Video Script

1) Adoption - from Colombia, adopted at 6 months old from an orphanage called Ayudame via the Jewish children and Family services ... which at the time was a mother daughter team, mom did the admin, daughter went and got the kids.

My name is Canin Carlos Apriori-Mendoza, this is my sixth and final government name ... I am beginning to tell my story.

2) I arrived the weekend after Thanksgiving to Minneapolis; adopted by an Evangelical couple who were living in the Western Suburb of Wayzata at the time. I was their consolation prize, they had tried everything else already.

3) The first time that I ever saw anyone who looked like me was when I was 4.5 years old in the December 1988 issue of National Geographic ... they had brown skin, black hair and faces shaped like mine.

4) But they were living in nature, with nature ... forests and rivers; where ever I was, was not where I "belonged".

5) At the age of 5 I was put on stage to perform in church musicals twice per year until the age of 12, in 1996 I performed on stage with Psalty the Singing Songbook for the Billy Graham Kidz Gig.

6) Also at the age of 5 I moved to Long Lake, and attended the Orono Public School system until graduation in 2002; though in my first school essay, I was describe my three wishes ... and I guess, by blessing and miracle ... I have since achieved them.

7) My first wish was the find my sister, and my second wish was to find my mother; my third wish was for world peace.

8) I knew that I came from a land that had known much violence, and I suppose there was a part of me that knew the reason for my own separation from my mother was due to a lack of peace in the world; for all of us, I just wanted for us to be able to be together, in happiness and love.

9) As at that present moment, whether I realized it or not, I was a prop; a reason for a woman to be called a mother, nothing more, and quite easily treated as less.

10) This is where I want to caution my own ego, and this narrative; some of the things I say do truly come from a place of privilege ... though I do beg of us to see things in context ...

11) They were not invested in my development, simply in the maintenance of my existence until such time as I was no longer necessary, and their status as parents was assured.

12) At some point we travelled to Florida to visit my uncle who had also built a car ... I was able to page through the parts magazine; and when I was 14 I wanted to build a car with the man who had bought me ...

13) Just as my desire to find my sister and mother were never tended to, this request was dismissed as well.

14) And I wish that I could say that these were isolated incidences ... without me, the male who adopted me might not have had much of a social life outside of his two college friends ... who we occasionally visited.

15) As because of me he was able to be class leader of Pioneer Boys, and eventually the director ... which was the Evangelical alternative to Boy Scouts ... which again, was odd ... because on the otherside, both of these people John and Jean we'll call them ... they were both the eldest children of farming families, raised in Kittson County, the northwestern most county in Minnesota ... where we also often vivited.

16) Hunting, fishing and camping were very much a part of my childhood.

17) I knew much more than just the Western Suburbs of Minneapolis ... the ravines of Southern Minnesota, the cliffs of the Iron Range ... the rolling fields and prairie land, and the sweet smelling forests of the BWCA.

18) Back to what I was saying .. nature is so beautiful, she is always worth the pause ... to ponder, yes/no?

19) There was an incident that happened which continues to play in my mind, as there was were many father-son duos through the program and age-ranges ... one of whom was a carpenter ... OH WOW ... total revelation coming in ... ok ... so

20) This other father-son duo were authentic ... they built a pine-car derby car together ... James left me to my own devices and built his own, spending time outside of meetings to perfect it ... super sleek ... AND then he added weights to it ... just because he wanted to test it out, or ... he wasn't outright cheating, as he wasn't even competing ... he just made his own ... and largely ignored me ... to compensate for what?

21) Granted ... his father as an alcoholic womanizer, and he was a Vietnam vet ... I don't know how much action he saw, but the I've no desire to diminish the experience, nor its effect on him. Nor do I hold his distance against him, save to say that it had an effect on my own upbringing.

22) I started working near the age of 14 as well, riding my bike to Wayzata Country Club to caddy ... which was made more interesting by the existence of an authentic totem pole at the first tee.

23) My entire relationship with other was inauthentic because that is what was modeled in the home, while outside of the home, I was one of 36 latinos in Long Lake, a small town of about 2,000 at the time. And I definitely wasn't expected at the country club, except that I had friends who were also caddies ... and we had been playing soccer together for the previous 7 years ... so I wasn't able to be denied either ...

24) But I didn't understand, or trust this ... I simply wasn't able to for some reason ... because in hindsight, but I needed to do was go out into the world and find someone who would have been willing to help me build a car.

25) This is perhaps what was expected of me to do ... because ... Back to when I was 5 ... I wanted to play the drums, and the woman who bought me was a beginner band teacher, she knew that I would need to learn to play the piano in order to play drums ... so I started taking piano ... a bit of a fiasco of it's own ... because racism is so easy to access ...

26) Later the woman would tell the mother of my child that "you never know what you'll get when you adopt from a developing country."

27) The narrative being that my mother herself was a drug-addict, and that's why I was in the orphanage ... and so I was probably a "crack-baby" or the like.

28) Either way, that was the excuse to provide or deny according to their whims, absent of any real logic, nor foresight/forethought.

