[00:00:03] Speaker A: You know, I think that I have been transformed through learning new stuff. And I think that if there's anybody who's out there who's willing to teach somebody not just to read, how to learn and how to be curious about learning and how to fight with what you've learned and how to make what you've learned actionable. I think that is one of the first steps to helping people to act, to not feel like we have to wait on some leader to bestow a better life upon us.
[00:00:30] Speaker B: Welcome back to Deconstruction. Conducting therapy. If you're here, maybe your spirit, like mine, knows Western therapy isn't the whole story and that the intensity of these times is revealing both our wounds and our power. Together, we'll listen to powerful storytellers, therapists, teachers, activists, humans who carry both brokenness and brilliance. Their voices challenge the limits of Western model and open us to deeper ways of healing rooted in culture, justice, and liberation. I invite us to lean in that our spirits fully arrive and allow this to be a pause in our day. Together, we'll reimagine what therapy can become when it truly belongs to all of us.
Today, I'm excited to talk with Jasmine Brown. Jasmine is a passionate organizer and community advocate with degrees in psychology and communications. She brings both heart and strategy to her work. Jasmine has organized with a party for socialism and liberation for over three years and co founded the Pensacola Abortion Rights Task Force.
From political education to environmental justice, she's deeply involved in building collective power to confront the crisis our communities face. One of her guiding inspirations, a quote by James Baldwin, those who say it can't be done are usually interrupted by others doing it. I've always really been struck by your speaking ability and just the way you think and the way you kind of view the world and such an outside of the box thinker.
[00:01:54] Speaker A: Thank you.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: And just so passionate, credible passion for just empowering people while also having this humility to interact with people and kind of just meeting them where they're at at the same time. And so I've never really had an opportunity to sit down with you in a way where I could really understand you and understand your story behind where all that passion and empowerment comes from. So, you know, I love the chance to do that today. So I want to know kind of, where did this develop inside of you?
[00:02:24] Speaker A: Well, thank you for having me, Alethea. I appreciate, you know, every time we have had a chance to speak with each other, it's not very often that we are able to see each other in Person. Especially typically when I tell people about my, like, political journey or just my journey in general, I remark on how I used to just be angry all the time. I grew up as a teenager, an early teenager during the Tumblr era, the social justice warrior era, and being made aware of social issues, seeing social issues in person, you know, with family members who have had run ins with, you know, to police terror, seeing my parents work all the time and not really, like, getting ahead. That combined with just naturally being online and just seeing stories that I might not have seen on the regular news that my parents watch, you know, mainstream media. I'm just like, what is going on? Like, the world just seems like it is awful, and I don't understand why it's awful. It can't just be me. I know it's not just me, but I don't. I can't pinpoint why everything feels awful most of the time.
[00:03:31] Speaker B: So you grew up always knowing this. There's something wrong here. This does not feel right. My parents are working their asses off. They're not getting ahead.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: You know, seeing homeless people on the side of the street.
[00:03:41] Speaker B: Yeah. Like, it never. Never felt normal to you? You never normalized it.
[00:03:45] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:46] Speaker B: Which is. Which is great.
[00:03:47] Speaker A: It just didn't make sense. That was the thing. I'm just like, this does not make sense. And I guess part of that too was I've worked a lot of different jobs. I've been a server, a front desk agent. I've worked as a janitor, a stalker at Winn Dixie, Dollar Tree. And honestly, when I was at the hotel, I went from working as a janitor to a hostess, to a. To a server, basically, and then to front desk. And it was very.
I think that clicked something in me. I was like, wow. The job that I worked the hardest at is the job that I got paid the least at.
And that has. And that was just in, like, the microcosm of the hotel. That has been the case for these, like, in general, these other jobs that I've had is just like the jobs that I worked the hardest at. And I got the ones I got paid the least. And then I just looked around at, you know, how my coworkers were treated, depending on the department they were in, you know, the lack of respect they got, the lack of pay they got. You know, it was just several little steps of me, like, figuring out why things are the way they were. At one time in my environmental science class, it was just environmental science, not environmental justice or anything like that. It was just an Environmental science class and they talked about this one anecdote of this one, like, northern area where colonizers came. I think, I think, I don't, I forget. I'm very bad at memory. But I just remember the specific story in the book. And you know, these people, these settlers came and they just started like raising the land of all these trees. And then they, they really messed up the, the ecological, like, balance of this area. And I was like, that doesn't make sense. Why would you come and just extract so much like at an unsustainable rate? And I was like, oh my goodness. The system extracts everything at an unsustainable rate. It extracts everything from our land and from people at an unsustainable rate. And so I was just. That was the main thing.
