights organizer then and the General Delivery Post Office was—the door was behind the main door of the post office which was across the street from Madison Square Garden where the RNC was. And they declared a frozen zone in that whole Midtown area.

Tracy: [00:49:00] So, people couldn’t get their checks.

Lewis: People couldn’t get their checks because the RNC was the second of the month and you got your check—if you had SSI [Supplemental Security Income]—on the first and if you were getting a VA [Veterans Association] or a Social Security Disability check, it was on the third, so it affected thousands of people. One of our demands was to have the General Delivery Post Office Open. Do you remember what we did?

Tracy: [00:49:33 I don’t remember that.

Lewis: We set up across the street and held people’s bags so that they could go get their mail.

Tracy: Oh, okay. Yeah... That’s right, it’s been a while.

Lewis: Yes, and Andre 3000 from Outkast walked by. Do you remember that?

Tracy: Yeah, I remember that. [Smiles]

Lewis: [laughs]

Tracy: Everybody was all happy about it.

Lewis: [00:50:02] So, you also have another facet to your relationship with Picture the Homeless and that is as a cultural worker.

Tracy: Uh-huh.

Lewis: So, I wanted you to talk about when the Molotov Mouths came?

Tracy: Yes, that was fun. So, I was part of a group called the Molotov Mouths Outspoken Word Troop, we were a group of poets—political poets—that would travel all around and do shows and things like that. And so, when we came into New York, we were supposed to do two gigs. The first one was going to be at the Bowery Poetry Club, but that was when the big blackout happened, [smiles] so we ended up walking around doing a few poems in a blacked-out Tompkins Square Park. But I remember that you still, in a blackout, found a place to get those egg white shakes or what do you call them?

Lewis: Egg creams [laughs].

Tracy: [00:50:58] Egg creams, right—and got everybody egg creams and we stood around Tompkins Square Park doing poetry and there was a drummer, and all that. That was a lot of fun. But the lights came back on, and we did the gig at St. Marks [Church] with the Welfare Poets for a big, big fundraiser. And yeah, it was nice to be able to connect on that level, too. I think Sam also had us up the next day to do a little poetry workshop with some of the folks and yeah, that was great. That was exactly what we wanted to do because we were—Molotov Mouths really believed in that whole Roque Dalton thing that we believed that poetry, like bread, is for everyone and we just wanted to, “Hey, if we can write a poem, somebody else can too.” We loved using popular education and poetry and mixing them together and I think Ananda [Esteva] and George [Tirado] and I came up and did a little workshop on poetry there.

Lewis: Yeah, Leroy was part of the group and Josiah

Tracy: Yeah Leroy Moore, Josiah Luis Alterete, Ananda Esteva. I don’t think Dani [Montgomery] made it on that trip. It was just the five of us, I could be missing someone. We had a rotating cast of characters. [Smiles]

Lewis: And so how did you describe Picture the Homeless to them because they didn’t know us?

Tracy: [00:52:41] I basically just said you were the New York version of the Coalition on Homelessness or close to it, and they got it. I mean, nobody in the Molotov Mouths would have found that off-putting or anything like that. Leroy had experienced homelessness, Ananda had experienced a different form of displacement early on with her family fleeing Chile, George had been homeless quite a few times, George Tirado. So, yeah, being able to contribute to your guys’ work by appearing at your fundraiser and doing a little poetry workshop the next day, that wasn’t anything that you had to twist anybody’s arms for. People got it right away about why that was something that radical community-oriented poets should do, you know. Josiah and George were really excited at reading at a place that they had figured out that Miguel Pinero had probably read at or something like that so yeah, people were pretty jazzed.

Lewis: [00:54:01] And so, were there folks that stood out to you that were part of Picture the Homeless at that time?

Tracy: [00:54:36] A lot of them. So, Jean Rice, for sure. Jean Rice always wanted to tell you about history, his history, movement history, more of his history, [smiles] back and forth. Anthony of course, you know, just immediately. They immediately welcomed us and were interested in what we were up to and wanted to share their work. Emily, who I had already met, she made an appearance. Yes, there was just… Just all of them just really provided—Nikita [Price], of course—just provided such a big welcome and they’re really interested in _connecting _with people because people in Picture the Homeless tend to be very, very proud of their connection to New York, but they’re also equally proud of being connected with people all around the globe that are thinking and doing and being part of an anti-poverty movement. And so, if you’re connected to that yourself, you always know you’re going to be welcome with Picture the Homeless people and they’re always going to be interested in comparing notes like, “Hey, what’s going on in your city?” And you, that’s a form of research. That’s a form of intellectual work, right? Sometimes, you don’t realize you’re being interviewed by them about strategies and tactics until after it’s done. “Hey, how did you guys get that surplus property legislation going?” Things like that. They’re very natural at that, at making connections.

