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Schools in the Next Decade
89 Plays6 months ago
Drawing From the Well is back!
In the first episode of Season 2, we're talking about the future of schools and the ideas & issues critical for educators to be mindful of when centering student wellness in the next decade.
In this episode we hear from...
- Fatimah Salahuddin, who reflects on the importance of rest and its relationship to wellness
- Mama McGee, who shares her experiences of sending her children to schools and what she would've done differently if she knew then what she knows now
- Scholar activist and educator David Stovall who sits down for our Mic Check..1,2,3! round table segment alongside educators Kenjus T. Watson and Jewell Bachelor to talk about the future of schools.
Drawing From The Well is hosted by Tiffani Marie.
The podcast is co-produced by Tiffani Marie and Jon Reyes with music by Jansen V.
DFTW is supported by Community Responsive Education. Continue the conversation at youthwellness.com
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast Series
00:00:02
Speaker
Drawing from the Well is a podcast series from the youth wellness movement. We are educators, researchers, healers, parents, and community members striving to repurpose schools to address the critical wellness gaps in our youth's development.
The Impact of Sleep Deprivation in Education
00:00:19
Speaker
Founded by Community Responsive Education.
00:00:27
Speaker
I think one of the biggest issues right now in education is sleep deprivation and a lack of engagement from our students. I strongly believe that due to the pandemic and the crazy constraints that we've all been working and living under, that all our students, including myself and teachers, are just in survival mode and that the students come to school feeling very apathetic, tired, and just exhausted.
Rest as Resistance and Nap Passes
00:00:57
Speaker
A lot of us talk also about rest as resistance and I have been really enjoying a lot of conversations that have been happening on social media from organizations like the Knapp Ministry or even Justice for Black Girls specifically talking about the connection between resting and resisting systems of oppression, specifically capitalism.
00:01:20
Speaker
so As a high school teacher, I realize we never really allow or don't want our students to sleep in class, right, especially at the secondary level.
00:01:31
Speaker
Sleeping in class has become such, I would say, a lot of stigma around it, right? It carries this idea that students are, you know, lazy. And of course, it makes them appear unmotivated, especially after lunchtime, when you have the later periods.
00:01:49
Speaker
Students have eaten the most unhealthiest foods that we have over here in East Oakland, which is just a food desert. So all they have is Burger King and crispy crunchy chicken that they're eating large amounts of and pizza.
00:02:03
Speaker
And they come back after the later periods and most of them do sleep. So I decided to stop pushing up against it and wanted to do something really radical and just something out of my love for my students.
00:02:17
Speaker
And that was administer nap passes. So once again, I want to really talk about napping. for seniors. Allowing seniors to nap for most teachers and educators, I think, seems crazy.
00:02:33
Speaker
And I know that a lot of teachers are against me on this, but what I've realized is that just giving them the option has really helped me build strong relationships with them based with like an ethic of care, I would say. Like they really know I care about them.
00:02:53
Speaker
And on these nap passes, I really, really appreciate just some of the philosophy that they're really getting across to the students. So one of those is you've done enough, you are enough, rest.
00:03:10
Speaker
When I rest, I resist systems that dishonor me. And most importantly, this quote that I put on the NAP pass was, I am worthy of rest no matter how much I produce.
00:03:22
Speaker
I do not have to earn rest. I am unconditionally deserving of restoration. These quotes were from Justice for Black Girls, amazing organization.
00:03:34
Speaker
I put these on there because I wanted them to know that rest is not something that they have to earn. and that it's something that we all have a right to.
00:03:46
Speaker
If you're not up to working that day, then it's okay to say, hey, here's a nap pass, no questions asked, and you're allowed to rest in my class. So some of the concerns of other teachers were like, what if all of them give you a nap pass? you know That's actually never happened. What I've noticed is students are more engaged and the fact that they have the option They use it less.
00:04:11
Speaker
And I think knowing that it's there and that that's something I put some thought into is boosted engagement, right? So I was a little afraid of what this might do, but they rarely use them.
00:04:26
Speaker
So when I think about my teaching moving forward, The pandemic and distance learning has just made me take more risk. And if we're going to center wellness in our classrooms, we have to be willing to take those risks.
00:04:40
Speaker
We have to be willing to do things that are really, really nontraditional, especially at the secondary level. You know, no one would ever imagine that 12th graders need naps, but they do.
00:04:51
Speaker
Right. What would the world, our our education system look like if we allowed our students to nap. If we allowed through 12th to nap, what would our education system look like if teachers were allowed to nap throughout the day?
00:05:10
Speaker
I think it would be in a much better state. This business as usual push forward is really starting to burn us all out. So I feel like as an educator, I want to recenter the need for rest and restoration and its connection to learning and the success of our students, especially for students of color in East Oakland.
Season Two Introduction and Reflections
00:05:37
Speaker
Welcome to season two of Drawing From The Well. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. For this first episode, we spent a little bit of time today focusing on the future of schools.
00:05:51
Speaker
You just heard from educator Fatima Salahuddin who blessed us with this reflection on the importance of rest and its relationship to wellness. We're so grateful for her.
00:06:02
Speaker
Up next, you're going to hear from Kenjess' mama. We call her Mama McGee, who's going to share some of her own reflections on her children's experiences in schools and what she would have done differently if she knew then what she knows now.
00:06:17
Speaker
And lastly, for our Mic Check 1, 2, 3 segment, we chop it up with scholar, activist, and educator, Professor David Stovall, who joins me, Kintjes, and Jewel to reflect on the future of schools.
00:06:36
Speaker
I thought that there was something we could do to change our condition, you know, to protect you and your sisters. But what I've learned and what I know now is that bringing you into the world is like bringing a piece of paper into a burning forest fire, you know, and I'm trying to protect you.
00:06:55
Speaker
But your paper and you are actually a part of, you know, you're a component of a tree. These people who came before you, that's what you are. But all of the trees, the entire forest is on fire.
00:07:08
Speaker
And um I'm saying to myself, you know what was I thinking? I mean, there are these great moments with the paper, you know with you all, when I can read you and I see the amazing universe you all contain and are capable of bringing into existence. you know The paper's your true value and your your true worth.
00:07:29
Speaker
And then there are times where it seems like that paper is just going to catch on fire and burn up and be gone right out of my hands. Just like that. Just like that. And I've had so many of those moments.
00:07:42
Speaker
Seeing this place burn you, scar your sisters, it's changed me. I'm forever changed. I tell you what, if I knew back then what this place was, I would have tried to move as far away from the system as possible.
00:07:59
Speaker
And it's really difficult because, you know, the whole world is based on that fire. And it would be difficult to find a place that's not burning. That's how the world runs. It's like an unforgiving fire. It just consumes everything.
00:08:13
Speaker
It consumes hope. It definitely consumes blackness and black people. You know, blackness is a commodity. Blackness is a commodity. It's like the more the world is in touch with each other, the more the more they find out that they all agree that black people are a commodity and should be consumed by fire, by the flames.
00:08:36
Speaker
It's like the more they find out, the worse it is for us. You know, there was a time when white people didn't even know Africa existed before they found us. You know, there should be a book called Before They Found Us.
00:08:49
Speaker
Yeah, that sounds like a romance for the ages, doesn't it? But the truth is, I'm really hopeful. You're really woke because you guys are woke like that. I'm hoping that.
00:09:02
Speaker
That'll change something. You know how white people always like to say that they're woke? I don't know what that means. For us, I think it means that knowing that racism does exist and that the world is on fire.
00:09:15
Speaker
And since you already know that, as you're having your children, maybe you'll be able to figure out how to get your children through the place without getting as burnt as you were. Maybe you'll get your children as far away from this hell as possible and encourage other black people to do so.
00:09:33
Speaker
And maybe after you all, your children won't be as burnt you were. And the next generation will be further away.
Professor David Stovall on Chicago's Influence
00:10:03
Speaker
What's up, y'all? We don't have no name for this. We'll call this Mike Check. Mike Check. Mike Check 123. I got Kendris Jewel and I'm Tiffany Marie. Today we have the one and only.
00:10:15
Speaker
Oh my God, y'all. We got the one and only. David Stovall. I know you got a a middle name to start with an O. What's your middle name? Amatoso. Amatoso. Come on. No, I was born in 72, so my parents were still on that thing. So, you know, black power was popping.
00:10:33
Speaker
So, you know, it's just, it's what it is. So, my parents' next door neighbor was before I was born was from Nigeria. His name was Amatoso Aremu.
00:10:46
Speaker
And she just he just made his transition last year. shout out to brother Aremu, my namesake. And my birthday is Juneteenth, but my mom's birthday is June 20th.
00:11:01
Speaker
So Amatoso means the gift of the child. Oh, wow. Wow. Ashe. I shaded that, brother. love her lesson. That's beautiful. One of my homegirls who I have known for years, her father is from the continent and her middle name is Omatola.
00:11:18
Speaker
So I wrote an intro to her book. Her name is Ebony McGee. We put our middle names on the book so folks could see what it is, where we're coming from.
00:11:30
Speaker
Nice. And on that same note, tell us a little bit, because I feel like if people look at you, they can guess where you're from. But tell these people where you're from. Indeed. Born and raised in Chicago, south side of the city. God bless. 87th Street in Chicago because we live under this deep hypersegregation.