[00:05:30] Speaker B: I love that you always had this sense of wonder and just would not just accept things as norm because there's so many things that don't make sense to most of us.
And I think it's become so normalized that people don't question it. But it sounds like you always had this sense of, nope, this doesn't make sense. I'm not going to just convince myself that it does or just say this is just the way it is and that's it. Like you just, you had that fight in you, it seems like always of like, nope, doesn't make sense. This isn't right.
[00:05:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I just, I don't like things that don't make sense.
[00:05:58] Speaker B: Yeah. Is your, were your parents like that too? Did they cultivate that kind of questioning and curiosity inside you?
[00:06:05] Speaker A: Yes and no. So my parents were to be southern black parents. I will say they were a little bit more. They weren't as conservative as maybe their counterparts. You know, neither of my parents were really like in the military. My dad served two years, but he wasn't really like, you know, like a military brat. My mom actually was the daughter of my granddad who was in the Navy his whole life. But she never seemed like super patriotic or anything like that. I really just had some regular middle of the road, like working class parents who watched the news and were like, okay, vote blue no matter who. We went to church, but it wasn't like our whole life. We did go to church somewhat, but, you know, I didn't have parents who really, who really pushed me or my brother to go into the military. They didn't really push me, my brother, to go to church if we didn't really want to. They didn't really push us to go for certain careers or jobs. They Were really like, we just want you to be able to sustain yourself, do something that you enjoy and will support you as long as you're going for something. Not, we don't want you to get. Give up on life. We want you to do anything. You know, be a musician if you want to, as long as you're going to go for it. Be a doctor if you want to, as long as you're going to go for it. So they're pretty open, I'll say.
[00:07:10] Speaker B: And so I guess they themselves kind of stuck to the line and, you know, middle of the road, but they gave you a lot of space and permission to be who you are.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And then they always helped people.
And that was the main thing too, is that my parents were. Are such. Well, my dad has passed, but my mom and both of them, you know, even when he was alive, they're both such givers. You know, we've offered up a room in our house several times to family members and people who needed it, and I've got it from them. If we see like an older person walking on the side of the street, we'll pick them up and drive them wherever they need to be. Like, we've. That's. That's something that they've done a lot. And so I've gotten like a do for others type of sentiment from them.
[00:07:51] Speaker B: Yeah. So that was always part of who you are and then just letting you question and wonder and say, no, you need to do.
You need to do what makes you happy. That was kind of embedded in you at an early age, too.
[00:08:03] Speaker A: This is a combination of things. It's not like they really pushed any one thing. It's not like, you know, that they really understood a lot of psychological concepts. I will say they did not do corporal punishment on my brother and I. You know, we really just got talked to.
And I have a fear of getting in trouble. And so a lot of the reasons why I didn't get in trouble as a kid is just, I. I didn't like to be in trouble, so I just simply did not do things that create. That made me be in trouble. So I don't know, just constant fear of not wanting to disappoint them, I guess.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: Yeah, good. Sounds like you had a good connection with them or you do have a good connection. That makes a lot of sense. So then kind of, where did your journey go from there? Like, you've always had this, like the system doesn't make sense. People are working the hardest, are doing worse. My parents are good people. Working really hard, they're not getting ahead. None of this makes sense. I'm just angry about it. You went on Tumblr, you kind of got validated from a lot of other people speaking about this stuff. What drove you into, I guess, doing activism work, going into psychology?
[00:09:03] Speaker A: You know, I guess that intrinsic feeling of wanting to help people. Now, I didn't really go into psychology necessarily wanting to be like, a therapist or a psychiatrist. I. I did know that you could apply psychology to a lot of different career fields, and I am curious about how people learn. I realize that the brain is everything. You know, the brain is just. It's so vastly complex and complicated, and it steers your whole lived experience. It steers your perception of the world. And so that's just so interesting to me. Kind of transitioned to psychology because, you know, I started. I love science, but I'm really horrible at math. And I like writing. I like literature, but I also like human nature. And so it's kind of all formulated into getting into getting a psychology degree. And so I didn't really know about activism, like, as far as me playing a role in it.
