(Relaxed music) - For too long we've been in conditions that are frankly unacceptable.

- Facing race means we're facing these things head on.

We have good people who want to do this work.

- We fight for what is right and educate for people to understand one another.

- How can we remove the gaps between race and we have to face it all of us.

- Hello everyone.

I'm Nadege Souvenir and I am delighted to welcome you to the 16th annual Facing Race Awards.

Each year the St. Paul & Minnesota Foundation recognizes anti-racism activists who are nominated by the community.

Through the Facing Race Awards, we celebrate and share the stories of those who are fighting racism and challenging flawed racial narratives as they work to make Minnesota welcoming for everyone.

We are coming to you today from the Art Gallery at Clues Comunidades Latinas Unidas En Servicio Minnesota's largest Latino led nonprofit and a foundation grantee.

We thank them for the use of this beautiful space.

We are so excited to share the incredible stories of our four award recipients this year from Lulete Mola, whose work meets at the intersection of gender and racial justice to Classie Dudley, whose leadership in Duluth has created community for black residents and challenged harmful racial narratives, to Txongpao Lee, who preserves the history and culture of the Hmong community for the benefit of us all, and Angela Hooks, who steps in to address urgent needs identified by her community.

In all of these stories, you are going to see the many ways we can all challenge racism.

Individuals, people just like you, can make all the difference.

In addition to these inspiring individuals we'll be joined later in the show by Dr. Eric Jolly, President and CEO of the foundation and musicians from TaikoArts Midwest will treat us to an exhilarating performance.

Now, it's my pleasure to introduce you to our first Facing Race Award recipient, Lulete Mola is transforming the world of philanthropy, shining a light on the work of Black led initiatives, activists, and organizations as a way to lead us all to positive change.

- I am very, very proud of where I come from, my heritage.

I was born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in a hospital called t'ik'uri ibesa which translates to the Black Lion.

This essence of Black pride and dignity has always been within me and it shows up in everything that I do.

Coffee is how we create community, is how families gather.

It's more than a drink.

It's a ritual of love and community and my mom is really good at it.

I wanted to help create a world that honored and loved my mother the way I did.

And I saw, too often, that that did not happen and I just thought that was unacceptable because that's my mama.

This year marks 15 years in the work of gender and racial justice for me.

I started a young women's program at the age of 15 called "She".

It was a power and leadership program for teenage girls.

There were predetermined futures that were imagined for us.

All of the ways we wanted to show up in the world were not reflected in these programs that were offered to us.

I'm most interested in resourcing and amplifying and partnering with the best of who we are and what we have to offer and who we are beyond the harm that we face.

In May, 2020 during the racial justice uprising, I was in the streets with the youth and the neighborhood protectors.

I was also in philanthropy in boardrooms about resourcing change and often I felt split between the two.

I would wonder why am I one of a few?

It was evident that it was by design.

There aren't enough of us in the sector leading, and with power.

I felt a calling to step into this work in a different way.

The Minnesota Black Collective Foundation is really about recognizing Black led work for the genius that it is.

Black led change has changed the world with limited resources.

So what can happen if the work is resourced at its full potential?

And that's the vision and the work that we hold.

So, we do grant making, we engage in participatory philanthropy, we engage in research to hold institutions accountable and inspire them for measurable change.

This role that I'm in as president and co-founder feels like a calling.

I feel like while I've dreamt of change this position has dreamt of me, and it feels like I've been asked to build on the good work that has come before us.

I think sometimes it's hard because I feel there's very little room to fail.

I've been trusted and blessed by my community and so I don't take it lightly.

We are a Black collective, you know?

So when I do feel those moments, I lean on who we are as a community and that never fails to amaze me.

- I was born and raised in Duluth and I just laid my foundation here.

It is such a beautiful city.

We have this beautiful lake and these beautiful lake walks but we seem to ignore as a huge part of our truth which is we have mass inequities in our community.

We have to open our eyes and see that we are failing a whole group of people because we choose to ignore it.

I have experienced racism on multi-tiered levels and know what it feels like personally.

My dad grew up in the Jim Crow era and he really ingrained in me what White supremacy meant and how it's not just somebody yelling out and calling you the N-word.