00:11:50
Speaker
sometimes the names of neighborhoods kind of blend in each other. So growing up, I always thought the neighborhood that I grew up in is Avalon, but Avalon is across the street. So that the neighborhood that actually grew up in, the name is Calumet Heights. Now, if you ask any Chicagoan who is from Calumet Heights, they probably won't even know. They were like, look, I live on 87th Street, right? i live I live on these particular spaces. So neighborhood names,
00:12:14
Speaker
just kind of bleed in different ways. So just coming up in that space and really coming from, because you know when people talk about mixed income communities, that's still kind of a middle-class trope in 2022.
00:12:29
Speaker
But coming up, I really, like without knowing what it was, it was folks from all different income levels, largely black, but just like really understanding that from a number of people different ah spaces. So that deeply impacted what it meant to see Black folks in different aspects of life.
00:12:53
Speaker
and e And we got certain shows on television now that give us this depiction of the shy, but tell us your own experiences. What was your childhood like?
00:13:05
Speaker
You know, I'm so glad you mentioned the shot. You know, a lot of Chicago ones do not mess with that. Right. Sis, who created the show, you know, she grew up in Shire until she was 12 and then she moved to a suburb and it shows. Oh, even beef, you know, I would tell that to her face. Rob Yeah, for sure. Right, Rob Markman, It's just like, look, you know when you from the crib, you got to tell that story right.
00:13:28
Speaker
like So you know like what they did with The Wire, they told that story right. right Now, you know the whole joint, the power joint that 50 has put off, you know Tommy seen the white dude, you know was supposed to be in shot. I'm like, Fiff, don't do that, homie. like When you fuck up stories about the crib, cats going to come for you. like Don't do that right.
00:13:50
Speaker
And I think Chicagoans are sensitive to that because we have the optic of what people think about shy in terms of homicides or what have you. But folks don't actually understand what it means to live under that type of hypersegregation where conflict is created by state mechanisms to get people at each other. Right. So as a young person,
00:14:15
Speaker
you really understand that, right? And you really understand, like, I remember when I first heard the word occupation and somebody was talking about it. And the first thing I said, y'all, real talk, first thing I said was, damn, that's the crib.
00:14:29
Speaker
Like when somebody was talking about an occupied state, I was like, oh shit, that's the crib. Like that's what it meant. And you had to make something out of that.
00:14:40
Speaker
And I was just thinking about it earlier today. You had to exist. understanding at any given point, you know, that it popped off on a swivel. Like you, you know, everything could be peaceful. You could be at a community event, all sudden all it takes is one thing to just kind of pop it off.
00:14:57
Speaker
And police were never in those situations to address any broad-based community ills. They were really there to suppress whatever was happening, right? So the preemptive measure became on our heads.
00:15:16
Speaker
I'm walking down 87th Street, you know, cops would pull up and just like, what is happening, man? And after a while, you start to become conditioned to it.
00:15:27
Speaker
And there's a particular type of conditioning. It's not a healthy conditioning. But at the same time, it made you either more fearful of death or less fearful of it.
00:15:41
Speaker
like Just being like, look, this is what it is, then this shit, here's what it is. like You existed in spaces where you're not trying to just go out and try to martyr yourself, but you know in certain situations, if it pops off in a particular way, you might not make it back to the crib. And that's not...
00:16:03
Speaker
so much with interactions amongst Black people, but that was more so interactions with the state, right? Because a lot of times when people hear me say that, they think I'm talking about interactions with other Black folks.
00:16:17
Speaker
Like for the most part, if you was cool, folks kept it cool. Like folks weren't willing to kind of pop it off just because, right? That's the stereotypical trope. What it really was is that if you were assumed to be in violation of anything, right? So there's a hip hop group here in Chicago called Quelo, they used to have this song and they would say, you've been convicted of a class X crime called black and breathing. right So that thing around really what it means to understand that. So that relationship to the state really impacted how
00:16:59
Speaker
I felt it made me very irreverent of authority. And it also made me very clear around understanding not just the prison industrial complex, but carcerality.
00:17:14
Speaker
Right. Because, you know, you in schools and Learning. Was really done not because of school. But really in spite of it, right? So it was like these teachers who were just like, look, all this bullshit they telling y'all, let's get to the real and let's engage it.
00:17:34
Speaker
But when you talk about school, that was the anomaly, right? That wasn't the grouping of people who were committed to that thing. right that I had a couple of teachers who were committed to that, but that wasn't because of the institution.
00:17:48
Speaker
That was actually them fighting the institution. So like that carcerality, that really understanding occupation, like man, I can't tell y'all. like When I first heard about like South Africa and Palestine, i was like, oh, shit, that's the crib. Those are the same principles.
00:18:05
Speaker
a And even to the point where You know, we have these digital cameras here in Chicago that are used in all these forms of surveillance.
00:18:17
Speaker
And that was a technology that was first used in the refugee camps in Ramallah. There's a tangible, concrete context to this. It just made it so clear that I was a young person navigating an occupied state.
00:18:36
Speaker
Right. But still... being able to make that claim to joy. like So it's a heavy contradiction. As a Chicagoan, I reflect on that a lot and I understand that a lot, but just really understanding that contradiction and what does it mean to exist in that kind of police state.
00:18:56
Speaker
And what does it mean to like claim joy in that police state? It happened for me. It was athletics. ah It's going sound funny to y'all, but reading. like i think reading actually saved me being able to navigate school.
00:19:10
Speaker
Because I could read early on. So I knew that it would be harder for folks to fool me because I would have the questions that I would ask would be in relationship to what it was that I was reading.
00:19:23
Speaker
So those were deeply important things for me coming up. And then even as a older person being able to reflect on. You said a little bit about schools and your agency within it.
00:19:35
Speaker
And I really appreciate this idea of joy in the midst of it. You know, I'm from the Bay area and we're just extremely cocky. We feel like we created everything that the nation uses, the terminology.
00:19:48
Speaker
and so when you talk about joy, like what's, what y'all known for in the shot, what you feel like, what was a part of that joy and that happiness? Man, look, it's February right now. Summertime Shy is like that all time thing. like People don't really understand, like when Kanye put that in a song, Cash was like, oh, like we rockin' with you in all your madness, Kanye. We fuckin' with you because that Summertime Shy, that is all things because The weather is so brutal here.
00:20:18
Speaker
When the weather breaks here in Shia, the best piece to, and and I'm a little bit older, so there's a movie, I always appreciated The Wiz. Like, Wizard of Oz was always trash to me. It was like, look, The Wiz is that shit, right? Like that,
00:20:31
Speaker
i'm trying to figure out if you was trying to play me or us and act like we didn't know what the Wiz was. What the Wiz was. I got to check it because look, you know, man, look, Jewel, to your point, I always have to say that because i am my students, my college students right now were born in like 0-1.
00:20:53
Speaker
oh one I have to make like hello reference to be like, oh, i have to say stuff like there was this movie called The Wiz. I got to be like, y'all need to peep that. Right. And then I just give them like little scenes.
00:21:09
Speaker
But in Shy, It goes back to the Wiz, especially the movie version, and Can You Feel a Brand New Day? That scene, that is summertime shy. you know I like the song, everybody look around.
00:21:23
Speaker
There's a brand new feeling. shit, shit.
00:21:27
Speaker
that's what That's what it feels like when the weather breaks. You just like, look and it's an ill piece in the Wiz because everybody is coming out of the costumes, like the evil costumes. They like breaking out.
00:21:39
Speaker
That is summertime shot. That's so powerful. When June hit, In Chicago as a young black man, you couldn't force me to do anything related to school. I was like, uh-uh, uh-uh.
00:21:53
Speaker
I'm in the street, homie. I'm in the street all day. like I would just be standing the corner. like, what you doing? Look, I'm just outside. I'm just outside. Right? I mean, but that, I think shy, food, that food,
00:22:09
Speaker
Because, actually, Shai's known for fool because hypersegregation, right? Because folks couldn't go anywhere without conflict. So now people had ethnic enclaves where they could actually live out their culture, right? So now you had those particular types of fool, like here in Shai, we got a straight pipeline from Mississippi, right? So like in the Bay, y'all got the pipeline from Louisiana and Texas. so Here in Shire, it would be considered by folks in Mississippi as up south, right? So it's neighborhoods that you would look at that look similar to spaces in Jackson, Mississippi, right? So that type of relationship. So food, summertime, Shire, and then just
00:22:53
Speaker
blatant honesty about the world. You know what I mean? Because it's like, look, what else can you do to me? It's three degrees outside, homie. like Man, look, what do we have time for to lie? What are we doing?
00:23:07
Speaker
All we got is what is in us to do whatever it is that we're trying to do. Folks respect that gate in Chicago. So when if you're trying to do it, folks, they check it for you because That's what it really means to be in a space, you know, Rust Belt space, folks grinding, right? You out here doing stuff, whether it's part of the formal economy or not.
00:23:31
Speaker
But that grind, that type of hustle is always respected in terms of people see you for that. And then they see if you are...
00:23:42
Speaker
willing to follow up on what it is that you say you're going to do. right So, shy keeps you accountable. There's no room for fakeness. You're going to get put on the carpet quick.
00:23:54
Speaker
If you come in, as the elders here say, selling wolf tickets, right you that ain't going to work. I got an uncle who just turned 99. So that's how he talks to me. He's like, Youngblood, y'all don't need streets.