[00:09:58] Speaker B: Were you the same as your parents, like, politically? Did you have this evolution yourself of. Were you someone who's like, vote blue no matter who just consider yourself, like, mainstream?
[00:10:06] Speaker A: Not really, because that didn't make sense to me. I was like, well, there has.
Not that I naturally, like, critiqued Democrats or anything. I just didn't want a blind allegiance to a political party because, I don't know, it just didn't seem right. And so I remember being like, I think I was 18 and I could, you know, register to vote. And I was like, okay, I'm going to sign up to be an independent. And my parents were like, why? And I was like, well, because I was like, because I feel like there's some, you know, naive me. I'm like, yeah, there's good and bad. We can pick and choose. I'd rather, you know, go with a candidate that seems like they align more with me rather than just a Democrat. I don't know if they align with me yet or not. And I didn't know about the voting system, so I didn't know that independents could not vote in the primaries. Then I switched over to Democrats simply because of that. You know, that was my voting allegiance.
[00:10:56] Speaker B: But you are always someone who. Something doesn't make sense. I'm not just going to go along with it.
[00:10:59] Speaker A: Yeah. So I intellectualize things too much. I've asked my therapist intellectualize too much. And Rationalize things too much. So, yeah, I went from not doing activist work to doing activist work. There was not really much of a transition. I didn't do a lot of volunteer work or anything. I kind of just like, hold up at my house in my room, and, you know, did whatever I did and supported activist work, you know, on social media. My first protest that I went to was during Black Lives Matter, and it was at Graffiti Bridge in Pensacola. And I went there with my friend. We had our sign. I felt like I was there, but I didn't feel like. It just felt like I was there. It didn't feel like I was in the movement. And then I was hoping that by me being there and so and hundreds of other people, that change would happen. I didn't know a lot about history, as much as I knew about history was what we were taught in school. I didn't dig a little that much further. What flipped the switch for me in activism was a local struggle, actually, was Pensacola was looking to sign the contract with FPL for the power and light. Big, basically a monopoly at this point, power company at the city. A lot of people in the city were mad about it. My boyfriend, Deshawn, he was in the PSL already at this point, and we were broken up at this point, but we were rekindling our relationship. And so, you know, he was like, hey, you want to come to city council with me? We're, you know, trying to fight to make sure that they don't sign this contract quite yet. We want them to do a feasibility study first, encouraging the city to come out and be like, okay, well, let's approach the city council with the possibility of having public power. So, you know, it was a whole campaign there. They needed people to speak at city council. And so I was like, okay, I'll sign up. I don't know what I was thinking. I just was like, okay, I'll talk. I mean, I don't know what to say, but people seem like they're just comfortable doing it. So I did it, and so I just went from there.
[00:12:42] Speaker B: How did that change for you? Did that feel like you're in it?
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Yeah, at that point, I was like, okay, I'm actually addressing the people who are supposed to do something about what I'm mad about right now. I'm here with other people who are fired up and riled up. And it was more than that particular moment. Part of that campaign was also doing a lot of outreach and door knocking, asking people about how much they pay in their utilities, how they would feel about public power, you know, educating them about fpl, telling them that this is something that the city doesn't have to sign on to quite yet. We can fully do a feasibility study before they sign this contract with fpl.
[00:13:16] Speaker B: And were you able to do that? Was that successful?
[00:13:19] Speaker A: No, the city still went with fpl and they have. Have horrible price hikes. They've had that power cut off and the heat in the middle of summer. I know someone personally, she's a mother of five, and they got their power cut off, which was one of the dominoes that led to her being evicted. But, you know, from the care from her neighbor, the compassion of her neighbor, he, like, wired like a line. What do they call it, an extension cord to her house so they could have some power. But, you know, trying to support her in that, you know, seeing the prices go up for elderly people who are on fixed income, regardless of, you know, any payment plan, stuff like that. It's just. It was very. It's very sad. And we're still fighting fpl. We actually just went to speak to. It's like the public service committee or something like that. They hosted a forum, a public forum. They've been hosting a public forum around the state the last few months. And so we went to speak at the one recently.
[00:14:05] Speaker B: What keeps you going? Because I can see you kind of getting energized as you say, no, we can do something. I can see this power behind you and this really hope and this belief that we can do something. And this feels specific and it's local and like. But you. You know, the systems are so strong, and you've been doing this, even this specific battle for a while. What kind of keeps your head on where like, no, I'm gonna keep the fight up.
