Ableism & Racism: Roots of The Same Tree

Rebecca Cokley is one of the country’s leading voices on disability rights, and centers race in her analysis and advocacy. She is the founding director of the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American Progress, and served in the Obama administration from 2009-2013. Dr. Kendi sat down with the California native for a frank conversation on the intersections of ableism and racism in America, the historic civil rights legislation governing both, and what we can all do to advocate for a better future for people with disabilities. For further reading, resources, and a transcript of this episode, visit pushkin.fm/show/be-antiracist-ibram-kendi.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. A few years ago, I got a terrifying phone call.
The police were at my parents' house. They'd been called
by my brother, who was living with our parents at

(00:37):
the time. I got in my car and rushed over.
I made what was normally a twelve minute drive in
five minutes flat. When I got there, I tried to
sow my heart down. I carefully walked through the front
door so as not to alarm the officers. My mission simple,

(00:59):
get the police out away from my family. I'm ibramex Kendy,
and this is be anti racist. The intense fear I
just described. It was about the hazards of racism, of course,

(01:20):
but it was about something else as well. My brother
has a learning disability. At the time he called the
cops and our parents, he was in his mid thirties
and struggling to find employment. It was a difficult time
for him. When I entered the house, it was with
the full understanding of the racist and ablest violence in

(01:40):
this country when police are involved. I always fear from
my brother's life around the police. In the United States,
as many as half of the people who were killed
by police are people with disabilities. And the fact that
my brother had been struggling to find work. Nothing unusual
about it. The unemployment rate for people of color with

(02:01):
disabilities is much higher than the national average and higher
than that of white Americans with disabilities. As in a historian,
I know how deeply racism and ableism are intertwined in America.
Starting in the seventeenth century, colonizers did not just call
Native Americans racially inferior. They call them physically and mentally

(02:23):
incapable of adapting to so called civilization, and they went
on to use this ablest framework to rationalize enslavement, force removal,
and genocide. Well into the nineteenth century. Slaveholders use racist
ablest ideas about black people supposed mental inferiority to justify slavery.

(02:44):
In the twentieth century, eugenesis deployed ideas of feeble mindedness
to forcibly sterilize Black Latinas and Indigenous women. Today, low
income and students of color are disproportionately assigned to special
education classes, and young people of color with disabilities are
more likely to face the gallows of incarceration. All of

(03:08):
this on my mind as I stepped into my parents' house.
All of this kept me focused. Within minutes, the officers
who were walking out the door. I was closing it.
I was turning to rest my back against it. I
was exhaling, feeling as if our lives had been spared.
I've never shared that story before. It has been unbelievably

(03:32):
hard to share a memory that's so wrapped in anger
over what my brother has experienced in his life. He
never told me when he was being bullied at school.
He never told me when he was being bullied at work.
He didn't tell me until long afterwards because he knew
what I would do. He protected me when I wanted

(03:56):
to protect him. I carry so much shame for not
doing more to fight for him and fight against this
structural problem. My brother is in a better place now,
but not in a place free of racism and ableism.
I know how deeply the connection between racism and ableism

(04:17):
still affects all of us. It's time to have more
public conversations about what we can all do to change things.
Today's show is for my older brother. I Love you.
Welcome to be Anti Racist in Action podcasts where we

(04:39):
discuss how to diagnose, dismantle, and abolish racism, how to
save humanity from the divisiveness of racist ideas and the
destructiveness of racist power and policy. How to free humanity
through the unity of anti racist ideas and the constructiveness
of anti racist power and policy. We were all born

(05:01):
into a world of racist ideas, many of which I
myself consumed as a young man in New York in Virginia.
Throughout my life, I've had to come to grips with
some of the things that I imagine and thought were
true about the world and the people in it. And
like all of us, I'm still learning in my pursuit

(05:21):
of understanding. I became an historian, I've written books, been
on TV, taught at universities, lectured around the world. And
the latest step in my journey is to help you
on yours for us to keep growing together. On BUNTI Racist,
we discuss how to make the impossible possible and how

(05:41):
to bring into being what modern humans have never known,
a just inequitable world. You ready, let's roll. I now

(06:06):
lift my pen to sign this Americans with Rey Act
and say, let the shameful wall of exclusion finally come
tumbling down. More than thirty years ago, then President George
Herbert Walker Bush signed the Americans with Disabilities Act into law.
It came after a long struggle by disability activists to