00:24:09
Speaker
You know them white folks, we trying to sell y'all wolf tickets, but look, what you trying to do? so that's literally how he talks. So it's like, right, look, it ain't no choice but to do it in that particular way.
00:24:25
Speaker
Yeah. Yo, we just had Stove singing. And you had a good voice too. You know what I think about? Like a whole bunch of y'all, like you you mentioned Kanye and I'm like, come on, say a little bit more.
00:24:37
Speaker
But like y'all like set the stage for music. I feel like, I'm not going to Kanye started it or nothing, but I'm to this, Kanye did his stay and it was just like, I just seeing all these artists from the shy just setting the agenda for music for a solid decade.
00:24:53
Speaker
You know, full disclosure, I went to high school with Common. We used to hoop together, right? So and I remember when he had come to a summer league game and I remember my coach was like,
00:25:04
Speaker
Where's Lonnie? And I was not like, what? and And I was like, shit, where's Rosh? Because his his name is Lonnie Rasheed Lynn. So we all called him Rosh. I remember but where I was.
00:25:16
Speaker
And he was like, see that boy over there trying to be Ron DMC? And I was like, what I was like, what? What are they talking about?
00:25:27
Speaker
then I running into Ross. was like, Ross, you ain't hooping. He was like, no, I'm going to do this hip hop thing. And he took it seriously. And he pushed that. But you know before hip hop, you had all these soul. And I would encourage y'all to check out this sister named Ayana Contratas.
00:25:43
Speaker
she does this ah show on Chicago Soul because, you know, Curtis Mayfield, Donny Hathaway, you know, folks, Minnie Ripperton, you know, these are Chaka Khan.
00:25:54
Speaker
These are folks who come from Chicago, right, in terms of doing their work. Now, the other thing, and I'm glad you mentioned this, Tiff, because The other part that was deeply influential to me musically as a Chicagoan was house music, right?
00:26:10
Speaker
And we don't get that love like, Chai is one of the foundational spaces for house music, right? Because the term house comes from a club that used to be played at here in Chicago called the Warehouse.
00:26:23
Speaker
So house music comes from Chicago, right? And that, so Frankie Knuckles, even though he's from New York, he didn't start spinning that way until he came to Chicago. right Another house DJ by the name of Ron Hardy, who's actually from California, came to Chicago. And that's how we get this type. And then we also had we had DJs here, you know, Marshall Jefferson, Steve Hurley.
00:26:46
Speaker
We had a group of folks on a radio station called WBMX with the Hot Mix 5. So as a young person, it was hip hop and house music, but house music first, because house music was really a description of the way disco music was spun.
00:27:04
Speaker
Yeah. And then people brought in kind of new wave music from Western Europe. And then what we would call in Chicago acid tracks were that combination of the Western European sound with shy based stuff. And then that moved up to Detroit.
00:27:20
Speaker
And that's how you got Detroit techno. Detroit techno was actually a black sound before you know white folks got into it or what have you. So house music was deeply influential.
00:27:32
Speaker
for me coming up because there was this amalgamation because, you know, Chicago is where gospel music comes from. So Thomas Dorsey, At first, Baptist Church, he was a blues artist.
00:27:45
Speaker
So he just was using blues chords. And then he started calling it gospel music, the music of the gospel. Right. So this thing around really understanding that deep historical musical trajectory in Chicago and how that lives in us, because house music.
Cultural Identity through Music
00:28:04
Speaker
is so influential, particularly in folks of my age in my age grouping, because it was something that was black creative space. And more importantly, it was black queer space.
00:28:18
Speaker
i So house music is black queer music. Period. It ain't no ifs, ands, or buts. If you do not have an LGBTQAI understanding of the origins of house music, you got it all fucked up.
00:28:33
Speaker
It must be understood as Black queer space, right? So I was a visitor in that Black queer space, right? I'm in seventh, eighth grade, my cousin's sneaking me into parties and i'm like,
00:28:45
Speaker
It's cold. I'm like, it's cold. ah This is the business. Because the music was so, because it was the combination of disco, Western European, New Wave, Soul, you know, those long disco 12 inches. like I mean, like man, it was a whole situation. So...
00:29:05
Speaker
House became that grounding point, right? And now, you know, you got folks and really an independent hip hop, because I think that's an important space. So, you know, folks like Chance, Saba, all these young bloods who are really pushing the envelope, but also realizing that the major label slavery was not the way to go.
00:29:29
Speaker
Right? So this thing around really doing work differently, but house music is a deep influence on my own understanding and just really house music allowed me to understand intersectionality before I even had the term.
00:29:45
Speaker
Right? This was Black queer folk, folk from other spaces, Latinx folks, all folks coming into the same space, this deeply creative space. Going back to the Wiz,
00:29:59
Speaker
Back to the Wiz. I'm telling y'all, this shit is like hella influential, right? I remember being in a party and I was in high school and it's still in my head. I mean, I'll be 50 this summer and it's still in my head.
00:30:15
Speaker
I was in a party and they had a screen and on the screen they were playing the Wiz, the song You Got to Be Seen.
00:30:25
Speaker
Y'all, this, you know, you got to be seen in green. You know, all that stuff. It's got to be gold. It's gold. That's it. Man, look. I love that so much. And everybody in the party started strolling around like they were doing in the scene. I was like, this is cold, right?
00:30:47
Speaker
So when Madonna is scraping Vogue culture from New York City, I'm like, man, look. You gotta get right. Don't do it twice wrong. Exactly. Don't get it twisted. it twisted. Do it that's what's up.
00:31:04
Speaker
And it goes back to Lena Waithe with the shy, right? It's like, man, you got to get that right. you got to You got to tell that story right. And my fear is that when you don't confer with the people who are going through the pieces and who are going through those experiences,
00:31:20
Speaker
you're destined to get it wrong. And to Kenji's point, twice wrong. Yeah, that was definitely twice wrong. so Right. You're mentioning the Wiz and then you bring up, you know, the creators, current creators of Chirac. And I'm like, you know, I've met Barry Gordy. I've met these kinds of folks. And so there's a groundedness, but then there's also that funk that comes with, I think, further in incorporation.
00:31:42
Speaker
So, and one thing that's sticking out me sharing all this, you talked about, really, i heard, references to this place as an enclosure, as an outreach or a colony, right? That you were under occupation and that there was this, you said Black breath was the crime. So you have Black breath, Black music, Black creativity in spite of state violence.
00:32:06
Speaker
And I'm wondering about your experiences within schooling spaces where you were referring to the the teachers who were doing the work and the young folks doing the work of education in spite of school.
00:32:17
Speaker
Yeah, i mean, I think for me it was big, like around fourth or fifth grade. So i had this really kind of unique schooling experience. So, you know, we talk about the lack of black males in schools.
00:32:33
Speaker
I actually had three black male teachers in school. Each of them had their own kind of take, but the one who really understood it was this woman named Miss Lester. How she just kind of approached things, she was like, look, y'all get this thing twisted and y'all get too much into what people are expecting of you in terms of these rules.
00:32:57
Speaker
But it's something else out here. Right. And now you got to figure out what that thing is. Right. And had a fourth grade teacher named Mr. Dennis, who ended up being one of my high school football coaches.
00:33:10
Speaker
And he was like, look, man, you got to be clear about what this is, because the world is going to come for you in certain ways. And if you're not careful, you won't see it.
00:33:22
Speaker
Right. Until it's just kind of washed over you. So now you have to figure out what it is that you are trying to do. Right. And then i had this teacher in high school, this white dude named Mr. Winter.
00:33:38
Speaker
And he was just like, man, he was just like this too cool for school type dude. He was like, grades. What is that? i mean like He literally was like, what? Come on, man. He said, the most important thing is for you to be able to engage. I want you to be able to see how you look at the world. I want you to articulate that to folks outside yourself. And then i had another teacher named Searsen, and he was like, man, look, whatever it is that you want to do, my encouragement is for you to do it.
00:34:08
Speaker
The thing is Remember that you're articulating it to this broad audience. So how do you want this broad audience to understand what it is that you are doing?
00:34:19
Speaker
And it was heavy for me because it was a speech class. I gave a speech on like farting. High school Dave Stovall random shit. This had big fart go. And he was in the back cracking
00:34:37
Speaker
Then my other homegirl, we still crack jokes about this to this day. She gave her speech around her first period and we was all like, oh shit. I mean, it was all types of stuff. if though He just opened it up for us and he was just like, look, i don't care. He was like, I don't care what people are talking about, what you shouldn't be doing.
00:34:56
Speaker
That's the least of my concerns. The thing is now let's look at what it is that you are articulating, right? That was the first time y'all I'd ever seen a rubric. Right. because So he was just like, this is what verbal communication should do.
00:35:12
Speaker
Right. It should get people to be able to understand what it is that you're saying. It should have a space for people to be able to ask questions. And it should be a reflection of who you are, not necessarily what people believe you to be.
00:35:28
Speaker
Right. So that thing around really kind of opening it up. But like said, all of those teachers were renegades. They knew the rules of school were trash.
00:35:39
Speaker
They knew that that just didn't work. Right. So that thing for me was to be able to see that. I look if y'all going with that, I'm a rock with that. I'm like, I'm going take it as far as I can, because once I saw that,
00:35:52
Speaker
I was always looking for that. but I was always looking for the person who was willing to break ranks. who was willing to refute all this other stuff that people were putting forward? right Who was willing to say, all right, look, there's something else here.