[00:14:26] Speaker A: It's hard. And we are stacked up against giants and like, this whole system that was not really made for us, us regular people. I've been pleasantly surprised by the people I've spoken to in my community, honestly. You know, people say that the south is a certain way, and I've knocked on, like, hundreds of doors for various campaigns. I've talked to hundreds of people in. At their front door, and I have been invited into people's houses that I've. Before I've sat with old women at their kitchen table talking about how expensive life is and hearing their stories. I have gotten to common ground with, like, conservative people that I've never really would have spoken to ever in my life. I remember speaking to this one guy who was an Uber. He was an older white guy. He was a. I think he was a veteran. He was conservative coded. I don't know exactly what his politics were, but he was conservative coded. You know, if you were to judge a book, you know, you would assume you know who he is, like. But we ended up having a good conversation about how horrible this country treats veterans and how there shouldn't be any homelessness in general, let alone veterans, those who put their lives on the line. And so it's really just been being pleasantly surprised. And now that I'm in a political party, now that I am organizing more, I do know more history. And I know when people have won. We are really not taught when, when we've won, when people's gains have been won in our history. And now that I know how often we have won, I know we've had thousands of millions of losses, but we have one. A recent example I can think of is, is in, I think, North Carolina, where Hurricane Helene hit. The people who were. Who did survive and ended up in hotels. FEMA was trying to end their hotel vouchers in, like, May. And the Helene Survivors Committee, they fought back and they got those hotel vouchers extended for, like, I think a couple more months. When somebody tells me, it's like, oh, well, you don't know. If you don't ask, all they can do is say no. And it's like, well, you got to ask, you got to try, you got to fight. And so I think that's my motivation. Well, I'm not going to win anything if I don't try at all. And so I'm really trying to fight my natural born pessimism to be more optimistic in how people can mobilize and make wins, because I've seen it happen.
[00:16:32] Speaker B: And then learning about it and learning about how those wins are purposefully suppressed. From our education, I recently learned how.
[00:16:41] Speaker A: Many slave rebellions there were. I didn't even. I didn't know how often enslaved people rebelled. There were rebellions on the slave ships. They don't teach us that. They don't want us to know that we fought back. They don't want us to know that.
[00:16:52] Speaker B: They don't know how often, like, suddenly, oh, slavery was.
[00:16:56] Speaker A: Yeah, like, we're just these docile people and just went with it. That's fully not history. And so I think learning history also has been very helpful because we are really not taught our wins.
[00:17:06] Speaker B: No, that's such an important message. And then, then it lets you zoom out and see, yeah, this is a long game, but there are successes and you have to keep the fight up. And what it also sounds like keeps you going is really connecting with people and knowing, like, we're not alone in this struggle. Like, at least we can all keep connecting on that. We want the same things because we.
[00:17:25] Speaker A: Do want the same thing. We don't want the same thing as the developers, the CEOs, the these careerist politicians who simply want to get revoted back in. Like, there's nobody I've spoken to who's, like, we've asked people about, like, well, if the, if you could design the city budget, what would it look like for you? Not one person said they would keep the majority of the money in policing. Not one person said that they would build larger golf courses or more like resorts and hotels. Not one person said that that's the top thing that they would fund. A majority of people said that they wanted to have more money for schools, pay teachers more, that they would provide more affordable housing and stuff like that. So it's like a majority of us want better living standards for each other. People aren't so individualistic. And like, human nature is not competitive. Like people say, like, it's really not like that.
[00:18:11] Speaker B: And I would say that in itself is a win. It's like this constant uniting against the struggle and uniting against our common needs and desires instead of. And it's bound. It's fighting against that narrative that we're all so different.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: You know, society encourages us to think that everybody's out to get you, like your neighbor's out to get you. What's very funny, I, me and deshawn, we're still together. We live together and we. Me he organizes as well. And we live on a quadrant of an apartment apartment complex. And so there's us, these socialist organizers, if you're facing to the left of us, are very public Trump supporters. Above them is a very blue no matter who woman. And above us is. I mean, we've never really spoken to that person. It's an in and out unit. So the people who lived there previously seemed kind of apolitical. They were a younger black couple. And now above us is a Latin American man who is up all times of the night. I'll say that he was one of those upstairs neighbors that just moves all the time. I've been able to develop a friendly relationship with both ends of the spectrum. The blue MAGA lady and the red MAGA lady. We all have plants, and so we share our soil. Now, I don't think the Trump supporters and the blue supporter Lady, I don't think they like each other or have talked to each other. I've never witnessed it, but, you know, I've been able to develop a relationship with both of them separately, you know, and just on the very basis of like, okay, I plant these things. Democrat lady, she recently gave me some extra pots that she had. The lady beneath her, I think she gave me like a couple plant startups and she actually got. I was talking about how I like the elephant ear plants. And so she has some propagating and she's gonna give me one and I've given her some soil. So it's. I don't know. Humans are just not as horrible as we are fed.
