i'd like to welcome our keynote for this second day of the overcoming racism conference sam grant who is known as a community organizer who embodies deep democracy afro got me and sam grant is a lifelong organizer who has constantly worked on the intersections of cultural economic and environmental justice he co founded many organizations that are listed in your program on page fifteen at the age of seven and sam had his first experience of extreme racial violence when his family integrated a white neighborhood in jacksonville florida he spent the next decade of his life having to literally fight for survival and carries the inner scars of the worst survivor he is an organizing and movement building his organizing he is an sorry his organizing and movement building mentor jimmy bugs connected sam to toast psychology and this finally brought him forward toward his current transformative path of organizing and facilitat that he brings through his movement center for deep democracy his source for improvisation and innovation comes from his healing path as a drummer and his years performing with a small jazz well in college he continues to drum i don't see your drums today see him he continues to heal he continues to offer space for improvisational social movement forms please help me to welcome sam grant our keynote for follow out of the follow elder brother whitehead and the singers who are here on the on the stage sharing culture sharing stories sharing their own healing journey with you we don't take enough time and space to honor that all of it is about healing why is racism still running the game in the united states and in the global economy it's still running the game because we're too meek we're too afraid to heal we're too afraid to look at all of our relatives and honor them as exactly that there isn't any person there isn't any blade of grass there isn't any ripple of water that's not part of you and yet you live your life is though this defines you everything above the chin when you live in  everybody in this room does what's above the chin is your trap and you know it's a little bit funny to say that because here we are in an academy right in the academy is trying to train this thing well we need to heal the academy to because unless the academy reaches you in your heart in your soul and nurses your will to stand on the shoulders proudly and with  of what all of your ancestors have done before you to generate peace harmony health in justice for all of us and you're not yet learning anything so here in this school there have been professors who have continued to expound on the myth of the black male violence hypothesis there have been professors who have talked about how colonialism was good for africa  so i mean it happens and you know you know dr white had talked about you know some of his own stories of the boarding schools when i was in fourth grade when we integrated this neighborhood in jacksonville florida on the north side mr griffin who was my teacher in the fourth grade the first day of class i raised my hand to answer all the questions and he just said sammy don't bother raising your hand you're black even if you know the answer doesn't matter because you're not going anywhere and you know we can talk about the past but the reality is when we think about minnesota we think about the lynchings that happened here we think about the thirty eight people who were hanged i think about all of the people who have been lynched by systemic oppression in the twin cities today yesterday last week in this year we are nowhere near being an open fair honest society so as we think about cultivating transformation it's important to ask ourselves how do we begin that journey so one of my  students used to wear a little necklace when she come to class every day and it said be the change you wish to see in the world from gandhi and i think that one of the things that we have to do is on our of that work that  did when he was in south africa and he came up with the construct of blending the words hard to make truth force or soul force and what he said is that we have to learn how to be scientists of tr in our own lives and it's a day to day process it's a day to day practice if we don't work on constant inner transformation we can't be a resource for transformation on the planet and what happens is that we get caught in a role we get to find in a particular aspect of ourselves and then we start becoming that aspect this is a pattern that exists within the global dynamic of global apartheid we think that apartheid is something that ended in south africa in one thousand nine hundred four but it didn't end yet we're still part of that legacy of global apartheid when the government of south africa wanted to learn how to create apartheid they came to the united states we talked them how to create their homeland system we talked them how to treat their people my brothers who were here on the stage reminded you of our legacy within this country of that experience everything they said everything they shared was about their own healing journey when they pray in their ceremonies they're praying for your healing journey are you on your healing journey who are you on your healing journey with as you continue healing how are you closing all of the divides with the way that you live your life to many of us live in too much fear and block the possibilities for ourselves and block the possibilities for all of us on this planet so was i talking about transformation in an improvisational way which is cool because let go of that power point thing often mind best lectures in the classroom here at metro state happen when i just get in