(06:29):
extend the protections guaranteed by the Civil Rights Act. This
Act is powerful in its simplicity. It will ensure that
people with disabilities are given the basic guarantees for which
they have worked so long and so hard. Independence, freedom
of choice, control of their lives, the opportunity to blend

(06:52):
fully and equally into the rich mosaic of the American mainstream.
The signing of the ADA took place a lifetime ago,
and it was the culmination of more lifetimes of struggle.
But what kind of progress have we made us today?
Is Rebecca Cokeley one of the country's leading voices on

(07:12):
disability rights. I'm especially impressed by how well she sent
hers race in her analysis and advocacy. She founded and
directed the Disability Justice Initiative at the Center for American
Progress and served as the executive director of the National
Council on Disability. Recently, Cokeley joined the Ford Foundation as

(07:34):
the first program officer to lead a US based disability
rights portfolio. She's also a California native, a mother, and
someone who served in the Obama administration from two thousand
and nine to twenty thirteen. The day I sat down
to talk with Rebecca happened to be the day that
the closing arguments in the Derek Chauvin trial were presented

(07:56):
in Minneapolis. It was an intense day for both of us. Hey, Rebecca, Hey,
how have you been? Man? How are you really? I
think I'm overwhelmed and traumatized and excited and outraged. It's

(08:17):
this sort of weird mix of all of those emotions.
What about you? How are you feeling in this moment?
You know? I think I had done a panel at
Netroot several years ago, was myself and a couple of
folks from on the ground in Ferguson, and one of
the things they said at the time that it stuck
with me is that they believed that PTSD doesn't exist

(08:41):
because what we're dealing with is a constant state of trauma, stress,
and disorder. And it has been probably one of the
thoughts that has stayed in my head consistently since then,
because the notion that there is a time and a
space for recovery almost feels like a luxury exactly. It's
trauma all around, exactly, and part of that, even as

(09:05):
we talk, we have to be very cognizant about our terminology,
and so I think, starting this conversation, how should we
what terminology should we be using when we're thinking about
disability or the disabled community. You know, to me, I
love the word disability. I love it because of the

(09:27):
beauty of the elasticity of the term a It was
a word that was chosen by our elders, and it
was the first time that people with disabilities formally declared
what they wanted to be called. And then in the
crafting of the ADA, the definition is any mental or

(09:48):
physical impairment that impacts activities of daily life, a history
or a record of such impairment. And so the definition
is broad enough to encompass the children in Flint, Michigan
that are still several thousand days without clean drinking water
and have acquired learning disabilities as a result of it.

(10:10):
It's broad enough to include elders like Fanny Lew Hamer
who are involuntarily sterilized. And it's broad enough to include
people living with long haul COVID that are still trying
to figure out how they navigate this space and time.
To me, so often definitions are so restrictive, and this
is instead about does it impact how you eat, how

(10:33):
you live, how you engage with your loved ones. And
the beauty of that is that it varies with each
person definitely. And how would you define able I always
go to the definition by my colleague Talila Lewis and
Dustin Gibson that talks about ableism as a system that

(10:54):
places value on people's bodies and minds based on society
lee constructed ideas of normalcy, intelligence, excellence, and productivity. These
ideas are deeply rooted in anti blackness and eugenics, colonialism
and capitalism. And you don't have to be disabled to
experience ableism. It's really grounded in the notion of who

(11:16):
is valuable and worthy based on a person's appearance and
or their ability to produce, reproduce excel and the term
that they use, and I think is really powerful and
or behave. Somebody might not have a choice how they
appear in public, how they engage in public, but the
way that society responds to them. If they walk with

(11:36):
a limp, if they speak with a stutter, if they
use a communication board to communicate, all of those things
fall under the behavior piece, which I think is really
critically important when we think about what it means to
live in society. Wow, And it of course makes me
think about how people respond to certain people because of

(11:58):
the color of their skin, because of the texture of
their hair, because of the culture that they practice, because
of the language that they speak. And then when we
start thinking about the intersection of ableism and racism, I
think that's when it becomes tricky for many people, because
I think in many ways many Americans don't necessarily have