Lewis: How do you think that happens?

Tracy: [00:56:27] Well, it happens for more than one reason, right? So, part of it is personality. People who are attracted to Picture the Homeless tend to have a kernel of it just in their personality, like outgoing, inquisitive, wanting to be connected with others in a project, but also it’s because Picture the Homeless encourages that and helps people develop those good instincts and does political education and you know, makes connections. It’s just as important… And I’ve seen Picture the Homeless make connections to what’s going on in San Francisco, but also what’s going on in Brazil or what’s going on in Hungary or what not and really encouraging people to think about that this is a global struggle and that there’s things—because it’s a global struggle—there’s things to be learned from almost anybody that you could talk to across the globe that’s involved with that—which is pretty unique because so much homelessness and housing stuff tends to be so hyper-focused on the neighborhood, right? It doesn’t ever talk about—and so the fact that there’s this space at Picture the Homeless where people are encouraged to think about connections, instead of these little boxes of policy or neighborhood or their rights, or bad-cop-bad-landlord type of stuff. But just—but actually thinking about why homelessness exists, why does it exist almost all over the globe, with some exceptions, of course. And trusting that its members can develop their intellectual capacities farther than they may have even expected.

Lewis: [00:58:29] Jean and I developed a curriculum on globalization, and we had one member in there saying, “You know, when I was a kid, there was a commercial about poor people needing shoes and I don’t have shoes to send anyone and so… What’s the point?” And it was a really incredible discussion among older veterans about what the point was, and...

Tracy: Yeah.

Lewis: [00:59:01] That kind of leads us to something else we did together, that you did with Picture the Homeless and that is the trip to Budapest [Hungary].

Tracy: Yeah!

Lewis: Could you talk about what that was about?

Tracy: [00:59:39] Yeah, so you guys surprised me. You had an opening on the trip to Budapest. You were working with a group called A Varos Mendike, I may be mispronouncing their name. And they were a group of students, mostly radical social workers, but not all, and homeless people that were trying to kind of form an organization and Picture the Homeless was going to do a bunch of popular education and organizational building exercises and things like that. And so, we did it for three days with them?

Lewis: Three weeks.

Tracy: Three weeks. We were there for three weeks?

Lewis: We were there for twenty-one days.

Tracy: [00:59:55] Wow! That was a long time. [Laughs] We did a variety of things, sharing different stuff. I did a little exercise just on how to think through building alliances between housed and un-housed people, how to deal with it when the inevitable tensions would arise. Because no matter how cool somebody is and how down they are, you know, the fact is someone’s going to sleep in a tent and someone’s going to go sleep in a house so there’s going to be tensions that will come up. And you guys walked them through the basics of doing outreach and one-on-one’s and coming up with a strategy.

Tracy: [00:01:40] It was a trip being in a post-communist place, or post-Stalin… I wouldn’t, yeah, or post-Soviet orbit. I don’t think that what they had was real communism, but it was an attempt at it, you know? And its absence was even worse than what happened and watching—thinking that the homelessness crisis there—similar in some ways to the United States, but very different, you know—that many hundreds of thousands of people had become either housed or under-housed or unemployed after the collapse of communism. Because no matter what other problems their system was dealing with at the time, people had housing, people had a job. For that just to shift over night with the growth of neoliberalism and all of that. It was a vastly different context.

Lewis: They had privatized their public housing within five years—

Tracy: Yeah.

Lewis: —to one hundred percent private.

Tracy: [01:01:56] What is interesting is that they used—for some of those things, they used—I was told that they made privately held cooperatives which is, in Hungary, a which was a way of privatizing things, but then in the United States where we’re trying to build land trusts, that was actually a way of taking things back into the commons. So, I was tripped out about how the same tool could be used for different ends, depending on where you were.

Tracy: [01:02:37] We learned a lot. We went out to the forest where the encampment was and, we called it Sherlock Forest—not Sherlock—

Lewis: Sherwood—

Tracy: —Sherwood Forest.

Lewis: There was Robin Hood.

Tracy: Yeah, they treated us really well.

Lewis: And who else was with us?

Tracy: [01:02:55] So, Brandon [King]. Brandon was there. He later went on to be part of Malcom X Grassroots Movement and Cooperation Jackson. Of course, the great Rob Robinson from Picture the Homeless and yourself.