the class and i ask my students to do the powerpoint or not they always said no no no because if i don't use the electronics i have to actually interact with you from a deeper place and when i do that the hope is the prayer is that it actually touches you in a deeper place and it's from that deeper place that real possibilities emerge so point one we as i learn from jimmy boggs suffer from three divides we have a divide from nature which are indigenous brothers keep teaching us about we have a divide from nature eco side proceeds genocide we have a divide from our relatives are two legged relatives which were silicates genocide and racism racism is impossible if you see every relative as a relative and we all are look around the room look around the room right now look these are all your relatives these are all your relatives these are all your relatives they require your unconditional love to blossom they require your unconditional love to blossom they require you unconditional love to blossom you require their do we give that to each other taking classes in organizational science i learned that ninety five percent of american people no longer know how to listen i think that's a recipe for disaster because you know what without listening there's no healing without listening there's no healing so we have to take time to listen to each other we have to take time to listen to ourselves we have to take time to talk to the plants and that's not a borderline psychiatric disorder it's called but beyond botany which is another colonial science it's called relationship that plant gives you life plants photosynthesize energy from the sun and nothing else on the planet would be possible even the oxygen we breathe wouldn't be except for the practices of plants so your life depends on them you should give them love every day including singing them songs so divide from nature divide from each other the third divide is equally important we're divided within we no longer know ourselves when we're trained to play our part of apartheid ask yourself what does my ego compel me to do what people look to me to do is that your ego or is that your soul that people look to what is  often you'll notice that it's your ego you have set yourself up in an apartheid role so we through all of our life's experience have to heal these three divides divide from nature divide from each other divide within i did a workshop back in march for five hundred corporate executives and i asked them how many of you feel like you can be your full self when you go to work in the morning there is only one so even the people who are part of the global one percent are feeling the pain of this apartheid even they are feeling it so we have to heal through this sense that there is an us and them we have to get over the luxury of other ring and get into the practice of relating as the indigenous people call it visiting spending time with other people sharing stories sharing laughter sharing crying sharing whatever it is we have to share in that particular moment and bringing our full self to that space so having started with that little introduction i am samuel hugh grant the fifth every sam grant has been a community organizer i have daughters not sons my daughters are community organizers but none of them are named sam they have their own  my dream is that this is the generation this is the moment in history when we shift from this deeper place of relationship and we say let me take all of this conditioning of apartheid all of this conditioning of genocide all of this conditioning of eco side all of these are aspects of historical trauma and let me pull it out of myself in relationship to you let me stand with you sit with you in circle while you pull it out of yourself and let us together pull it out of all of our relatives we have numerous crises that are intersecting right now around how we are relating to the environment so climate change climate turbulence climate climate chaos whatever you choose to call who is it impacting if you look at a map of the holocaust of climate change minnesota is one of the safest places to be but that's a great danger for people who are here in minnesota because that will fortify your complacency you may not think too much about the people on those island nations and want you to think about the people who own those island nations right this second we live in a very small world in the internet age we can connect to people anywhere with internet access and there's still a whole lot of relatives that don't have we can journey to these places that are being most terribly impacted by everything we've created that we're protecting and i want to say we have an obligation to pay attention at that higher level pay attention to the danger to the risk to the death that what we have created facilitates an honor how everybody in this room regardless of your color regardless of your culture because here we are in the imperial global north that benefits more than any other place in the world from neo liberalism and yet neo liberalism is killing black boys in minneapolis so this is the best place the safest place and yet it's not equally safe that makes sense so in my only organizing work i used to believe that organizing was about fighting fighting i live my life as a clenched fist my first wife who has since decided that i wasn't healthy enough yet to be in a relationship and moved on one day she woke me up because i was screaming in my sleep and my fist was clenched i was foaming at the mouth and i was grousing and she gently grandma first and then and then here and got me to sit up and she said i need to know whatever that is so i can decide