00:36:07
Speaker
You can engage it, but you got to do it. And it wasn't until later that I you know started to connect it to it and saying like, man, people have been doing this for a long time, but that history and that reality has broadly been kept from us.
00:36:21
Speaker
I didn't learn the lessons of my grandmother until much later in life, right? Because my grandmother would have all these books at the crib. Like she had, Toni Morrison published a book in the 70s called The Black Book. That was in my grandmother's crib, right? Like she had books by Dick Gregory. She had Lena Horne's autobiography, Lorraine Hansberry's.
00:36:44
Speaker
work. She had a biography of Dorothy Dandridge. So now my grandmother passed at a 100 three years ago. I have all her books now, but I didn't put that together until I got to senior year in high school and like undergrads be like, damn, that was literally at my grandmother's crib for all this time.
00:37:06
Speaker
I had to be opened up to come back and connect to what she was already putting out. right So that thing around really kind of thinking about what those trajectories do and what they mean.
00:37:20
Speaker
You had schooling experiences that many of us did not, but do you consider those experiences to be the impetus to why you became an educator or like were there central experiences or was there a pivotal moment where you knew that you had some type of calling to work with young people and to work with your community?
Journey to Education and Daily Practices
00:37:40
Speaker
Yeah, it was three things in particular. One was a study group my freshman year. So I went to University Illinois Urbana-Champaign, but I had a cousin who was four years older than me who went there. So she do all the ropes, kind of laced me in terms of what was going on.
00:38:01
Speaker
So she introduced me to Ray, Ray Westbrook. I was like, OK, word. So he took me to this study group. And one of the first books in that study group was Bell Hooks and Our Woman.
00:38:15
Speaker
The other book was Carter G. Woodson's The Miseducation of the Negro. Right. So it was that space. And then at the same time, you know, this is kind of heavy, you know, student push for ethnic studies.
00:38:29
Speaker
They were just coming off the anti-apartheid stuff. And. it was. that kind of push to have this kind of authentic representation around Black Studies, which was really a return to Black Studies, Latinx Studies, Asian American Studies, and folks were kind of moving on that. So before I even started classes as in undergrad, I was actually at a protest.
00:38:55
Speaker
I was literally on the president's lawn. You know, undergrad, young bloods moving around. saying look, we got this protest. All right, shit, yeah. right So we we just go, I go to the protest. And the thing that I was thinking about is oh how do we connect this?
00:39:10
Speaker
And Ray had had the study group. And then I met these cats from Detroit who were older. They were doing youth work and organizing. And one of the things that they said to me was, look,
00:39:24
Speaker
you know, it's one thing to read about this. It's another thing to do it. Those experiences were deeply influential. And then had a professor named Tracy Orr.
00:39:36
Speaker
And Tracy Orr really kind of put me on. She was just like, man, look, to hell with all this. We're just going to do our shit in a way that we do it. And they ended up firing her. And I saw the capacity of what it meant to do work in a very different way.
00:39:55
Speaker
And then I was doing work in a school-based program. And one of the homies actually said, he was like, man, look, you know, you do this pretty good. You should think about, you know, figuring out ways where you could do this on a more consistent basis.
00:40:11
Speaker
And I was like, okay, cool. And that kind of amalgamation of experiences really kind of pushed me to say, all right, look, I know very clearly what I got from critically conscious educators.
00:40:26
Speaker
How can I expand that work? That was the question i was asking myself, like, like how how can I do work in the same vein with my own contribution to it and then thinking about what does it mean to work collectively with folks doing that work.
00:40:43
Speaker
Those were kind of the conduit experiences that allowed me to kind of see, okay, There's a connection to people and there's a connection to history that we often miss.
00:40:58
Speaker
Because like for me, Patrick Camagnon always says this. And when he said it, it clicked for me. He was like, look, we got to come to grips with what it is that we've been dispossessed ah of.
00:41:10
Speaker
For me, it was always, all right, this stuff has been stolen from us, but it's been stolen from us for particular reason. Now, if we recognize why it's been stolen, there's all the greater imperative to get our shit back.
00:41:27
Speaker
Right? So this thing around really being definitely intentional around what that looked like, right? Those mistakes and everything in it, those experiences deeply shaped my approach to education over schooling.
00:41:44
Speaker
Mm-hmm. I really appreciate hearing your story and like how you grew up in Chicago. One of the experiences that I shared with you, and I don't know if you'll remember, but it was after some conference and we were with a group of people and we went to a bar by the lake.
00:42:04
Speaker
And there was some interaction that happened
00:42:09
Speaker
And it felt like racial, like one of the white men says something and it was either to you or to somebody that we were with. Right. And I remember there was another brother there that was like talking to you and y'all were like whispering to each other, like almost like a prayer, like back and forth.
00:42:26
Speaker
We talk a lot about toxic masculinity and what this looks like in violence. But this was one of my first interactions where I was seeing masculinity, operating in a different way because you and your the person that you were talking to were very firm about the safety of everybody around you, but you also didn't come out of whatever character we've seen in other people.
00:42:50
Speaker
And so one of the questions I'm really interested in is like, where did you learn intimacy or like surrendering to yourself as a Black man? And how does that allow you to really experience your full humanity?
00:43:04
Speaker
No, thank you for that question. One very direct answer, Black radical feminism. Real talk. Hey, I like to hear it You know, just really understanding that because coming up, my gender understandings were not good, just to being deeply honest about that.
00:43:26
Speaker
And what I had to come to grips with was that type of space not only made folks feel uncomfortable, but it was contributing to that oppressive space and running counter to what we know we need in terms of what will free us.
00:43:49
Speaker
It's a heavy piece because you get caught into the individual experience and the type of relationship space because a lot of times that comes out in relationship space.
00:44:01
Speaker
But what it really was was to say, right, look, this isn't going to work long term. Right. And I think that realization, like it's not going to work.
00:44:16
Speaker
right That's not going to work. All you're going to do is make spaces more unsafe. e Right. So now how do you operate in ways that really kind of think about what happens? And to your point, Jewel, I had to come to grips with a bunch of shit because I have deeply jeopardized friendships over this, right? In terms of you know folks that I trust and love who were just like, nah, still well we're not really fucking with you. And I was like, oh shit, damn.
00:44:54
Speaker
right and the initial response is always, but wait, I'm a good person. And a good friend of mine was like, but wait, that's not the point. When you come to grips with that, right? And another thing that's really hit me, and talk about this friendship that almost became severed.
00:45:14
Speaker
One of the things that I had to realize was, If we are never to speak again, how do I live the lesson that was brought forward by my own errant behavior?
00:45:28
Speaker
Right. And coming to grips with that. And it took another homie to pull me aside and be like, look, you can repair this. But you have to do it.
00:45:42
Speaker
It was wild because it was like this, you know, bunch of people around and shit. And she said, let me talk to you real quick. And I was like, right, shit, a word. You know, I'm like, word, okay, shit, fuck it.
00:45:52
Speaker
Right? And her face got hella serious. Boom. I was like, oh shit, this is for real. Right? So now you have to think about that because I was just in the world doing shit, right? And it was kind of this steamroll thing, right? You just, you're just doing shit, doing shit. And then you you know, folks look up and you like, yeah, what you on? Like, man, I'm doing such such and such. All right. Yeah, I'm over here, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:46:18
Speaker
And it just becomes performative, right? yeah you You're not really kind of building out what it is you're trying to do, right? And it took for me, black radical feminism but also reflecting on how it impacts me.
00:46:39
Speaker
Right. And then really kind of having that reflection and being like, oh, shit, this is where this went awry. Right. This is where I didn't do X, X, X, X. And I'm like, damn, I have to now think about what is that responsibility largely on self and with others, right, in terms of being able to have, you know, that conversation, because that conversation, to your point, too that conversation is funky.
00:47:15
Speaker
I think it's funky because we don't have it enough and it's not in our toolkit to even have it in a way that's authentic and genuine.
00:47:27
Speaker
So I had to struggle with that. right I had to be like, all right, look. And I had to get out of the space of thinking about it as a personal attack. right It's really around, it's not on you being the banality of evil. right That's not it.
00:47:47
Speaker
It's really around saying, how do you recognize the spaces where people have been harmed? How do you participate in that harm? And then what are you willing to do to rectify that situation?
00:48:00
Speaker
And you hold a lot of weight with it because, you know, i started doing circles around, and this is with other folks younger than myself, around sexual violence. Yo, man, I mean, like the weight of that.
00:48:14
Speaker
When you holding circles in that way, you got to grapple with that weight. And I had to figure out ways to really... do that in a way that was sustainable, but also in a way to kind of held myself to account.
00:48:31
Speaker
And, you know, it's still a hell of a lot of work to do. You know, my road is as bumpy as the next person, if not more. But yeah, just think about, you know, just really having very intense conversation with myself, but also being what it means to be in communities with folks who will hold me enough to tell me when I'm moving ride.
00:48:55
Speaker
And just like a question from that, because I absolutely understand what you mean. Like when you learn about womanist theories and black feminist radicalism, you're able to like explore other ways of how people are experiencing life.