Lewis: So, Brandon was part of Malcom X Grassroots Movement before—

Tracy: Oh, before that.

Lewis: —before he came to Picture the Homeless and so he was a member of MXGM [Malcom X Grassroots Movement], but a staff person at Picture the Homeless. And Rob, of course. And we were there for twenty-one days.

Tracy: Uh-huh. That was a while.

Lewis: And we had half a day off—

Tracy: Yes.

Lewis: —and we went to the baths.

Tracy: Yeah. That was fun. [Smiles]

Lewis: You’ve touched on this already, but… Are there any fun stories of Picture the Homeless that you have? You’ve spent quite a bit of time over the years with Picture the Homeless, so do you have any fun stories, or…

Tracy: [01:03:59] Yeah, I mean, I think almost every time I’ve ever hung out with Picture the Homeless it’s been fun, even if you’re doing something really hard, even if you’re in the middle of a demonstration. But I remember one time I showed up—I don’t think it had anything to do with particularly Picture the Homeless—but a bunch of the guys led by Jean Rice came over and they said, “We’re having a party in your honor,” and the party in “their honors” and they brought three forties and a bootleg Ray Charles movie over to watch and that was a lot of fun, just watching this little DVD with them and drinking forties and— [smiles]

Lewis: Where was this?

Tracy: In your house [laughter]. I think somebody even brought over—I think it was before you even had a TV or something like that, but they had it all taken care of, right? I mean, Picture the Homeless knows how to party, knows how to use art and culture in connection with one another—and organizing from a point of love—because Picture the Homeless knows that you can’t sustain an organization, any organization of any class, through rhetoric and hard work. You have to make people feel like there’s meaning to what they’re doing, that there’s connections with other human beings… So that’s pretty important.

Lewis: If you were to write a book about Picture the Homeless, where would you start?

Tracy: [01:05:59] You’re going to write the book about Picture the Homeless [laughter]. But I would definitely start from the beginning. I would talk a lot about the genesis of it, about it coming from a detox center, coming from two people who have experienced homelessness—just because I think that there’s a lot of people that probably accept the fact that homeless people could be great activists and great organizers, but probably in their heart of hearts, probably don’t accept that two gentlemen with absolutely nothing could actually start an organization or form an organization—so I would start with that, or at least not ignore it. And I would take time for the boring stuff, too, just that decision-making processes, the debates about agency, about the divisions between staff and members and things like that because those are… You can’t make a whole book around that because it would be really boring [laughs], but at some point it’s also very fascinating about having real people work out these things and start a really grassroots, bottom-up, intersectional project together and within that, I would put in a lot of the housing takeovers and the sleep-outs because we know that any good book needs a lot of conflict and action and certainly that’s all over the Picture the Homeless thing.

Tracy: [01:07:53] But I would also make sure to bring out the characters. Bring out the Jean Rice’s and the Tyletha’s, because they’re the people who really would make that book _feel _like not just a mediation on housing policy and the tragedy of homelessness, but their stories would bring the empathy, would bring the optimism that every single last human being that wants to can play a role in a movement. Like James Baldwin said, “Everybody has a place in the choir.” There’s a place where people can find their place and that’s what I would really want to write about. I would want to bring—there’s such strong, amazing, dynamic characters that would be in that book. I would definitely write about Lynn Lewis, I would write about Sam Miller, William [Burnett] and I would make sure that you, that one would write a story about… These characters in all of their complexity, in their most brilliant moments and in their most struggling moments because those are the stories that tell other people that it’s possible, right? That you don’t have to be some perfect image of an organizer and activist to make a difference in the world, you know. That you can have flaws, or you can have your flaws and your brilliance all in the same moment.

Lewis: In terms of—as an organizer and having also written extensively about organizing and social movements—how would you describe the organizing culture of Picture the Homeless?