(12:21):
a clear definition of racism, nor do they have a
clear definition of which then prevents them from understanding their intersection.
And so how should we understand their intersection? Well, I
mean they're roots of the same trade. Yes, it's funny.
I actually went back through your book after reading it

(12:42):
the first time, and every time there was something there
that I was like, oh, it parallels here. I literally
like drew a picture of a trade. Thinking about even
from the days of slavery and the discussion of things
like drape to mania, the psychosis that went along with
runaway slaves, the development and frankly still continue to use

(13:05):
in many circles of phrenology the examination of the physicality
of a group of people in order to determine superiority
or not. Many of those things are still common discussion today.
Individuals who are slaughtered by law enforcement at least fifty
percent are people with disabilities, whether it be a mental illness,

(13:26):
whether it be a speech impediment, whether it be substance use,
which counts if somebody is in recovery. Even with the
Derek Schouven trial hearing the reliance on ablest language as
a justification for the numerous deaths of African Americans with disabilities. Yes,
but then you have some who say, well, why are

(13:48):
we still talking about disability? You know, indeed the ADA
was passed in nineteen ninety. Aren't we living in a
society where folks with the disability, you know, have rights justice,
Black and brown and indigenous and people of color have
their rights. So why are we talking about this? What
do you say to those who who make that claims?

(14:09):
I see you're already shaking it because it's the same
thing with post racial society, right it is, we still
deal with a seventy percent at least unemployment rate. We're
the only community that it is actually grounded in statute
that it is perfectly legal to pay disabled workers two
dollars and fifteen cents or less a week. Disabled people Still,

(14:34):
if you're on supplemental security income, you can't get married
or you'll lose your health insurance. We don't have marriage
equality yet for disabled people in this country. You aren't
allowed to maintain more than two thousand dollars in a
checking account in a lot of cases. Yes, the ADA
is thirty years old, but eighty percent of polling places
are still inaccessible to us. In one way, shape or form.

(14:57):
Progress has been made, but there has never been the
level of enforcement that we need to actually see people
with disabilities come anywhere near the level playing fe that
the law is fired to all those years ago. I'm
Rebecca Coakley, and you're listening to be anti racist with

(15:18):
Ebramax Kendy. I don't know if I've shared this for you.
My brother as a mental disability, and I think one
of the ways in which I've seen him experience the
world as a black boy and then ultimately a black
man with a disability is that it seems as if

(15:44):
due to his blackness, he has not provided the protections
of someone who has a disability. People just see him
as black. Well, I think it even starts at the
earliest days of education. I mean, we see, if you're
a white student and express certain behaviors a you're more

(16:05):
likely to have access to better, fine tuned diagnostics and
more likely to be accurately diagnosed with something along the
lines of autism. But if you're a person of color, specifically,
if you're a black boy with a disability, you're more
likely to be diagnosed as what they call EBED or
emotionally behaviorally disturbed. And just thinking about the language and

(16:29):
what that says to a child, what that says to
a family, what that says to a community. EBED sounds criminal,
And thinking about the fact that a majority of resources
that are targeting families of young people with disabilities are
in no way, shape or form grounded in the values

(16:53):
of communities of color. You know my husband who you'll
laugh about this since you're a fam grad. My husband's
a Howard grad. And my husband has a vision impairment.
And he grew up in South Carolina and didn't realize
that he could get large print book until after he
graduated Howard. He thought that everybody spent six plus hours

(17:15):
a night doing the reading to keep up. It wasn't
until right before he graduated, where somebody was like, you know,
you can get large print or you can get books
on tape, And he talked to his parents about it,
and his parents were like, we knew raising you in
South Carolina, where the state only guarantees a minimally adequate
public education, that if we would have advocated for accommodations

(17:38):
for you, they would have automatically pushed you into special
education and that would have been it. And so I
think there is a lot of fear, and it's grounded
in what the black community knows about segregation. You know,
we've never talked about the rights of students with disabilities
in the education space as civil rights. We always talk

(17:58):
about moving people to a separate classroom, And so I
think there needs to be a lot of talking about
what are the civil rights of students of color with
disabilities starting and education and moving throughout the world because
people aren't informed, No, they're not. And for me, there
is nothing scarier than those times in which I knew

(18:23):
my brother had to in some capacity interact with the police. Yeah,
and specifically in recent years I've begun to see, of course,
through all sorts of cases and certainly videos why we
were always scared, why my parents were always scared. But