[00:19:58] Speaker B: And that is how we are going to get liberation. It's from this connection and not refusing to dehumanize people the way they want us to dehumanize each other. So it's great that you're just doing it in all these little ways constantly, even when you're not actively doing it. Knocking on doors and stuff. This is what our complex looks like.
[00:20:16] Speaker A: It's so funny. It's just so funny. For that to be one quadrant of political spectrum is so funny.
[00:20:21] Speaker B: So I know we had talked off camera about this trip to Cuba that you had and that that was a big thing that shaped the way you think and made you question different things as well. I was wondering if you could share a little bit more about that trip.
[00:20:35] Speaker A: That trip really broke a type of barrier in my brain and expanded my thinking because of how their society is run.
[00:20:44] Speaker B: What was the purpose of the trip? What drove you to go in the first place?
[00:20:47] Speaker A: Yeah, it was with the International People's Assembly. They will invite members of different orgs to participate. So USSW went. You know, I think there was some people from black men, PSL and just various labor organizations and other activists and political organizations who went on this, I think 100 plus people trip. It was a trip where we could learn from Cuba, have discussions and discuss working conditions and living conditions in both countries and also have like a good cultural time. We went to some of their cultural centers. One of them was like the Martin Luther King Community center that they have and they. They have a publishing operation that comes out of there as well. It was, it was an amazing trip. It was about a week long. Some of the takeaways was how important culture is to a revolution, how much import how important culture is to society and cultivating that culture of involving music and not separating culture from politics, not separating culture from the mission of your People not separating culture from your historical legacy. Oh, it was just so amazing. You know, most places that we went, there was live music or there's an opportunity to dance with the people in Havana. We went to this one center that was a center for adults and people who couldn't really take care of themselves to live at this facility. Our group, we went on there and we helped them pick corn, we helped sow some sunflower plant seeds. And we got the opportunity to work on the land with them and they fed us and we got to dance with them. That was part of the event, was dancing with them at the end. That level of like community, I guess, was cultivated the whole time we were there. Just like dancing with each other, having time to do work. I think it. And there's probably like research and stuff for like, for, for real answers. But I really think that fundamentally it brings people together and that sounds so basic, but it really brings people into a space where they enjoy each other, not are not just doing work with each other, not just doing like serious stuff with each other. They can enjoy each other's space, they can let loose. Dancing to me, like, I'm not a dancer, but when I dance I feel like it feels liberatory to me. You just can move your body. It makes you feel connected to the earth, connected to your body. Like I said before, I intellectualize a lot and so I'm actually trying to dance more so I can feel my body. That's a hard thing for me, is to feel grounded and in place. And yeah, actually I guess I would add that too, is that I think dancing specifically and feeling music is a very grounding practice.
[00:23:19] Speaker B: And we're countering what the way we're counting capitalism just by doing that. Right? Because capitalism, the reason why you were disconnected and the reason why we're all kind of disconnected from our bodies is purposeful, right? We are taught that we're just supposed to be these machines that go in, be productive, get work done. And mindset is just hardwired into us. And then when we go into activist spaces, we kind of tend to do it that way too. And it's going to burn you out.
[00:23:45] Speaker A: Constantly thinking about your tasks, constantly thinking about like what you got to do at home, your tasks, your chores.
[00:23:50] Speaker B: Seems like it's a radically different way that they're doing it, like in every aspect of it. Like yes. No, dancing is part of the activity. It's not this add on of maybe we'll have a party later or something that's separate. It's it was constantly integrated.
[00:24:04] Speaker A: It was intertwined with what we were doing. We had an opportunity to go to, like, their museum of art and go to other historical sites and stuff like that. So I just think that so many fields, so many industries, so many aspects of life are intertwined rather than not. I think that's just one of the things for me was their insistence on keeping culture alive. And another major takeaway for me was how their popular education efforts. They have this. An entity called Cinesex, which is their lgbtq.