Tracy: [01:09:58] There’s a lot of different facets to it. It’s hard to describe it simply. I think it’s definitely evolved to be very—well, last time I checked while you were there, at least—it had very much of a popular education model, getting people to reflect on their own experiences, become critically conscious, but starting from evaluating their own experience and their own voices. But then, not just staying there, not just staying there in an individualistic way, but helping people develop an analysis of the systems that brought them to become homeless in the first place. So, I think that its foundation is popular education and there’s other layers, but I think that it’s, there’s—you can see parts that are, for as popular education left it is, that are just very traditional like part of the Alinsky family tree of direct action organizing. And then there’s public policy, there’s research, right? And popular education’s sister is Participatory Action Research and I saw plenty of that, especially with the report on vacant housing that came out. So, there’s a lot of different layers to it, but I don’t think that—or I’d rather say I think that it’s all based on a popular education and kind of Participatory Research model. Because without those tools to help people become competent and build their boldness, the direct-action rings pretty hollow and the public policy work doesn’t have the same power. People-powered public policy is what Picture the Homeless does sometimes, and then it shifts its hat and becomes activists in communications and media work and flipping the script around stigma around homelessness and what people think is possible. So, Picture the Homeless can change its approach, depending on what they think is strategic and what is good tactics. I’ve never seen Picture the Homeless to be too stuck on one tactical model, but what the basis of everything is popular education and making sure that homeless New Yorkers are competent in asserting their rights, in taking collective action, but also thinking really deeply about the conditions that create homelessness in the first place.

Lewis: Do you have anything besides answering my questions that you would like to offer about Picture the Homeless?

Tracy: [01:13:23] You covered most of the things that I would have made sure that they do. I would hope that—I was a little—maybe I’m biased because you’re my friend [smiles] and all that—but I was a little trepidatious. I know that when you left about what would happen, you know? Because we always talk—as organizers, we always want to build things that will outlast us, good institutions that will change as we leave and stuff like that, but I do really credit you a lot with building that popular education approach and that faith that the many can lead, right? Speaking of organizing traditions, you draw a lot from the old maxims like the role of the leaders to make more leaders and everything. So, I hope that that’s carried on. I don’t know, I’m not familiar with—I still keep in contact with Sam these days, but a lot of times, we just talk about his literary career and books and things like that because he has another aspect to his life which is wonderful and powerful, but we don’t talk the same way about Picture the Homeless.

Tracy: [01:14:39] I hope that they know that they’re building—that whatever they’re building—they’re building on a really great foundation. And it’s not just you, it was all the people you worked with, but you really brought a focus and the discipline of just reminding people about this way of doing things as opposed to being a traditional community organizing where there’s just one or two articulate leaders, or dynamic ED, or all the other different types or varieties that we see across the country. So, I hope that they know that they’re working with a great history and whatever remix or revisions that are appropriate that they do so mindful of what’s come before and I think that this project will be helpful—because that’s one of the major challenges in any organization, is just to transmit what has been done before so people can make good choices. What needs to be done in the future?

Lewis: I guess as a final question, having worked at the Coalition here in San Francisco and knowing Picture the Homeless really well, what are your thoughts about the challenges around building really a national homeless front?

Tracy: [01:16:14] Oh, so many challenges! I think I would start with state repression. Homeless people don’t have to ever become revolutionaries or activists or assert their rights to experience state repression. They just have_ to be, _right? Most of us, in other parts of the movement actually have to go do something [smiles] in order to be repressed. You know, not everybody, right, certainly state repression, police harassment isn’t in compliance only to homeless people, but homeless people just existence is an act of civil disobedience, having to do the things that the rest of us that are housed, even poorly housed, take for granted. We can pee inside when we need to. We can sleep inside. Our basic bodily functions are well attended to and not criminalized. So, I think that that makes for a certain amount of instability that can be really hard to organize around. But that’s what state repression is supposed to do—is make it really hard to organize. But not impossible! And while I really respect and take a lot of value from theorists like Piven and Cloward around poor people and I love the idea that their conclusion is that direct action is really important to poor people’s movements. I do not value the assertion that it’s because homeless people can’t… Are so unstable that they can’t organize permanent organizations. I think that they instability that they point to is real, right? It’s a real challenge. It’s a real barrier, but it’s not impossible to overcome and I think Picture the Homeless _shows _that, that bridge between the action, the disruption, and the value that they point out, too. But then, also, bridges to what theorists like Willie Baptist talk about, “Hey, homeless people can be intellectuals and they can be organizers and they can think through things and analyze things and do research just like everybody else,” and have those possibilities. So, I think that those are some challenges.

Tracy: [01:18:45] And certainly the biggest challenge is, just like the hegemony of real estate because every single last piece of land that you could possibly put social housing on is in almost every major city has a lot of competition. People want to build condos. People want to build affordable housing that might not be affordable to homeless people, even if it’s affordable to very low-income people; you could build a stadium on it, you know? So, a lot of the solutions that all start with housing, they don’t end with housing because we could conceivably get rid of homelessness and still have really abject poverty. But it all begins with… Just because the land that’s necessary is contested, is contested territory. But I really still believe that homeless people’s organizing is a real thing, it can continue to grow. I think it’s really, really hard—to—we turn to the non-profit model because it provides a certain amount of stability that’s sorely needed. It’s really hard to sustain for many years off of a rag tag group of people with absolutely no funding. [Smiles] It’s happened before, it’s possible. Not everything has to be—but then, there’s the contest for resources that happen where then different organizations start competing for the same grant funding, things like that.

