BAE BOY

3-16

And most recently, we'd helped two larger local organizations buy a big old hotel for migrants with kids to stay in when they were just dumped on the street or at the Greyhound station by ICE.

That was an emergency, actually. Because ICE, the people who grab up all the migrants at the border now, had started releasing these big bunches of shell-shocked people, without warning, at the Greyhound station or sometimes just onto the streets.

They could keep the single adults in the jail to wait for their hearings. But the ones with children had to be released because you can't incarcerate kids and adults together by law.

So there they'd be, 150 shell shocked people who didn't speak English and had been through hell trying to get to the border, wandering around the bus station or the streets of Nogales, trying to figure out what to do. Where to go. What those papers they'd just signed were all about.

There were some local organizations who kept volunteers at all the drop offs. And there were some safe houses that could take maybe 10 or 20 at a time. But they were releasing hundreds of them now. Deliberately, hoping to cause a lot of chaos and rile up the locals.

So Yoli had gotten Indio and his crew to drive vans from the port of entry or wherever they were being released over to the hotel, where they'd be able to call relatives or be assisted to find more permanent lodging by people who handled this kind of stuff all the time. Legal aid, too, they got. From people who spoke their languages.

So the KCF part of the presentation was mostly pictures of people at the hotels, cooking in the communal kitchen, or kids playing in what used to be the nightclub in the lobby...stuff like that. And some stats on funding we'd provided to local social service organizations. Numbers, you know? Impressive ones, but...I won't belabor the point. You get the idea.

And I got the idea. Made me feel real. I admit that.

But it got real real when they switched over to KCJ, where the wild things live. I'll just give you the bullet points. No commentary necessary. Cause we kicked some serious ass--check this out. We had:

· East Hell Arizona, HBO, starring me, myself and I. I was still going to shoot that, because I'd have even more time while I was off, actually. And Kendall really wanted to see some of the places I'd chosen.

· A Netflix travel series starring Big Brian--yep, my father-in-law. Nia pitched it to him, after he cracked her up talking about some of the rich people and celebs he'd taken to these exotic places. So he'd be doing the "extreme eco-tourism" thing with willing celebs. Not eating snakes and stuff but immersing them in different cultures and making them work and connect with the locals. It didn't have a title yet, but the little pitch video with Brian talking to Nia just the way they had the day she got the idea was broadcast worthy itself. Brian was totally natural on camera, and a born story teller, too.

· Our music production company (KayCee), which already had six chart topping CDs, (Billboard, Apple) one of which, this wild combination of poetry, Hip Hop and House music called Power UP, was actually in the running for several awards, including the goddamned Grammys, I guess. How that happened, I will never know. (Nia probably)

· Our film production company (Graciela Productions), with Halley and Yoshi at the helm. They were doing all kinds of work, from commercials to actual films. One of the scripts had been "stolen" from a major company that had bought but never made the film, even though it had always had a lot of "buzz." When the option lapsed, Nia heard and jumped on it. A director with a lot of prestige (but who I never heard of so I can never remember what his name is when I need to) was already on board. We were in all the major trade magazines after that happened.