It's much more ingrained in our society.

It really pushed me to try to eliminate White supremacy, eliminate racism, eliminate poverty, and all those things that intersect with it.

I would describe my work as community centered and really advocacy work for people.

I am the executive director of Community Action Duluth.

I'm also the president of the Duluth Branch NAACP.

When I got involved in the NAACP I kind of just dived in head first.

Seeing where the need was, and how to reactivate our branch 'cause our branch wasn't really active at that time.

And also bringing in new people and new energy was a huge thing to do as well.

I had an outpour of community support that I personally have never felt before and it just, it fueled me to want to do more.

We became the biggest NAACP in the state of Minnesota.

We're working across counties so we're not just in Duluth, we're also in Superior Wisconsin, Cloquet, Wilmer.

Wherever there's people who need help, we try to help them doing food drives, doing mask giveaway, we do that.

But 80% of what we focus on is policy changes.

So, stopping the systems that create people who will need these services, we try to stop it ahead of time.

These are the people that need the help the most.

This is where I need to be.

My goal is to get everybody to feel that way 'cause it's everybody's issue, It's not just the NAACP's issue, it's not just community action issue, It's everybody's issue, because these are real lives that were affecting.

Instead of looking at the big businesses and seeing what their needs are and assuming that that trickle down effect will work we need to see what the people need.

In order for Duluth to be successful, just in general, we have to prioritize our people who need the help.

And we have to do it fast.

We cannot say, oh, this bureaucracy takes a long time.

It only takes a long time because we live it that way.

But it's a hundred percent changeable.

Duluth is small enough to where we can get these things done.

But it's big enough to make that ripple effect across the country.

So the more I can push people to work on these issues and to really prioritize it, the more change that can happen not just here, but across the country which is really exciting to me.

- Classie's commitment to challenging harmful narratives and creating stronger community connections will no doubt continue to have an impact across Minnesota.

I'm sure you'll agree that our Facing Race Award recipients have inspirational stories.

We all benefit from their dedication and advocacy.

But what does Facing Race mean for you or for me?

How can we learn from the stories of these recipients and use that inspiration to create change in our own communities?

Here's Foundation President and CEO, Dr. Eric Jolly with a few words on what Facing Race means for all of us.

- Hello everyone.

Thank you for joining us to celebrate the 16th annual Facing Race Awards.

Our foundation is the largest community foundation in Minnesota.

For more than 80 years, we've been working to create an equitable, just, and vibrant Minnesota where all communities and people thrive.

The Facing Race Awards are a critical aspect of our work.

Recognizing the contributions of Classie, Txongpao, Angela and Lulete is one of the many ways we advocate for equity.

These recipients' stories also inspire generosity of action, commitment, of community, and they demonstrate the best of what it means to invest in community led solutions.

Facing Race means something different to everyone, but the consistent theme in these stories is that these are leaders who show up.

When I think about what Facing Race means to me personally, I reflect back decades ago when I was a young assistant dean in a meeting at a state university.

At that time, I chaired the Native and African American Faculty Association.

I was chair of that state's Indian council and I taught Plains Indian sign language on the side.

That is to say there was no mistaking that I am a Native man.

And in that meeting, on that day, another dean used three racially insensitive epithets towards Native people.

I got up and left and later, a friend who was in the meeting, stopped by and asked me, Eric, did you hear what she said?

Wasn't it racist?

I said, "Yes, yes, Bill, it was," "Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because I'm tired, Bill.

Why didn't you?"

See if this is a shared value of justice, we also need to have a shared responsibility to see that our community lives that value.

So when I think about Facing Race, I think about who, in these moments, takes on the responsibility to speak to injustice.

Who will share with me and others the burden of speaking up?

I fill with joy when someone courageously recognizes injustice because it is the first step toward justice.

And that courage is what our Facing Race recipients inspire us to embrace.

Thank you again for tuning in.

- Now onto our next Facing Race award recipient.

Txongpao Lee is keeping the rich history and traditions of the Hmong community alive.

Through his work at the Hmong Cultural Center, and on his own family farm.

- The Hmong, we are a group that we work hard and try to take care of ourself.