Tracy: [01:20:39] And then, there’s also something that—like I mentioned earlier—that Picture the Homeless has made some strides for is that in order for homeless people to win, they have to be part of a larger movement. There’s no way… And that’s not because they’re weak, it’s just because no one group that’s on the under has the numbers or the power to win on its own. I don’t think that the larger left has fully grappled… And I keep saying the left because the left are the people that are most likely to want to do something [smiles] about this—but has fully grappled and welcomed homeless people in, and recognized folks’ ability to think for themselves and act for themselves and many parts are quite advanced on it, but as a whole, there’s other concerns right now.

Lewis: What parts do you see as being advanced on grappling with homeless potential and role?

Tracy: [01:21:50] It’s imperfect. When I say advanced, I mean that there’s potential. I don’t mean that they’re doing it all perfectly. I think that there’s been a lot of dialogue with, in Right to the City—stuff around homelessness. I think that’s been quite good. I think that in San Francisco, there’s a lot of collaboration between the tenants’ rights groups, the affordable housing sector, and homeless organizations. But that didn’t happen overnight. That was because people that recognized that that was a necessity had to figure it out.

Tracy: [01:22:39] I think that’s exciting; it’s really exciting that over the past few years that there’s been a resurgence of people willing to use the word socialist or anti-capitalist or what not, but a lot of those sectors certainly get that homelessness is part of the capitalist system and get it and would probably go to the wall to help turn that over. But you don’t necessarily see a bunch of un-housed people coming to these meetings all the time and taking on central roles. But there’s definitely movement towards it, you know? There’s definitely people in all the different parts that they get it. Either through just that they’re woke on the subject and get it, or they have some lived experience or lived closer to that, you know. But there’s still a lot of segregation within the left, economic segregation that really needs to get demolished because we only really get smarter and better the more voices we bring in.

Lewis: And so, on a final note, what suggestions would you have to have more integration, not just economic integration but to really center the folks that, in my opinion anyway, that are the most visibly harmed by capitalism in terms of housing or the people that have been pushed out housing. So, what are some suggestions?

Tracy: [01:24:29] That would depend from city to city, right? So, if you live in a city where there’s just fantastic groups like Picture the Homeless doing—already self-organizing—then you’re talking about starting a formal point of, “What can we work on together?” Kind of like what you guys did around the…

Lewis: Policing?

Tracy: [01:24:57] Stop and Frisk. The different groups didn’t all recruit each other, but they found a way largely under the leadership of un-housed people to fight back together, right? In a city where that doesn’t exist, it may be very different. It may be a completely different strategy. But I always think that inclusion starts—the nuts and bolts of inclusion whether you’re trying to build a multi-sector organization or coalition—starts with the basics. Equity means to always to try to have food and hopefully not just cheap ass non-profit pizza that tastes nasty—

Lewis: Chips.

Tracy: [01:25:46]—childcare, you know? [Smiles] It being well-facilitated, so people get out of there at some point because people don’t want to go to a four-hour meeting, things like that. I always just think about the structural things that would either welcome people or push people out and that usually comes down to food, childcare, translation, and no organization or coalition has the resources to do it all, right? Ideally, every progressive left-wing meeting would have all of those things, all the time. It’s nearly impossible to do that, but this could be an ongoing project. Maybe you can’t have all of them all at once, but you can start off with a location of the meeting, things like that. There was a really embarrassing attempt—I won’t name any names—in a city I visited where people tried to have a meeting and invite homeless people to it around housing—good people—but, because public space and meeting space is at a premium, they had it in a community room at a police station. Not exactly where you’d go to invite a bunch of homeless people to _voluntarily _walk into. [Laughs]

Tracy: [01:27:06] I always think about like just start with the basics, the nuts, and bolts, and then move onto your grand strategies and your organizational power-sharing schemes and your coalition model. But if you’re not consistently improving on the basic things that make people want to come be a part of a movement, then you’re going to fail.

Lewis: Alrighty. Well, on that note, I’ll say thank you.

Tracy: Thanks. [laughs]. You’re welcome.

[END OF INTERVIEW]