00:49:09
Speaker
And what I've also learned is like, yes, you learn the language and this is coming from, i would consider myself like a womanist. I learned the language early on, but I was still doing some cuff shit. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:49:22
Speaker
And so, oh, excuse me. I'm sorry. I'm not supposed to be cussing. So edit that out. Let me... I didn't know we couldn't touch this. Because what I'm getting at is I definitely remember learning the language and I remember being like, you are a patriarch, misogynistic... But I also remember like taking actions and this is like We're going to say this, the old jewel, even this was yesterday, but we just got to say this, the old jewel.
00:49:47
Speaker
Even if that meant like I understood the language, but I was still participating with those actions, mainly like sleeping with those men or like still interacting with those men, allowing those men in community. And so what I'm interested in because this has been a part of my process, like what are those little things? What are those little shifts that you've made that allow you to be accountable It's not like changing your life, but is it waking up earlier and like you know praying and being more conscious?
00:50:15
Speaker
What is that little shift? Because when my God children grow up and they're four and six, I need them to have more language from Black men around what are the rituals and shifts that you take to honor yourself, thus you are also honoring people in your community. Definitely. No, thank you for that. And for me, those little shifts include...
00:50:38
Speaker
a daily meditation around the people that I am working in community with, the folks that I love, and what is the work needed to move forward in those spaces. That's every day.
00:50:55
Speaker
The other part is to be very intentional about a regimen of exercise. For me, exercise is a way for me to begin my thought process, right? So it's not as much the physical space, but exercise is a mental exercise.
00:51:18
Speaker
So I engage in that and try my best to be consistent around that. My partner put me up on Qigong, right? So I do Qigong every week.
00:51:29
Speaker
And Qigong is in Chinese life science and movement energy, they refer to it as the cultivation of life force energy, right? And not to sound so esoteric, but it's really around these movements actually activate certain meridians in the body to get you more in tune with your body.
00:51:50
Speaker
Right. So you can actually see where the problem you can feel where the problems are to address them. Right. So those things have been very important. And now other thing that is deeply connected to that.
00:52:08
Speaker
is getting older, right? So my father, who's 81, says this to he's like, look man, the longer you're around, the more people get younger.
00:52:22
Speaker
He was
00:52:26
Speaker
just like, it's good. like every Like everybody gets younger thinking about the responsibility in that, right? Because like you my undergrads monograss were born in 01, 02, real talk.
00:52:40
Speaker
Right? So now when you think about that, I mean, somebody born in 02 is 20. So now you think about what that means, right? And where you were, where was in 02, right? So now thinking about that and not admonishing folks for not having those experiences, because that's a lot of times what we see folks do, you know, what's wrong with y'all? All y'all need to do is pull up y your pants. And if you just pull up your pants, Right. Right. Right.
00:53:11
Speaker
We'll be okay. It's like, come on, man. but what we What are we doing? Right. So I think for me, those instances really become important because it allows me to see some things and reflect in a particular way because no coming up, I wasn't a very reflective person. it was just like, look,
00:53:32
Speaker
Let's get it. No, however it go. If we don't make it, shit, we go on with the storm. Right. I mean, like that type of peace became like this kind of quick way to martyrdom. Right. But yeah to your point, Jewel, I think it's really around being deeply intentional about those little things because the little things accumulate.
00:53:53
Speaker
Right. the Little things, because, I mean, that's really what illness is. Right. Or this is right. haven't paid attention to those little things. And now they build up to where it's literally a problem in our bodies.
00:54:07
Speaker
Right. So now how do we do that kind of early detection? in our practice, right? What is a practice of early detection, right? And really understand. And it changed my language around, you know, a lot of times people talk about work-life balance, which is some bullshit, right? But really it's supposed to be this, all of this stuff here, then all of this stuff here. and That's just not how life works, right? But what Qigong challenged me to think about was,
00:54:35
Speaker
what is a harmonious experience? Right? So now harmony says you have to dedicate some time to some things where you may pull back from others.
00:54:46
Speaker
You may have to dedicate some time to something else and pull back from something else because what you're trying to do is create harmony, which was a really important lesson for me because i always thought the work-life balance was just kind of trash in terms of how people talked about it. You know, now you've got the work-life balance expert coming to the gig telling you some slick shit. You just like, come on, man.
00:55:10
Speaker
In real space, that just does not work. Home Equal Plan, right? So, but Harmony says, here's how you can think about the work, right? What do you need to pull back from and what do you need to move towards?
00:55:23
Speaker
Which is a very deeply important lesson for me in terms of how to move in the world differently. And to your point, Juul, very small practices that now allow you some foresight so you can see a little differently.
00:55:43
Speaker
I like that you said that because also what's wrapped up in how we talk about Black masculinity is this idea that Black men have to produce to be worthy. As a woman who also dates men, I know that I also like feed into that stereotype and I'm like consciously working through that. So if you could give ah Black man or a Black boy advice,
00:56:09
Speaker
What would that be? Because I think so much of their identity has been rooted in, can you build a house? Because I definitely ask. Oh, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Can you build a crib? Can you protect it?
00:56:21
Speaker
Right? That type of thing. This takes me back to a conversation about five years ago. And this one, it threw me for one. A young brother called me and he was like, man, I need to rap to you. And I was like, okay, cool.
00:56:35
Speaker
So I meet up with him. This was when a lot of the protests, folks were just kind of coming off of Ferguson, being reminded of the ways in which black life is castigated, because it's not a new thing, of course.
00:56:49
Speaker
It was a lot of young people doing a lot of different work around the city. And because folks haven't wrestled with gender, a lot of folks were being harmed.
00:57:02
Speaker
yeah We saw just an explosion of this. right He said to me, he said, yeah, man, I've been going through a lot, but I'm having some questions around how I'm moving in the world and trying to see that I'm staying on point because I feel like this thing could go awry very quickly.
00:57:23
Speaker
And at that moment, y'all, I saw my 21-year-old self. I was like, oh, shit. Like after our conversation, I called my mom.
00:57:34
Speaker
I was like, yo, I just had the wildest conversation. And she was like, what was was going i was like, man, I was literally talking to my 21 year old self. But I love her response though. She said, well, what did you say?
00:57:49
Speaker
i I was because like, damn, bomb for the win, right? But what was happening in that space, yeah I had had the similar experiences. no you know Movement stuff, you know you doing shit, and i then you go, then the folk got the party, then the party is the it's the party after the party, and then it's just you posted up. It's like maybe about three or four y'all there.
00:58:15
Speaker
And you look around like, Because I was always a person trying to close parties down. Like that was my victory condition. Like um we we going so hard, we going to shut it down. That's when I go to the crib, right?
00:58:26
Speaker
So, but then in that space, the conversations often become more intimate her and assumptions can be made.
00:58:38
Speaker
And the question becomes, now, what is the wherewithal that you have in that space? to ask a different question because now where this current thing may appear to be ah good thing, what does it mean? And I would just say to myself, what does it mean four days later when you're in the same space?
00:59:05
Speaker
What does it mean a month later if this didn't go right? I was explaining that to him and he was just like, Yo, have you like been in my head? I was like, no, it's literally just living, man, right?
00:59:21
Speaker
And now how do we pay attention to one of the things that calls us into responsibility is to say, we cannot mimic the world that has castigated to us.
00:59:37
Speaker
You have to do something different. So now who are the people who are doing something different that you can connect to? Right.
00:59:48
Speaker
Like he was tripping and I was tripping. I'm like, damn, I'm literally talking to my 21 year old self. Right. I had an earlier conversation with my father in eighth grade.
01:00:00
Speaker
And my father, he sat me down before I went to high school. He said, man, you know, I never knew my father. And. You're about to see some things. that you probably will be confused by.
01:00:15
Speaker
And that's perfectly fine. But I want you to know if there is ever any time that you need to talk,
01:00:26
Speaker
we should talk. And that was heavy for me because look, y'all, my first day of high school, I was on a bus. This dude who i went who went to my school, was my freshman year first day.
01:00:40
Speaker
He drinking a 40, smashing a 40 in the back of the bus. We all in the back. He's smashing a 40. We get off the bus. He throws the 40 on the lawn. And he was like, welcome to high school.
01:00:52
Speaker
I go to my biology class.
01:00:56
Speaker
My lab partner gets into an argument with the teacher. And he was like, what are you doing back there? Blah, blah, blah, blah. He was like, man, I'm just rolling this ounce with Stovall. He had an ounce in his pants.
01:01:09
Speaker
Right? Look, I ain't been the third period yet. I'm what i like, yo, this is what it is, right? This is what it is. And I was like, okay, okay.
01:01:25
Speaker
And nothing was shocking. right So I was just like, oh, okay, this is what it is. But my father's conversation prepped me for that.
01:01:37
Speaker
Unbeknownst to me. Right. I was just like, right. That's what he was talking about. Oh, this is a whole different set of realities. Now, in that conversation that I was having with that young blood, I understood what that responsibility was.
01:01:54
Speaker
Right. To be able to have that conversation and to be the vulnerability had to happen to say, look, you're not by yourself. Right. You may feel as if you are isolated.
01:02:08
Speaker
Right. But you're not by yourself. Right. Continue to do what you do, but always ask yourself, what does it mean to be responsible one to oneself?
01:02:19
Speaker
What does it mean to be responsible to other people? And then what do you do because you are trying to do that work. Because this is not about your outward facing persona, right? Because, you know, the advent of social media and all these other things.
01:02:34
Speaker
This is literally about when all that shit is shut off and it is just you and you, right? As Capadonna would say, when I'm at the crib, I'm in a by myself meeting.