So the Hmong, when they came to Minnesota many of our parents, grandparent come to the United States without knowing how to speak English.

However, they work hard when they come here by their hand and bring food for their family.

I see my parents, the way they're farming the way how they take care of their family, how they're doing success from generation after generation.

I want to carry my parents legacy and show to my kids how they're working how they got their food, bring for the family.

That is something that I do extra from my full-time job.

I am the executive director at the Hmong Cultural Center here.

Many people around in the US here, they don't know who's the Hmong, where the Hmong come from, and why Hmong has a history that moving place to place.

My role is to talk about Hmong history and the Hmong culture and who's the Hmong.

The Hmong Culture Center is creating by the Hmong elderly, they want to pass the knowledge to the younger people.

Because the Hmong, we don't have a country that we can go back to and learn from.

They're concerned that if we don't create this agency, the culture will slowly die out.

At the beginning, they teach the music and the funeral and Mekong marriage ceremony.

In 2004, we have a large Hmong refugee come to the Twin Cities here.

We know that they really need help in English, So we add in the ESL class.

Couple years later, we adding the citizenship class.

Name one branch or part of the government.

You can say congress, legislative.

And later we are adding the resource library.

This year we are adding the museum here.

The museum is the most important, collecting the Hmong history, and the Hmong people around the globe.

While during the time we about to open the museum, someone just vandalized, spraying paint outside the building in front of the museum and destroyed the museum sign.

So it make the museum unable to open that's something that it's very sad for myself that we work hard on it and things happen in just one second to destroy what we have done.

The neighborhood here, they're very concerned about it.

They're very supportive, and they donate over $6,000 to help clean up the paint that on the wall.

So that is one thing that made me feel good about it.

It's not myself at the agency alone, but the whole people come in supporting the museum.

After we clean up and we open the museum, we feel great about it.

I'm so happy.

I'm glad that we have this piece and the museum piece and people are able to come and see.

No matter what, we're gonna tell who we are, where we came from, keeping our history alive.

- Emotional things bring me to the front line.

Things that could happen to me.

Things that do happen to friends, neighbors, family.

When I see things that are troubling or stigmatizing, I just want to remove the barriers.

I am the executive director of Black on Black Development and Entertainment Inc. Our mission is Black empowerment, sustainability and transformation.

Black on Black is a very well-rounded organization.

We develop our programs according to the essential needs of the community, the individuals.

One minute we're doing activism, one minute we're doing a petition on inclusion.

We help develop sustainability for artists during Covid, and we advocate for everyone.

There's a lot of things that I do in my role, from grant writing, frontline activism, research and advocacy.

Black on Black Development and Entertainment is embarking on a multi-service cultural center.

Black Diamonds is in the planning and development stage.

This Is Black Diamonds (laughter) Our new space will also be a cultural cafe and supper club.

Which will provide connectedness and community, will address public safety, and will also address one of our more unique programming options, which is systems navigation.

I've personally had to go through navigating the system.

Through the criminal system, through the arts system, through the health system, social service, human service.

Knowing how to navigate through the system determines your outcome.

And so anything that you need help with you'll be able to get in this location.

- I'm looking forward to more people getting their managers certificates and just being entrepreneurs.

- And of course I wanna mention reentry because the boiler maker, the maintenance, and food service, hospitality, those are ways that we allow reentry inmates to be able to come into the community with training and jobs and not return to crime.

I'm most excited that we will connect community.

We will connect people and we will bridge and dismantle the myths, the stereotypes the fear that separates race.

- Angela's commitment to helping her neighbors and her community address their most pressing needs highlights the impact that just one person can make.

Thank you for joining us for Facing Race.

I hope you've taken something away from each of our incredible stories.

To learn more about this year's recipients, visit facingrace.org.

If you've been inspired by what you saw today I encourage you to share these stories with your friends, family, and community so we can continue to learn from their great work.

And now, I'd like to introduce EnsM Daiko from TaikoArts Midwest a Minnesota nonprofit using Taiko drumming as a way to strengthen and build community.

(Taiko drumming) - The Facing Race Awards is a TPT co-production of St. Paul and Minnesota Foundation and Twin Cities PBS.