if i'm sleeping another night in this bed in i was back in the war zone i was back on my front porch with white boys with loaded guns aiming at me and pulling the triggers and i was holding a gun and i was shooting back and she said you need to heal that you need to heal that or we can be here together because that gets in the way of your capacity to love another human being i never thought about it we grew up in the age of you know revolutionary black nationalism and the american indian movement for my indigenous brothers here and we used to say today is a good day to die if i fade away let me take ten of them with me right that's what i grew up with this kind of military construct and it was you know we worshiped it we romanced it with our egos and it was in that moment that i realize that i had to change my definition of what it means to be a warrior in order to be a husband in order to be a father in order to be a human being so i started building relationships with white men like from a deeper place no longer from the head so used to you know the training was you think about you know you have to figure out whether or not they're part of the clan or not before you can take that next step it was my training so i just started listening to their stories and saying let me know you and as i began to know them i felt my cells in my body start to shift that i didn't have to hold this as a way of being anymore i could hold this this constant process of relating you letting you relate to me from this deeper place healing together as a fundamental aspect of the journey of the two leggett's in the midst of all of our other relatives here on earth so used to define organizing is fighting now i define organizing as healing when we organize we start by listening to each other listening to stories in that listening to stories we begin to recognize things about how the world works that we didn't know we begin to generate an energy together an energy based on respect an energy based on awareness an energy based on possibilities that emerge because i can finally get out of my skin and say what's been blocked racism is a form of blocked energy that's all it is it's a form of blocked energy that needs some acupuncture so just as a little funny thought exercise sense you know dr white had talked about physics earlier i want you to imagine that one of your fingers is an acupuncture needle and i want you to ask yourself where in your body at this particular moment is racism the most alive where is it blocking you just think about it you know what this is it might seem silly but these simple exercises actually work think about where you feel most blocked use your acupuncture needle in touch use your acupuncture needle and touch it pull that needle out and as you pull that needle out you just notice that energy washing away we have an obligation to take care of ourselves as we show up each day for this work in the world because if you live according to the mindset the energy of your wound what you're offering to the get to the world is the gift of your womb but not the gift of your healing we need to offer the world a gift of our healing in order for the world to heal with us simple things we make it difficult but it's actually pretty simple we just have to have the courage to be mindful of the simple ways we can approach this so a couple of stories i've got some students here in the room who were in my classroom got some benefit from being in my classroom but now they're my mentors because they have thankfully exceeded my pitiful example and they're making a bigger difference in the world than i knew how to make so now you  i don't teach at the academy and i've been on faculty here since one thousand nine hundred because i love the academy i'm here at the academy because i'm having a love affair with ella baker who founded the student nonviolent coordinating committee and was a key genesis and example of the power of student movements in healing and changing the world so i'm here because it's a place that i get the luxury the privilege the pleasure of engaging students in the real world that's exciting to me so one of my students who isn't here this morning he came yesterday jason sole you know went from being a hardcore gang banger to you know becoming a ph d and he teaches here in our criminal justice department there's an amazing story but while he was a student here he found himself because of his own historical trauma which gets us a little bit twisted in our capacity to think clearly he made a mistake of letting a good friend of his store some contraband in his garage and when he came home from work and he noticed that you know his house was surrounded and was currently being you know raided by the cops he throws and he ran and they caught him and they threw him under the clock he got his court date and he asked me to come and say a few words in his behalf and so when i got to the court i said i have worked with thousands of young african american men who trying to do the right thing and if i had to pick one that i would humbly say throw me under the bus instead of him this is the one put me in prison for life let him be free he all that he has already exceeded my example don't evaluate him by this mistaken judgment evaluate him by the journey he's on let me give you some evidence the judge even though looking at the paper she had kind of already decided that she was going to throw him under the bus she said i'm violating everything that makes sense to me and i'm just going to put this you know young man on paper and watch him but i'm not going to put him behind bars and so he stayed free and he finished his master's degree