(18:44):
it's not just, of course, parents of color who have
children with disabilities. It's white parents too. It seems as
if this is a systemic issue of the police killing
people with disabilities. And I think there's many ways in
which we can talk about police violence. There are many
ways in which police violence, specifically in the United States

(19:08):
demos strates itself to be really chaos, to be a scourge.
But for me, I don't know of a way that
police violence is worse than when we're speaking about the
number of people with disabilities who are killed, and then
even the number of people with disabilities who are in prison,

(19:30):
and the number of those people who are who are
people of color, and the number of people of color
who leave the carceral system who have acquired disabilities while
in there because of the intense trauma of incarceration, and
there's no connection to a community, there's no connection to

(19:54):
understanding what your rights are. We deal with situations where
people who are deaf are not given qualified sign language
interpreters when engaging with their lawyers, and it is terrifying,
and it starts in the schools, And I mean that's
a significant issue around school resource officers. We had a

(20:14):
situation even with our son a few years ago where
a para professional and the after school program thought it
would be funny to pick up our son and put
him on top of the refrigerator and walk away. And
he's a little person like I am, so we tend
to be a little wary of heights in general. His

(20:34):
friends got very upset and went and got another teacher.
By the time the other teacher had finally shown up,
they had pulled him down. And so our son is
very headstrong and didn't say anything to us. We got
to call that night from both of his best friend's
parents who were like, did you hear what happened to
Jackson today? And you know, my husband was talking to
him that night, was like, so what happened and he

(20:55):
was like, oh, they thought it was funny and was
like jump off and pat And my husband was like,
don't ever, don't listen to random, average eight people telling
you anything. You're very lucky that you have friends that
care about you, but that's the kind of thing you
want to tell Mama that about when you come home. Yeah,
you know, having to teach them, having to acknowledge the

(21:16):
hurt and that it's not okay, and that they have
a right to their bodily autonomy and they have a
right to their privacy, and also at the same time,
having that conversation around safety and being like, you're not
going to be able to pick every fight. It's more
important to me that you come home safe. And I
mean that's the reality for so many families of kids
with disabilities. I think growing up watching people and hearing

(21:41):
about people mistreat my brother, there were a few things
that could cause me to want to fight, Yeah, and
that was always at the top of the list. And
he knew that, so he would not tell me, especially
when it was something happening at school, even when it
was something happening you know, at work. Yep. So how

(22:05):
should we seek to be allies? Because obviously, you know,
ableism is so rampant, and certainly people with disabilities want
to protect their allies. And so I guess, how should
we be responding. Should I have went and try to
fight everybody? Like? What should should I be doing that? Now?

(22:28):
I think part of it is doing this is starting
the conversation and actively talking about it. I mean, we
literally build buildings to ship off our disabled people. That's
how hidden it is. Doris Day had a talk show
in the fifties and she talked about moving her sister
home from an institution, and it was considered so radical,

(22:52):
and that's still considered radical. When I worked in the
Obama White House, one of my favorite things to do
was to give White House tours because people wouldn't expect
me to be the person giving the tour. I remember
giving a tour to a civil rights a well established
civil rights leader, who was like, oh, my gosh, it's
so cute that you're here. Are you here as part
of a charity program? And I remember being like, no,

(23:18):
I'm President Obama's chief diversity officer. I'm in charge of
diversity hiring for the administration, and I do tours on
the weekend because it's fun and it's important that people
understand that they're disabled people that work here, and giving
tours to young kids with disabilities in particular, and like
showing them the roots around the White House and showing them, oh,
this is the ramp that FDR set up so that
the press would never see him in a wheelchair. This matters,

(23:40):
this is our history. Talking about your brother matters, and
so I think what allies can really do is do
the homework, use the Google, do your reading, talk to
people and talk about disability and ableism. When you're talking
about racism, when you're talking about homophobia, when you're talking
about sexism, acknowledge the commonalities, acknowledge the differences. I remember

(24:07):
the first time I had heard any politician actually say
the word ableism. It was Julian Castro, and I remember
just being like, oh my gosh, he said it, and
like tweeting his team and being like, holy buckets he
said it. They're like, we told you he would. You know.
In this last year, we actually had eleven presidential candidates