I think it's an arm of the government, and I wish I had more facts in front of me, but it's Cinesex. C E N E S E X, I think, is how it's spelled. They function as a popular education tool. They provide healthcare services, they provide legal services for LGBTQ people. And so for an example, one thing they do is that, say, you know, and Cuba had been working on their socialist revolution for decades. You know, a revolution comes. You can't overnight, you know, the contradictions of society of, like, you know, racism, homophobia, sexism and stuff is not going to end overnight. One of their functions is that, you know, say, somebody who's trans gets kicked out of their home. Well, one, they help provide support, tangible material support for that person who might have been kicked out. But they don't give up on the family. They'll provide, like, education and provide proper terminology for the family, like, you know, give people chances. And it's a culture of not throwing people away, and that's how they. They function.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: No, but I. You're giving me. You're painting a great picture of it, of just not throwing people away, which I think in psychology, we tend to do that a lot, too, when we're talking about boundaries and, oh, my God, they did that. They treat you this way. Cut them out. No, we can protect you. We can give you your resources and then also reconnect with your family, because that's an important.
[00:25:47] Speaker A: That's the goal. That should be the goal. It shouldn't be that, like, this person can never learn, this person can never get better. They can never welcome you back in. I think that's so limited of a way to go throughout life, is that people can't change. So many people have changed before, and.
[00:26:03] Speaker B: It'S just breeding more individualism. Right. Like, you just got to think about yourself, advocate for yourself, and then cut whoever else out that can't think that way.
[00:26:10] Speaker A: Yeah, it's sad when people think that way. I used to be so misanthropic. However you say it's I used to just hate the world and hate people until I learned more and now I have more faith and I guess appreciation for how people can be.
[00:26:26] Speaker B: For sure, it seems like you really dive in there with an open mind, but then also with that questioning at the same time. I can connect to people, I see them with an open heart, but I'm also doesn't make sense. I'm going to keep questioning it, I'm going to keep fighting. And it seems like you bring that into every space you walk into. Is there anything else that you wanted to touch on? Any shout outs you want to give to any resources that you want to link to where people can get more information about how to get involved?
[00:26:54] Speaker A: I will say one other major thing that was important to me on this trip was what I learned in Cuba was how powerful popular education can be. Like, simply put, just people knowing empowers them to make informed decisions. Like it sounds so simple. But one of my favorite quotes is by Septima Poinsettia Clark and it kind of goes, I believe in the power of people when they're given the truth. You know, in the US we are lied to since we are born. And it's incredible to credible to me what people can do when they are informed.
Pedagogy of the oppressed. I would recommend that book is by Paolo Freire. I don't know how to say his last name very well, but the book and the concept is basically about popular education and how how to reach people. Honestly, that's ultimately what it is is how to reach people and get them to the next level. How to make people feel empowered with being able to read. On the trip there was somebody I met named Mbali and he's from South Africa. You know, some other countries they will have like a youth contingent of like a communist organization or a socialist organization or something like that. And he was like, how come y' all don't have that in the US Very much. I was like Mbali, quite frankly, culture aside and resources aside, I was like a lot of people in the U.S. like a large number in the, in the U.S. can't read. You know, our average literacy level is like about sixth grade, I think. And I think it has gone down recently. Sometimes I've done outreach and I've. We've had surveys for people and they, they've asked us can we read it to them because they don't know how to read. And improving illiteracy rates and was one of the first things that you know that was done in the Cuban revolution was, you know, sending people out to the countryside to help them learn how to read. You know, I. I think that I have been transformed through learning new stuff. And I think that if there's anybody who's out there who's willing to teach somebody, not just to read, how to learn and how to be curious about learning and how to fight with what you've learned and how to make what you've learned actionable. I think that is one of the first steps to helping people to act, to not feel like we have to wait on some leader to bestow a better life upon us, to have to wait on some activist who was just so popular that you can get behind them.