29) Jean showed up late for band sign-up ... and the drums were filled ... while my second choice ... the saxaphone ... I was told that my fingers were too short ... she's a teacher mind you ... she knows these things.

30) There were plenty of trumpet spaces open and conveniently her sister had a silver trump that I would be able to use.

31) This is partially why I was an object of convenience, not concern, nor investment ... which tbh, continue to be funny and dumb as fuck to me.

32) Oh quick note about Latinidad ... my first encounter with "real" Latinos ... I put that in quotes because I have issues with the identity as a whole ... and consider it largely to be spicy white supremacy.

33) I worked at the local restaurant, which was called Benjamin's Family Restuarant ... and jesus ... ok, so the manager was a drunk apparently, and the so that's why in one of my first shifts I walked into an empty restaurant ...

34) I had to do everything ... I say this because I distinctly remember having to make the chicken tenders ...

35) A latino family came in ... and they did not treat me kindly ... there kid was running around the restaurant and ran into me as I was walking out of the kitchen, and I got yelled at ... fun!!!!

36) I left that job, and got a job at the local coffee shop; which was a great job, and I absolutely loved every second of it ... Sunday mornings were the best ... making drinks for happy people, and the folks after church, everyone was so nice and it was a great job ...

37) Until I left the job and was denied my last paycheck under the allegation that I did not return the key ... when again, I have a distinct memory of putting the key in the office and leaving with the door locked behind me.

38) No one stood up for me ... John and Jean did nothing ... it was none of their concern ... I can't even remember if I told them ... because ... I don't know I was really starting to tune out of their existence ...

39) They didn't care about mine, and I needed to start figuring out wtf was going on ...

40) I had wanted to transfer to another school, as two other classmates had done so ... but I was refused this opportunity ... for whatever reason ... I don't know ...

41) That was the fun one ... they sent me to a Christian summer camp, and when I said that I didn't like it, that was used as an excuse for me to not attend a soccer summer camp.

42) Though again, Jean was able to be the class leader for the one week La Semana camp, for kids adopted from Latin America, run by white Christian women ... a place for them to feed us our culture through their filters.

43) Moving the fuck on ....

44) I spent my first year of college at the University of Minnesota living in a fraternity ... this was the year the Wellstones plane crashed, and his aid was a prominent frat member.

45) In my sophmore year I reconnected with a high school sweetheart ... we eventually collaborated in the conception of a child.

46) I worked a few other places, one of which being Bob's Java Hut; and a few notable connections were made through this.

47) The child was born, I was working a few jobs and attempting to attend school full-time while carrying for a pregnant fiance/wife ... long story short ... moving on.

48) Divorce was inevitable and after the papers were signed I made a beeline for the Community University Health Clinic on Franklin ... they had experience working with non-white people and I needed someone I could trust to administer a complete mental health exam.

49) I was given a good education, and had a solid ideas of anthropology, sociology and psychology ... I wanted help, I needed help ... I needed a place to start ... The results came back ... maybe ... maybe bi-polar ... but a larger concern that was stated was ... lack of a primary support group.

When I got back into the University for the second time, I also started attending therapy sessions and eventually met with the psychiatrist who would eventually become the Chief Medical Officer for all of Boynton. He said that I have a personality capable of bouts of mania, but lacked the depressive lows, or delusion of gradeur, for true bi-polarity, he was willing to prescribe an SSRI if I wanted, but if I didn't want to go that route, it wasn't necessary.

50) Next I went to the father of a school friend, and asked for help understanding finances and such ... eventually I got a job at Mesa ... well actually ... so that's how it worked ...

51) I walked into Tony's Diner and asked if they were hiring, they were not ... but soundboard.

52) Eventually I started helping behind the counter at Tony's ... and then Mesa Pizza opened ... I eventually started delivering pizzas for them; and that was my first really steady job ...

53) At the same time I was also running the soundboard for events at Tony's (we didn't have a license so it was eventually shutdown) – but the family owned another space two blocks away ... so the music moved over there.

54) YouTube.com/ScreamFreely documents that time.

55) I also got involved in local activism at that time ... when I first went to the U ... I had a professor ... well, so the story goes ... there were folks who would read our essays and some of the essays they would put aside and send those kids to LeRoy ... LeRoy Gardner Jr.

56) He was the first Minnesota born Black man to earn a full-ride scholarship to play ball at the U ... and he took care of us ... he cared for us. I ... he told me that if anyone asked whose I was, I was to tell them that I was his ... I'm not a perfect person, I can never claim that title ... but I judge myself by what his eyes see, and no one else's.

57) It was curious, the family that owned Downtime ... and the owner was actually the same guy who taught me the f-word on the school bus when I was in 3rd grade.

58) The bartender was an old high-school friend ... and one of the eventual cooks was actually a cook I knew from another restaurant that I had worked at earlier.

59) we had music six nights per week, Eventually we expanded into providing booking and engineering assistance to local festivals ... it was a jam, for real.