(24:29):
right disability platforms, which had never happened before. And it
took a lot of work, and it took a lot
of honestly, like sitting with candidates and being like, no,
let's help you practice saying the word disability, because they
would go to special needs, they would go to differently
abled And for us, the reason we like disability is
it's a specific, deliberate tide to civil rights. We've been

(24:49):
taught to internalize that shame. We've been taught that we
don't talk about it, that we act like it's not there,
and then we don't get our needs met. We aren't included.
Just as the notion of a colorblind society is bullshit,
so is the idea where people say, see the person,
not the disability. No, I need you to see my
disability and I need you to see it as a
fun a mental part of who I am. And for

(25:11):
able bodied people to no longer imagine themselves as normal, yeah,
just as white folks should not imagine themselves as normal
and men should not imagine themselves as normal. Definitely, in
so many different ways we've normalized particular groups, not understanding

(25:33):
that that normalization is based on different forms of bigotry that,
as you stated earlier, ultimately emerge from the same tree.
And particularly destigmatizing mental illness I think is one of
the most important things that we can do, and really
combating the notion that the mind and body are separate

(25:55):
and that mental health is different than physical health when
it is all one system. How do we as a
nation eliminate ableism, particularly from an anti race standpoint, I
say eliminate because certainly there can be gradual approaches which

(26:15):
particularly may be easier for able bodied people, but I mean,
what should we be rallying around. One is massive civil
rights enforcement. We've never had enforcement of the ADA. People
will say, well, why don't you call the ADA when
you get discriminated again? And I always joke it's not
like an eight hundred number that sends down a team
of like customer service ninjas that might build a ramp

(26:39):
or like kick somebody's But I wish it was like that, gosh,
that would take a lot of money, but actively fight
for the enforcement of these laws, which I think is
really critical thinking through the enforcement of ADA. How can
we structurally ensure that it is enforced? Do you think
that the Justice Department needs to be honestly, we need

(27:05):
robust funding of civil rights enforcement across the board, Yeah,
across race, disability, LGBT, immigration. You know, doing each of
these things and silos has not worked out for us
well so far. How do we walk in lockstep with
each other and hold each other accountable, but also hold

(27:26):
the government accountable for what has not been done. How
do we design reparations in a way that doesn't negatively
impact the health insurance of black disabled people? How do
we think about immigration reform and the public charge in
such a way that it lifts up those that need
personal care assistance. It goes beyond thinking about our movements

(27:47):
and silos and saying, you know, how do we actually
get at those that are most directly impacted? And what's
fascinating is, I think you have able bodied people who
will say, well, if we do have well funded enforcement
in regulations that ensure people would abilities have opportunities and resources,

(28:12):
people consistently think, well, then somehow I'm going to be
punished or hurt or deprived as opposed to I think
what you're speaking to is if we truly did have
robust enforcement of our civil rights laws, it would benefit
almost everyone. And I think we continue to be told

(28:34):
from white, non disabled SYS society that civil rights are
extra and that we're asking for special treatment. We hear
that all the time when the reality is is like, no,
this has been the law for thirty years. Yeah, I mean,
I should be able to go to the bank around
the corner from my house here in Washington, d C.

(28:55):
Without having to scale the wall to reach the ATM.
And it's not about extra It's about basic, fundamental access
to the civil rights we all have as human beings
on this planet or we should have as human beings
on this planet. And it's also present an urgent right
now because we're seeing a rise in people with disabilities

(29:19):
after COVID. Many of them are struggling to get disability benefits.
Yeah you know, they said roughly one third of people
with COVID will have long haul symptoms. So we're talking
at least ten million plus new disabled people in our
country that might not realize that they count under the ADA,
might not realize that when they go back to work

(29:40):
they can ask for time off or an amended schedule
to access a doctor or a therapist. And I think
now more than ever, coming out of the pandemic, I mean,
COVID has highlighted what disabled people knew decades ago, like
we are viewed as disposable. And yes, folks might not
be ready to identify politically or culturally as part of

(30:01):
the disability community, but we have a fundamental responsibility to
be resources to them, meet them where they are, and
help support them in this transition because we do know better,
we do know how it works, we do know how
to deal with these systems and what our rights and
responsibilities are under law, and nobody's informing them precisely, and