and finished his p h d and he is a key national resource for the healing of black men in the engagement of black men and making this world better for all of us the commander of the downtown district for the st paul police has partnered with jason to be a resource to go into all of these key places in downtown where people are maybe going to get caught up in a hos and jason and his people will like slow people down catch him right here at the heart space say brother so what's up what's happened and how you do and how you doing what do you hope and what do you dream and what do you need how can i help you and because it's him asking these questions there's no drama people know his story people know his spirit and they have a real talk and these people get on their journey of healing another one of my former students who was here yesterday but couldn't come back this morning carol you know young person organizer an activist got on her journey of environmental justice you know by being here at metro state and has exceeded my example given her national level work working with van jones and a lot of our key leaders around environmental justice she could not get her organization to consider her for a promotion so she invited me to come and do an intervention because i'm on the board of her organization so you know because i'm on the board they let me come to a staff meeting otherwise they would have said no you can't bring friends with you so i went to the staff meeting with karen and we sat in this circle and she read a letter to them that she had written about the pain of being the only person of color in a white mainstream organization and how she gave them evidence by which to evaluate her amazing  work and you see what i've done can you see how it's helped do you notice it please notice it is hurts to feel invisible when i show up every day and give it all i've got you think i'm holding back sometimes but that's only to protect you there's times when i know i can't speak because if i do i might sl so i sat with her and them and everybody said thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you we appreciate your vulnerability and your courage to share with us your experience and how you feel it hurts us to know that we have hurt you and i said thank you for your honest feedback to carry but just to give her feedback on a one to one in this space but then not to do it every day unacceptable i expect every single one of you not just her supervisor to show her love every single day and i'll be checking on her every day and if i don't hear that she's getting respect i will be here and secondly karen has told you that when people from our community walk into this organization they don't feel welcome because all of the symbols are about what matters to the white people in the organization but there's no symbols here of us and how we're included in the mission of this organization you got to change that starting tomorrow and coming back to check and finally she has given you a hint about what she needs from you i want you to take the hint in in amplify it and i want you to answer answer from your deeper place give her the respect and the support that she needs the next morning she called me and said and i said oh that must have already been in the works right because it just doesn't happen she says no it's because of our intervention so now some real talk minnesota is a great teacher of apartheid this is the best place to live in the world and it's the worst place to live in the world all of my friends who organizers in the black world we talk about the black misery index how are you doing in your in gauge mints in interrogations of white space in white a soda how is how's it going for you how's it going and i know that might be a little painful to hear but i mean i'm being really nice and gentle today this is the good nice me ok i'm going to have us one of the i've sworn yet i normally do a lot of that i've even thrown chairs across the classroom to help make a you know an important pedagogical point so we have a lot of healing to do and i was about to tell a story and i forgot what it was black misery index among black organizers so look at the employment disparities we have the worst unemployment disparity for black people here in minnesota of all major metro areas now the  the raw unemployment rate is worse in some other cities but the ratio i mean the relative disparity of white unemployment to black unemployment is worst here than anywhere else so even though the oppression index is high for all people it's particularly persistent for american indians and african americans here in minnesota so you look at child out of home placement you look at the criminal justice system you look at health disparities you look at employment disparities housing disparities particularly ugly and painful on a daily basis for indigenous people and black people i'm not sure about the numbers we have to do a lot of work on healing our relationship with data in building powerful compelling appropriate accurate data with each other but i just looked at a study that said that in order to end the employment disparity for african americans in american indians by twenty twenty we have to create eighty three thousand additional jobs specifically for blacks and indians by two thousand and twenty in the twin cities metro area eighty three thousand additional jobs specifically for blacks and indians so think about everybody in the room right now and listen magine everybody in the room is on facebook or linked in or something like that and you've got a thousand friends if you called all a thousand of your friends and those with the wherewithal