60) Oh yea, the kid ... court order was for me to see my kid through therapy every other week... I just had to test clean of weed ... the ad lidum didn't care, but the referee was a man-hater apparently, someone else had made a website talking about it.

61) Eventually the therapist went out of town for three weeks, and decided not to tell me until he returned, after which he said he didn't have availability for another two weeks ... no one cared.

62) It's almost easy to say that the entire system wanted to separate me from my child ... as to why ... we can only assume ... so I digress, save to say that the people who bought me signed an aggreement with the woman who bore my child that ... they would be able to see my child so long as they never talked about me, and never told me anything about my child.

63) This is all under the guise of me being crazy and doing something crazy if I ever knew anything ... which ... again ... is so dumb to me ... because then ... I don't have the email anymore, because I don't care to hold on to it ... but for the story's sake ... I got a bill from the reunification therapist ... and it had my ex's address on it ... 27 something Taylor St North, yea?

64) These people are all paranoid about be doing something crazy ... and then the therapist literally sends me their address ... it still feels like a set-up.

65) There is so much that I am glossing over because it is not my desire to demean or disrespect anyone who matters to my child, though the people who bought me not included in that collection of individuals.

66) Moving on ... real quick ... fun employment story ... I applied for this place called the Needle Doctor ... and when I interviewed the owner looked at my resume ... which had a local high school and the local University on it, my name at the time was Christopher James Apriori ... and the last question he asked me was ... "You can speak, read and write English?"

67) Later on, I would tell him that story, and he would laugh and say well now he needs Spanish speakers ... I didn't speak Spanish at that time ... but stereotypes and such, am I right?

68) Being trans-racial ... every experience was an exercise in perseverence without any hope of reprieve ... it was actually fascinating to me because it's not that I had nothing to offer ... quite the opposite ... in my opinion ... but that's also why whiteness could never let me succeed ... because I would then prove the majority of whiteness incorrect in its very existence.

69) Eventually I would participate in OccupyMN, and I would be interfacing with local law enforcement near daily in regards to the occupation, as it were ... that's how I got my name in their databases.

70) I would also come in competition with a white latino "organizer" ...

71) A few years later I was approached by some young Black, brown and Muslim women who were being harrassed and preyed upon by this white latino ... and they asked if I would compile and publish their stories.

72) The piece was released right before a large action at the Mall of America, and got over 10,000 views in under 24 hours ... thankfully another white latino "elder" saw the piece, swooped in and built a healing-circle for the white latino who had been outed as a predator.

73) And a few years after this an old friend of mine who is the father to a bi-racial child asked me about someone he'd seen speaking at a seminar he went to ... as a white man he felt compelled to learn about the non-white experience as best as he could, and so sought out seminars where non-white folks talked about raising and helping non-white boys, and young men.

74) Our white latino elder apparently used much of the time to talk about himself ... I spoke out about this ... reminding people that he had built a healing circle for a white latino predator ... and was now getting money for "helping people reach young men of color".

75) He wrote a smear piece about me ... while other incidences had already ... it was interesting ... because I came from the suburbs, I am the perfect target for progressive ladder climbers, I was the perfect individual for the urbans colored to other.

76) And so the white-passing one's did and the brown/Black people had no real choice but to follow; because everyone is beholden to whiteness and the proximity to whiteness in Minneapolis/Minnesota ... eh ... that's what happened ... and in my opinion that's another reason Minnesota was vulnerable ... as I once told a well-known journalist ... it is the epitome of the US to me ... a state with urban liberals and rural conservative ... but that rural demographic has deeper roots as originally being part of the DFL - Democratic Farmer Labor party.

77) Too many curious things happened ... though ... the point of this story, and where I will end it for now ... is here.

78) Eventually I got a job at the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation as an Application Developer ... which was also an incredible experience in racism, discrimination, character assassination and sadly ugly behavior.

79) But I did the job for three years! And I enjoyed it!

80) Also, last year I got back in connection with my child ... I'm not saying things are perfect, I'm not saying I'm the best person ... but they never have to question whether I care ... and I'm able to ... that was my work, that was my dream.

81) That should I ever be able to speak with my child, that I did not carry bitterness, resentment nor anger for my experiences, and so did not bring that energy into our relationship.

82) I feel as though I am at such a point, or sufficient enough to acknowledge accomplishment of this goal.

83) And so I share my story with you all ... because I think that it can be illustrative of how we can make a difference in our own neighborhoods and communities, the importance of being more attentive.

84) I made the joke recently that Minnesotans avoids/demeans me like Trump avoids the Epstein files ... and now we all know why.

85) I'm just starting to be able to tell my stories ... because I don't want to do so from a place of anger, I want to do so in a way that can help us learn from these experiences, and be more aware of what to look out for in our community building work.

86) And in order to clean my own image, as it was intentionally tarnished by particular people for reasons that may be more clear now than they once were.

87) That said ... I would like to end with a quote from Khalil Gibran:

"And when one of you falls down he falls for those behind him, a caution against the stumbling stone. Ay, and he falls for those ahead of him, who though faster and surer of foot, yet removed not the stumbling stone."