(30:24):
so I suspect people are thinking, Okay, what can they do?
We've spoken broadly, but if we can maybe speak individually
to people who who may have realized for the first
time the ways in which they have upheld able they
have upheld its intersection with racism. They realize that they

(30:49):
can no longer be passive. You know, in this fight
for the human rights of everyone. Where should they start?
I think you start acknowledging ways that you've behaved and
ablest mindset to the people that you love. I mean people,
disabilities exist in one third of households. So if we're
not in your house, we're your neighbor on the right
or the left, where your brother, where your sister, were

(31:13):
your parents and acknowledging the learning as a first step,
what could you be doing differently or more boldly. It
is just like retraining your brain on acknowledging racial bias
and racist policies. People think that disability is sort of
over there, when once you start noticing, you start noticing

(31:35):
it everywhere. It is something that you walk over as
blandly as you walk over a curb cut without the
recognition that back in the sixties and seventies, disabled people
literally took pitchforks to sidewalks in Denver to be able
to get through their community. Wow, it is pretty apparent
to me that one cannot be anti racist while still

(32:01):
being ableist. And that's why I was so happy we
could have this conversation, because I think for many people
who are indeed striving to be anti racist, they may
not realize the ways in which they're still being prevented
from moving along on this journey due to their unacknowledged

(32:25):
or unrecognized ableism, or the ways in which they're in denial.
Then I would say, probably it's the same way the
other way around. You can't really be anti ableist if
you're also not striving to be anti racist. I think
that's so true, and I think it is such an
opportunity for greater solidarity, greater learning, greater co conspiratorship. Yes,

(32:52):
especially because this work is hard, this work is unyielding,
it's never ending, And I look forward to us continuing
this conversation going forward, because, as you and I both know,
the work's not going to be done tomorrow. It isn't
and I'm certainly still learning and growing and recognizing the
ways in which we indeed need to be co conspiratis.

(33:15):
So I just want to thank you, Rebecca for taking
a few minutes with me to really talk this through. Definitely,
this was fun. We'll do this again. Definitely. Able body

(33:37):
people of color face racism. White people with disabilities face ableism,
but neither group faces the twin forces of ableism and
racism like people of color with disabilities. I admire the
way Rebecca confronts racism and ableism and disability justice and
racial justice. She is resolute in defending the humanity of

(33:59):
people with disabilities, and we must be too. So how
can we fight back? We must know what to fight
and how to fight. Read books on ableism. Read memoirs
of people of color with disabilities. Read their essays and stories.
Understand their experiences and perspectives and histories. Knowledge can be

(34:22):
the well spring of empathy and compassion. We learn to
change ourselves to change our society. Join and support anti
racist organizations battling ableism. Support anti ablist organizations battling racism.
Check the show notes for a link to our website.
There you'll find links to further readings, resources, and organizations

(34:46):
that are focused on this work. It takes you, It
takes me, It takes us, It takes eternal hope. It
takes opening our minds, overcoming fear, being vulnerable, daring ourselves
to revolutionize ourselves, challenging power and policy to revolutionize society,
amassing the courage and conviction to be anti racist. Be

(35:24):
Anti Racist is a production of Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia.
It is written and hosted by doctor Ebram x Kindy
and produced by Alexandra Garraton with associate producer Brittany Brown.
Our engineer has been Tyliday, Our editor is Julia Barton,
and our showrunner is Sasha Matthias. Our executive producers The
Only Time, WILLD and Me and Lobell. Many thanks to
Tammy Win and doctor Heather Stanford at the Center for

(35:46):
Anti Racist Research at Boston University for all of their
help at Pushkin. Thanks to Heather Fame, Parley meg Leori,
John Schnars, and Jacob Weisberg. You can find doctor Kendy
on Twitter at d r Ebram and on Instagram at
Ibram x k. You can find Pushkin on all social
platforms at Pushkin Pods. You can sign up for our
newsletter at pushkin dot FM. To find more Pushkin podcast

(36:07):
listen on the iHeart Radio, Apple podcasts, or whatever you
listen to podcasts. Your piece that you wrote in the
Atlantic is still one of the most circulated pieces among
our black disabled activists all the time. They talk about
that piece all the time. So I promised several of
them I will continue to tell Ibrahm how important that

(36:30):
people is. Oh my gosh, well, thank you, and please
tell them I said hello.