[00:29:06] Speaker B: So there's so much power behind that education and learning how to learn. I like how you said that it's not just learning how to read and getting the information in. It's like learning how to be curious and learning that, oh, look at all, like, what happened with you? We're like, oh, we won this way. Look at how many slave revolts there were. And then that kind of awoken something inside of you.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: So I don't necessarily want to be a teacher, but I do want to be able to grow my skills in teaching people in whatever capacity I have. And I learned from other people as well. Like, when I go do these. Like, when I do outreach and whatever, I do do more listening than talking. And so I do love learning from other people because everybody has their own experience in life. Everybody. Everybody knows something. So, yeah, it was just very cool talking to people, learning more about people, using different techniques and different conversations. Whether it's, like, a debate or there's, like, a goal in mind, or we're just trying to hear what you have to say. Sometimes we talk to people and they're like, oh, nobody's ever asked me about this. Nobody's ever asked me how I feel about the politics. Nobody's ever asked me how I feel about the local budget. And so just giving people the opportunity to talk about something that they never have the opportunity to talk to. Besides yelling in the comment sections on social media, that's pretty much the public square as we have it nowadays.
[00:30:17] Speaker B: And it's a whole other thing when you're really interacting with them face to face.
[00:30:20] Speaker A: Yeah, we got to beat the algorithm by talking to each other. And so I would just plug, I guess, honestly, some autobiographies I read Revolutionary Suicide by Huey Newton, Thus Assata, which is Assata Shakur's book, her biography. She is a activist or a figure that I really relate to because she kind of had the same political journey that I did. Kind of just growing up observing the world around you and witnessing injustice, but not really putting. Not really put, like, connecting the dots yet. Until she got a little bit older. She went to college. She started, you know, just learning more and just kind of was a wave of, okay, this is what I need to do. This is how I fight back. And so I really recommend if anybody's starting out with their political journey specifically, or their other journeys, like. And I. I pair my psychology with my outreach and with my organizing. I really recommend autobiographies, finding people who. Just seeing how they fell into it, too. Like, not really necessarily going for, like, the big concepts or the big theories or jumping into that first time. I'm recently. I've started reading Zora Neale Hurston recently. I didn't know she was considered an anthropologist. I'll say that that might be another field I'll be interested in if I had money for another degree. But I didn't realize she was an anthropologist, and she's from Florida. That's very interesting to me, too, is that she went around talking to people and being in different spaces and seeing different types of people and what, like, socioeconomic conditions led to their behavior and led to how they view the world and how they view their own sense of power in the. And how they relate to one another, what they keep in their communities rather than what they express to, like, the outside world. I think that anybody can get to any place in their, I guess, evolution, whether it be learning about themselves or the world around them, whether they become a psychologist or not, everybody has the capacity to learn more about the world around us.
[00:32:11] Speaker B: That's great wisdom. And I also really like you saying, instead of getting overwhelmed with learning all this heavy theory, if you want to understand it, just read some stories. Feels a lot less overwhelming, you know, right now.
[00:32:22] Speaker A: And I guess I divert back to politics. We're in such a hectic political moment that there's something for everybody. If you want to fight for, you know, environmental issues, find a local group that picks up litter. They are everywhere.
And have conversations with them, have studies with them. If you're invested in, you know, reproductive access, there is probably an organization out there who does that work. Start with, like, a domestic violence organization. They exist. There's. There's organizations out there for everybody to tap into, you know, no matter what their capacity is. There is. You know, there's work to be done. And so I think that that is a good first step for people. If you are just on a newsletter and then you see, oh, this Saturday we're having a social, come meet us. That's a good first step. And then maybe you are in the organization, you go to their meeting and you have an idea and you share that idea. That's a good next.
I want to leave this and you know, to your listeners, just hopefully help people feel empowered to make the tiny step. You don't have to become an organizer. You don't have to become like a political activist or anything, but just care about your community. Care about. Not just care because I'm sure a lot of people care. It's not that it's really feel empowered to do something. Don't feel like the weight of the world is crashing down on you. Because One thing that DeShawn's therapist said to him when he was feeling like everything was insurmountable, she said, just pick up a broom, start sweeping. She was like, you don't have to take down the warm feeling powered of.
[00:33:47] Speaker B: The chaos in my environment right here.
[00:33:49] Speaker A: Yeah, just, just pick up a broom. That's what I'll leave it with is pick up a broom.
[00:33:53] Speaker B: Beautiful. Great last words to of wisdom to leave on.
Very good honor to to be with you today. I'm glad we kind of got to really spend some time together and hear your story. I appreciate you.
[00:34:05] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you for letting me ramble and.
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Hopefully we'll be working together soon.
[00:34:09] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: Join the movement and keep the conversation
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