01:02:45
Speaker
What do you say to yourself in the by myself meeting? yeah That's the concern. When we get there, it gets us away from the tropes, all of the tropes that are surrounding folks. But it's really like, look, man, at the end of the day, i had a godmother who would always say, it is late in the day and the sun has set.
01:03:06
Speaker
What are you trying to do? Right? So that type of piece, I think, really becomes important in terms of just kind of figuring out you know how we can really engage in who we are as cisgendered, hetero, gay, trans men, right? So really, really around what that means for ourselves inwardly. When we answer those inward questions, then it becomes a little easier to engage the outward facing questions.
01:03:44
Speaker
Right. Because we're because it's it's a reflective space. So it's kind of thinking about that. But thank you for asking that, because, you know, we just don't talk about that enough. That conversation that I had with my 21 year old self through that other brother was that was a freak out moment. I was driving to the crib like, yo what just happened right there?
01:04:04
Speaker
And really kind of having the reflection to be like, yeah, okay. And that's what the universe put me in that space to do, right? Because I've had my trials, tribulations, mess ups and the like, but to just be like, all right, look, here's what we can do.
01:04:21
Speaker
You know, Stove, I so appreciate these groundings and jewels, the questions around really these movements towards, I don't even think of them as alternative or non-traditional. I think of them as grounded forms of that energy of masculinity.
01:04:34
Speaker
You were talking about what Cam had talked about, what we've been dispossessed of and knowing what that is. And so, i mean, one of the first interactions I had with you, Stove, was around this point.
01:04:45
Speaker
I was in a conference that just put my head in and was on all kinds of stuff going on and my life at the time. And I caught like one word and you were talking to a room full of critical race educators and you said, what we need to do is stop.
01:05:01
Speaker
This is the PG version. Stop screwing our students. Stop screwing them literally and in all kinds of ways. You mean stop sleeping with them? That's one of them.
01:05:12
Speaker
That's one of them. That was one of them? That's one of them, for sure. And all the other ways. I just want to make sure. Just to be clear. You got to put that one on deck. So talking about what you're dispossessed of, right? The role of an educator. What I'm hearing, these godmothers, these grandmothers, your mother, these other people, your father, who played that part, those radical teachers, who were transmitting...
01:05:31
Speaker
Aesthetics, ah cultural frameworks, practices, if you will, like rituals that would keep you more secure, help you survive, remain more or less autonomous.
01:05:42
Speaker
That we know schooling, which is an outstretched arm of this broader state apparatus, the violence, attempts to dispossess us of and then replace us with basically felt-ish, right? Which has us doing that kind of work, has us operating in a way as so-called men that is aligned with the very conditioning and harm that was done to us, right? That we're reflecting that.
01:06:08
Speaker
And you have made a clarion call in the last few years, along with a host of others, right? That you would probably say stretches all the way back To the first time someone said no, right? and in the In the plantation or the castles or the boat or whatever. the First time someone said and nah, no, no, right?
01:06:28
Speaker
To the saying, we're not about this. We're going to abolish this. We're going to abolish schooling.
Abolition and Creating New Systems
01:06:34
Speaker
I'm thinking about this idea of dispossession and what Jewel's reminding us of around these other possibilities, these older possibilities of ways of being.
01:06:41
Speaker
Because abolition is, you know, 20%, the sexy work of dismantling saying no. But the part that I always hear you inviting us back to is, okay, what are we building?
01:06:52
Speaker
Who are we building with? Where are we heading towards? If it's no to this, what are we saying yes to? I'm wondering if you can say a little bit more about that work as you've seen it develop and where you see it going around school abolition in particular.
01:07:06
Speaker
This is this moment, right? So when we think about the COVID moment, we think about all this transpired in the COVID moment. ah Another thing to put in our consciousness is Movement work often operates around breakage, right?
01:07:20
Speaker
It's breaking the orthodoxy. It's breaking of these particular systems. But at the same time, this simultaneous commitment to build. I think the most important thing that I've learned from abolition is whatever it is that you are trying to dismantle,
01:07:39
Speaker
There is the greater responsibility to build something else. Come on. This is the thing that people miss because people just kind of located it in this kind of anarchistic ploy.
01:07:49
Speaker
Right. But what it really is saying is, no, these things can exist. So now what are we doing? to build something else out, right?
01:08:01
Speaker
And that, I think, really becomes important. So if we think about classroom spaces, this is a real content and pedagogy question, right? So what are you doing in those spaces, right?
01:08:13
Speaker
And it's also really understanding non-reformist reform and Please excuse the academic trap. Because, you know, ah being employed as academic boy, you talking about the most circular conversations.
01:08:29
Speaker
just be like, damn, y'all. Can somebody just say that liminal means in between? That quotient means It's like, come on, y'all. What are we doing, man?
01:08:43
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. But I think non-reformist reform becomes important because what that really is is saying, what do we do in the meantime? If abolition is our aspiration, what are we doing in the meantime?
01:08:57
Speaker
yeah But more importantly, does the work in the meantime build us out to do something different. And I want like this very clear example for me.
01:09:09
Speaker
There's a sister here in Chicago named Natalie Moore, who's a journalist for Chicago's NPR affiliate WBZ. She went to Finland over the summer to look at their, what they refer to as open prisons.
01:09:26
Speaker
And she interviewed Finland's kind of version of the head of the Department of Corrections. This is this white Finnish woman, right? And she says, we have to consider and think seriously about whether or not these places need to exist.
01:09:46
Speaker
And the work that we're doing right now is trying to answer that question. i was like, oh, oh. oh Moving towards it. Yeah, she was just like, look.
01:09:59
Speaker
Because she was like, we're clear. talking about reducing crime, prisons don't work. She's like, we know that as a Department of Corrections. She's like, we know this. I think it's called like the Finnish service of like it's connected to the courts.
01:10:17
Speaker
Right. And she's just like, look, we know that this doesn't deter crime, nor does it stop it. So now if we think about what folks need, can we create non-carceral institutions that are centered around what people need? Because now when you think about it in that way, one of the real issues in the meantime to address stateside as much as incarceration is recidivism.
01:10:48
Speaker
Right. So really people going back. Right. So once you get to the outside now, because there's nothing there for you, there's a greater chance that you go back. So now if you're talking about building something different, now we have to think about what is the need.
01:11:04
Speaker
Right. So if our building project, the project of building, the abolitionist project of building requires us to center ourselves in the needs of people.
01:11:17
Speaker
Right. And I think that becomes important. So when you get stuff like the elimination of cash bail, that's a good thing. It's still a non reformist reform. It's getting us somewhere. Yeah.
01:11:28
Speaker
It's made an intentional interruption, but we got to push. We got to push some more. We got schools here in Chicago that don't have grades. grades are rewards for you regurgitating the rules of white supremacy, period.
01:11:43
Speaker
and Let's just talk about it what it is, right? So now if we know that to be true, what if we got rid of that and said, all right, this person has demonstrated proficiency, this person is good with it, this person needs some more support.
01:11:57
Speaker
And what's really interesting about that school that doesn't use grades, if any young person needs more support, That cannot be where the assessment stops.
01:12:11
Speaker
Come That's where the assessment starts, right? So now we think about this in a completely different way. So it's really putting on deck what we've known for quite some time, but now really putting it into some structural actions, right? And I think this is really kind of challenging us. So I i got one of my undergrads classes on the politics of incarceration.
01:12:37
Speaker
The thing that I always start with is, look, we know worldwide what deters crime and actually keeps folks out of jail.
01:12:48
Speaker
We know it. right We got 80 years of data to show us. i my If somebody has ah viable place to live, ah viable place to work, something yeah healthy to eat, right and viable access to education, we know that the chances of them being incarcerated reduce anywhere from 75 to 95%. We know this. right The issue is, where is the political will to do that?
01:13:18
Speaker
Right. And you got other countries who do that. Like Finland has a quote unquote prison system where you go out to work, come back and actually got access to counseling. I was like, damn.
01:13:33
Speaker
Right. And the counseling is set up so that you never come back. So really it's around. We know these things.
01:13:45
Speaker
that work, right? But to what extent are we willing to get out of the mode of sacrificing our own, right? Because that's you know that's always the thing around schools, right? It's like, well, these kids can't.
01:13:59
Speaker
Who says that? Who says that, right? Why? And what does it mean when you ascribe to that understanding? So now what are you willing to do to push yourself to think about your work responsibly? And abolitionists saying we got to do a couple of things.
01:14:19
Speaker
We got to think about the internal. We have to think about what we do in the meantime. And we have to think about what is unacceptable.
01:14:27
Speaker
And again, so your point, Candice, it gets us away from the sexiness. We're no longer talking about you know, the slick join, you on a panel. if I a chance to interview Angela Davis, right? hey I'm sitting there her and my mom grew up in towns are very close to each other. You know she's from Birmingham. My mom is from a very small town in Alabama. And my mom was in the audience and I was just like,
01:14:50
Speaker
oh, this is some wild shit. Like I'm literally, I'm three feet away from Angela Davis. right hip And she was just like, look, you have to be clear about what it is that you're trying to do and all the things that contribute to that. So abolition is not just this thing that you now aspire to.
01:15:15
Speaker
Abolition is a struggle in perpetuity. Right. So now how do you now start to think about that in real ways? Like, I really appreciate, you know, the homies for Rima Porkor Sheet, Erica Miners, Beth Ritchie, Christy Anderson Savala, all of the critical resistance folks, Education so for Liberation Network.
01:15:35
Speaker
When they did that Lessons in Liberation book. It's some tough stuff. And that like that that book is hard. Right. Because. What you see in it is how people struggle with the concept, right? And still do their work.
01:15:52
Speaker
That's the important piece, right? Because the struggle for abolition can't be in this kind of sexy time shit, right? It has to be really understanding that there will be not only mistakes made,
01:16:11
Speaker
but misdirection and now what do you do to pull yourself back? Right? And that, like, I really appreciate that book because they're doing some things that are now having us think very differently. And i was saying this to a group of folks a couple of days ago, you know, with Miriam Cabba's, we do this until we free us, man, everybody needs to read that R. Kelly chapter.
01:16:40
Speaker
Because, man, she is putting it out there. And real talk. I don't know if I'm still ready to comprehend what she is putting it out there. Because check out what she says.
01:16:52
Speaker
She says. It is unquestioned what R. Kelly has done and has resulted in the harm of black women. Those harms go deep.
01:17:03
Speaker
They are historical. And they're also a reflection of how he has also been harmed. yeah Then she says, we must be clear.
01:17:16
Speaker
The permanent incarceration of R. Kelly will not end rape culture.
01:17:25
Speaker
I was like, yo, whoa. right You got to grapple with that? Like that's a whole different thing. And what's so interesting that as the example is there was so much harm Black black girls feeling like the Black community did not respond to what he was doing to Black girls for years.
01:17:50
Speaker
yeah And so what felt like a justified consequence was prison because Black people never publicly, collectively responded. You know, there was a lot of like, we seen the video, that girl wouldn't be doing that if she was so young. You know, so there was like a lot of justifying it.
01:18:08
Speaker
So I'm like, I believe in the abolition of prisons and I believe in my community and all of our communities because we are such a nuanced people. And when we're talking about abolishing prisons, we have to start having critical conversations of how will we love and hold our people accountable?
01:18:25
Speaker
When you grapple with that, y'all, like to me, that's when it ain't sexy no more. It's not this thing to just be kind of throwing around slick, using it 10 times in your word search on Google Scholar. It's like, nah, this is when it hits the floor, right? And you gotta be like, look, what are you willing to do in Chicago this past Thursday.
01:18:48
Speaker
A cop by the name of Jason Van Dyke was released after shooting a young black person 16 times, right? He did two years, he was sentenced to six.
01:19:02
Speaker
I had this conversation with my students. was saying, this is what you have to understand about the Jason Van Dyke case. He was convicted not for shooting Laquan McDonald. He was convicted of shooting him too many times.
01:19:16
Speaker
That's where we have to ask yeah the questions. right That's where we have to be clear about this thing. like This isn't fly-by-night fake stuff. right It's really around being like, look, if we're going to grapple with this, the get down is going to be real. like It's not this thing that is an even space. right Because you know real talk, yo i was thinking about it, I was like, man,
01:19:43
Speaker
what is real accountability for somebody like R. Kelly who has harmed so many folks in so many ways? I have to think about like, what is that? Because, you know, the Chicago in me, you know, and plus dude is from Chi, so you know we've known that bullshit for quite some time.
01:20:02
Speaker
ah Right? And now, you think about it and I'm like, man, if one of those parents came up to dude and put two in his dome,
01:20:14
Speaker
It won't solve the problem, but I won't lie and say, I don't understand it. Yeah. Yeah. No, if we don't do this work, that's where we got to get into that funkiness, right? We can't run from that.
01:20:26
Speaker
Right. And that's in the same token, you know, shout to all the women who have been brave enough. Young women, I'm thinking here in Chicago, because in the poetry community, man, we had this onslaught of young women telling their stories around how they have been abused, harmed.
01:20:47
Speaker
and I mean, just dastardly. I mean, it's... surreal stories, right? Where they had the courage to come forward. And I'm just like, damn, me and a homie Asif Wilson, we were talking about this. We were like, man, yo, we can't run from this, man. Like this is a real thing.
01:21:07
Speaker
Cause I think the thing is now we operate in reaction to it in opposed to being, what does it mean to be preemptive in this? Right? So your point, Jewel around what are the entry level conversations that we having with young folks?
01:21:21
Speaker
right who are inundated with social and got all types of stuff that is coming across their eyes and no real way to process it. right And that's really hard to talk about. consent Consent culture in a space where kids are, we talk about prison, but we're talking about schools in a place where kids are kidnapped, for a lack of better words, and held captive throughout the day.
01:21:48
Speaker
What was coming to my mind when you Jule, you and Stover having the conversation around accountability was just the administration of accountability because admin, to me, that's coded as like from a misogynoir perspective, it's coded as like not something men do.
01:22:05
Speaker
We don't do the administrative work. And so it doesn't get the due justice that it deserves and that it needs for actual accountability. I'm thinking about this at the home, at the crib in the life right now. My partner,
01:22:16
Speaker
is talking about just transitions. They're sitting with probation officers, right? Because the question is, if you're going to close young incarcerated spaces out here in California, the truth is a lot of the probation officers are from the very communities that the young folks are from.
01:22:32
Speaker
You're talking about harm and accountability. They're saying harm and accountability. I'm a part of their, these are my family members or I'm here because my brother was so-and-so. And I hear in there, and my partner talked about this, very similar frames to why some of us go into education, why we teach. We go into these spaces that we know might be harmful, but we're from the communities.
01:22:52
Speaker
We're trying to do something different within the apparatus itself. So their work or conversation around how do you administer accountability and abolition is what do people do when the prison shuts down.
01:23:04
Speaker
The people from the community who have a job, who have a life, who's relying upon that, maybe generations of such who have been trying to do the good work. And I hear that a lot in conversations around education and school is, what will we do, us who are educators or operating, getting checks from these very places that we say are a part of our dispossession, our undoing?
01:23:28
Speaker
And I think that that conversation around administering different forms of accountability and futures is what was coming to my mind. But, Kendis, to your question, this is the point around reimagining public safety.
01:23:44
Speaker
Let's just dream for a second in the space, right? If you think of the California Department of Corrections and their probate division, What if the probate division was an anti-recidivism division?
01:24:01
Speaker
What if the thing was, okay, our job is to make sure we do everything humanly possible to keep you out? Right.
01:24:13
Speaker
So now we start to think about those particular spaces. you know, it's these broader questions around political will and what is community control of that space mean.
01:24:26
Speaker
Right. Here in Chicago, there's organization called Equity and Transformation. Shout to the young homie Rob Wallace. What they have done is said, well, look,
01:24:39
Speaker
We've all experienced carcerality in these different ways. Our understanding of the refusal of the carceral state is now to understand how we support ourselves through what they refer to as the informal economy.
01:24:58
Speaker
Right. Which is really mutual aid. So this is everybody for folks selling oils. The young bloods playing drums on buckets. These are sex workers.
01:25:09
Speaker
These are folks who are doing drug counseling. They're saying, look, we have a way by which to reconfigure our realities on our own terms.
01:25:26
Speaker
And here now are some outcomes that we can now start to do. And there's some interesting things that they've been finding around, like they do this work around living wage.
01:25:38
Speaker
So they said, i well, look, we're going to do this. We're to give all our members 500 bucks a month, which isn't a whole lot of money, but we're going to ask them what they use it for. Right.
01:25:50
Speaker
And what they're seeing is that with that little bit of boost, folks try to get settled so they can go out and find living wage employment.
01:26:04
Speaker
So nobody is like posting up, just trying to do some slick shit with it. But they just like, right, well, look, we can use this, take care of these, these necessities over here and then dip right back and Participate because now freed up time and stress so I can do these other things where some may view that as a non reformist reform.
01:26:27
Speaker
I really think about that as the pathway to abolition, because it's saying let's get away from if you give folks a boost, then they're just going to sit on it. We know that's not true.
01:26:39
Speaker
Right? So now thinking about it. o And it's a trauma response. Exactly. Because the arrogance of this country to steal everything, including land and people, to say that you have to prove and work for things.
01:26:55
Speaker
So it's a trauma response in how they act. So yeah, I just have to say that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I mean, you think about Makes me mad. Man, when you think about like Snap or TBT. When you see some of those regulations, yeah like you can't have an income over X. And then if you get a gig, you still can't have an income over X. And then you don't qualify for the assistance. And like, yo, this is untenable.
01:27:26
Speaker
Right? And now when we think about that over time, and this goes to rent assistance and the like. So now when we think about this, this is a broader question that we can't confront, that we have to confront, I should say, in ways that allow us to think differently around those possibilities because we see that there are those possibilities. And I think when we start to think about abolition,
01:27:54
Speaker
We also need to think about abolition as possibility, right? as the pathway to possibility. Again, it's not just the tear down and destruction. It's the capacity to state that certain things are unacceptable and they cannot exist in their current form.
01:28:12
Speaker
And reform is not enough. I cannot put a pink bow on a piece of turd and not think it's still to be a piece of fish. Because it is.
Youth and Militarism Post-9/11
01:28:28
Speaker
We've got to be clear about that.
01:28:30
Speaker
People, you know, in their good faith efforts think that it's just about building this new, different school. Hell no. No, it's not.
01:28:41
Speaker
You've got to ask a structural question of that space. And right you gotta be clear that that space is not work. To your point, Tiff, like literally where young folks are kidnapped and held captive.
01:28:54
Speaker
Let's go harder with this, Tiff. Kidnapped, held captive in places that are unsanitary and will further harm them. yeah No human being with the means would accept some of the shit shit that we're doing to young people in schools.
01:29:10
Speaker
Absolutely. So now... When those young people bang back, somebody like myself says, well, that's an informed decision.
01:29:23
Speaker
In opposed to what's wrong with them? No, that's deeply informed because you in your own human capacity would not accept that space. you know We opened this interview a while ago and you keep referencing to 2001.
01:29:37
Speaker
2001 was my first year of college. And that was the year at the Twin Towers were hit.
01:29:48
Speaker
I also graduated from high school in 2001. And I'll never forget my senior year as whole bunch of people in j r o t c was cracking. Everybody was just feeling their little shiny shoes and their uniforms that they got to wear once a week, Fridays, they were just flossing. These is like Panay youth, these is black folks, it's like folk of color, hella pumped about celebrating and embracing militarism. Right.
01:30:13
Speaker
And a lot of those cats enrolled in armed forces afterward. Really as a means to pay for college. And when 2001, most of those folks did not know what they were truly signing up for.
01:30:30
Speaker
Because a lot of them soon were engaged in war.
Reimagining Educational Spaces and Roles
01:30:34
Speaker
And I'm like super fascinated with, Ken just know, like most of these 9-11 documentaries, I watched all of them.
01:30:43
Speaker
And what was really intense to me in some of them was looking at how a the firefighters who they said their plays, their vows, whatever they say.
01:30:57
Speaker
And they had this vision for what their jobs would be. And then 9-11-2001 hit. And I think like a lot of people that I was in high school with, they never thought that that's what they were signing up for.
01:31:11
Speaker
And in some of those documentaries, one of the fire chiefs whose brother actually passed, he sent his brother upstairs. He made the call to send his brother upstairs.
01:31:22
Speaker
And some of the folks who were coming back down, i'm talk about the Twin Towers, who were coming down the stairs, they were talking about the faces of these firefighters. And they said was a look where there was this allegiance to this duty, but they knew they weren't coming back downstairs.
01:31:42
Speaker
And I think about that in relationship to folks who are prospective and early service teachers right now. yeah And they signed up for this work. They was pumped. They heard from us over the years about how great this was. What? What? And this year, they looking like, what? This is not what I signed up for. But what I've been trying to tell these educators, look, I've been trying to tell them, because I think a lot of things we say in this interview, because it's faux black people together. So it may seem...
01:32:17
Speaker
like a hyperbole or like we're exaggerating. Right, right. And what I try to tell folks is what you are seeing now is what schools have always been.
01:32:28
Speaker
Yes. Boom. Absolutely. And what you're experiencing now is just the light that's illuminating the conditions that we've been in for years. Absolutely. So when we talk about the new direction. And i was so moved by what you were saying in that we have a number of folks who want to think about teacher ed programs of like the types of consciousness that's necessary. If we're talking about abolition work, so much of it has to shift because so much of it is about sustaining ye and just sustaining it in a different way.
01:32:59
Speaker
yeah But then I also think about the work of folks inside of schools. And the commitment that they have to make, because a lot of folks, their critique of our work is like, y'all not giving us no steps.
01:33:12
Speaker
Yeah. Right. Yup. Yup. Yup. i won't even on that today but there's a number of reasons why we don't but what you were say helped me to really think about the necessity for people even though they're hired as teachers to take on new roles in the interim.
01:33:33
Speaker
And that step. And if enough people do it, right? So here's my last question. going close us out with this. And it's basically the title of this episode is how do we make sense of educators' roles in schools in this era?
01:33:54
Speaker
And how can their actions lead to a new vision for what we're doing with young people during the day. Right. Yeah. I think, Tiff, thank you so much for shifting our understanding to say, what does it mean to come to grips where we have always been teaching in the war condition, right? Yes. Or as what soldiers refer to as the war theater, right?
01:34:18
Speaker
But the war theater, the students, our students are not the enemy combatants. They have been framed as such. um Right? So the war condition is to really understand that the war theater is the system that you're in.
01:34:37
Speaker
Come on. When you start to think about what it means to exist in that space, because like those firefighters in nine eleven we got a bunch of folks who are in this thing. They will not be here next year.
01:34:49
Speaker
Period. Man. Right? Y'all seen this thing in New Mexico? Look, New Mexico hit the National Guard up to fill out substitute spots. Right. Right. So don that's a throwback. man go So, yeah, exactly. right But the thing is, we've seen this before. I think that's the real point. ti We have to understand that we've seen this before.
01:35:11
Speaker
Right. That we've been in historical moments like this. This is what it meant for those black teachers when schoolhouses were being bombed throughout the South. This is what they were teaching in.
01:35:23
Speaker
Right. And this is Derek Bell fessed up to this. He said, we did not listen to those black women. Yeah. And because we didn't listen to those was black women, we were still making this argument around them being able to sit next to white kids. That's not what they were saying. Yep.
01:35:40
Speaker
but And he copped to that. He wrote about that. you know Shout to him because he fessed up to that. And he talked about the mistake of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund around that. That's right. So now when we think about this new vision, it's exactly what you said, Tiff. It's like, okay, now we've known this thing to be unacceptable. The COVID moment has just intensified what is already unacceptable.
01:36:03
Speaker
Now this is the window to think about how can we do this differently? yeah Right? This is the window to be like, okay, look, depending on our situation, we might not even have to have a big schoolhouse, but you can have a network of smaller spaces, right? You can have those networks connected to other folks to now that are also addressing things like housing, healthcare, care yeah affordable housing, right?
01:36:31
Speaker
And living wage employment. It's this thing around you can reconfigure these things because we also have proof
Learning from Black Educators and Wisdom
01:36:40
Speaker
of that. Here in Chicago, there's a program at a place called Northeastern Illinois University called University Without Walls.
01:36:47
Speaker
Again, dream with me for a second. Here's a program where these are people who have been formerly incarcerated, some who are incarcerated,
01:36:59
Speaker
folks who have been doing youth work, who have been doing public health work. And, you know, many of our parents, in our parents' generation, we have folks who did this work professionally who never had, quote unquote, degrees. yeah Right? yeah So it was a group of folks in Northeastern who was saying like, look, let's get these folks situated so that they don't get passed over because they're doing the real work.
01:37:23
Speaker
So now if you're in the university without walls, you sit down with a counselor and the counselor gives you what they refer to as life credits. And now you use that life credit and now you figure out what classes you need to take for degree completion.
01:37:44
Speaker
That's an entirely different pathway. right So now when we start to think about that, and again, to your point, Tiff, it's already existed. It's already out in the world.
01:37:56
Speaker
But now we have to think about that reimagining. We are required to reimagine just like those black women teachers in the South from the time that black folks were building their own schools to the current moment,
01:38:14
Speaker
to say, what can we learn from them? This is why Jarvis Givens book is so important, right? Fugitive Pedagogies, because he's talking about what those black women did.
01:38:25
Speaker
Right? Vanessa Siddle Walker's book is so important because she's talking about what, man, Horace Tate, who she interviews in his last years of life, had a whole attic full of all the correspondence that black women teachers were having with each other around what counted as quality education.
01:38:48
Speaker
Literally 40 years of work that if Vanessa Siddle Walker hadn't been introduced to him, who knows where that work would be, right? So now to address that question that you offered, Tiff, it's really around How do we return to our history and what can we learn about what does it mean to operate in those different capacities?
01:39:12
Speaker
Right. This is a contemporary question as much as it is a historical one. who And because we have that history now, it's even more important to go back into those spaces.
01:39:23
Speaker
Too good. yeah Y'all heard it here from the one and only David Amatoso Stovall, y'all. This needs to be a seven-hour conversation, but people got families and things, so we appreciate you, Stovall. Look, man, another thank y'all. Thank y'all so much. Love y'all fully.
01:39:42
Speaker
Thank you, Stovall. Truly appreciate
01:39:52
Speaker
Y'all, I'm walking away feeling so blessed from today's episode, really centering the wisdom and brilliance of Black people. Be very transparent here. I'm so grateful for their hope, not their optimism, not the suggestion that things are going to get better just the way they are, but their hope and tapping in to something unseen, to tapping into an ancestral wisdom and spirited energy that knows what that engages a type of remembering, to be able to protect our young people, as Mama McGee said, who are those pieces of paper in a burning world, to be able to center their sacredness so that they can rest, as Fatima reminds us, and tap into their sacred purpose.
01:40:41
Speaker
And to remember where we come from, as Stovall reminds us, the wisdom and the power that come from our communities and our people and our histories. I'm hoping to center these wisdoms, to center these experiences that come from today's episode throughout this second season of Drawing From the Well that will lead toward the abolition of the types of institutions and ways of thinking that are compromising our and our young people's wealth.
01:41:24
Speaker
Thank you for listening to this episode of Drawing from the Well, brought to you by the Youth Wellness Movement. I'm your host, Tiffany Marie. This podcast is co-produced by yours truly and John Reyes, with music by my boy Jansen V. Drawing from the Well is supported by Community Responsive Education.
01:41:45
Speaker
Continue the conversation youthwellness.com.