to hire if they all made the decision to hire an african american or an american indian you referred to them today could we solve that problem today could we you know i mean now you just write maybe we could part of why the severe oppression continues is that we lack the awareness the imagination in the courage to act from our most powerful self today so the journey of transformation begins with you being the bigger you so marianne williamson wrote this great poem that people wrongly attributed to nelson mandela as his inaugural speech and i'm going to paraphrase it because i don't have a good memory but at the core she says the world needs the biggest you to show up in every instant we can afford the small you and neither can you what does it take for you to be the biggest you which is the same thing that gandhi talked about with satyagraha be your highest self and engage me from there because when you engage me from there it inevitably because of its energy gets me to show up from a higher place don't engage me from your fear because i'll respond with fear unkind what does that create so one point satyagraha second point to healing we are all in relationship with each other i am only who i am i have become who i am through relationship with you rugged individual is a me me me is a disease our elder mother a tomb here you know was here yesterday and in her founding of the cultural wellness center she said that there are three aspects of disease the loss of culture the loss of community and the rise of individual is what is an individual once the culture and community are gone it's a shadow no longer full it's a shadow so as we think about this healing journey we have to acknowledge that colonialism racism genocide eco side is in all of ourselves we hold it the doctor of political psychology right here in the front row he knows what i'm talking about he knows it better than i do all of our work in every second of our lives has to be de colonizing work every second of your life take a second take a pause breeze decolonized the space to colonize decolonized this space to colonize notice what happens for you when you do that i just felt happy i felt fresh air like i was in a forest just washing over my soul just with that simple act there's a tremendous power of bringing awareness and a high level of intent if you bring that stuff will shift so if we say this is a place that practice racism and then we in each of our relationships say in this relationship we want to allow the practice of racism if we create in our organizations as you know dr sue worked on when she was the president here at metro state let this be an institution that doesn't practice and then we begin to offer a hand to our relatives and say let's begin to build more people more relationships and more institutions in more systems that do not practice this the world will begin to shift through that energy but we show up in the morning at our job and we immediately are inundated with all of the flooding images reminders to keep the and we give in i want you to acknowledge it's a choice you make and when you give in it's choice you don't have to but part of the reason you're giving in is that you are not doing the radical colonizing self care that the world needs you to do because if you do that radical colonizing self care you can't give in your body won't let you that's what we need from you so i want to begin to talk about how do we do that work some of the ways that i am trying to facilitate that work in my organizing north minneapolis anybody from north minneapolis in the house ok you north side north minneapolis according to colonial science is a food desert also according to colonial science north minneapolis is a food swap because it has an abundance of fast food restaurants selling crap it has an abundance of corner stores but not full scale you know  cooperative grocers that are you know selling organics it has a higher rate of heart disease obesity diabetes and certainly has within the twin cities region the highest index of historical trauma which you won't find you know matched until you go to one of our reservation communities right or the little so colonial science says that a community like this can't be healed from the inside out and that if you want to change north minneapolis you have to gentrify it you guys are shaking your head but you know it's true people are actively today trying to gentrify north minneapolis i sat in one of them with one of our former mayors of north minneapolis over at the urban league and he came right out and said i think gentrification would be good for north minneapolis i won't tell you which bull it was i sat in a room with the former police chief of the city of minneapolis this is back in one nine hundred eighty eight in one thousand nine hundred eighty eight the police were learning to use a new technology the thunder flash stun grenade it says right on the box of the thunder flashed on grenade do not use without fire department present says right on it they did a training mission with police officers from all over the state of minnesota eighty police officers were there no fire through the thunder flash stun grenade into the house the house burned down a senior citizen couple could not escape and they died would work to hold the police chief account we brought him to a community meeting and we said what the f his response was simple and blunt unlike a minnesota he said in the war on drugs there will be casualties we threw him out of the meeting and mediately and then we talk to each other and we're like ok that was a little awkward and painful what do we do well it was obvious to us that we had to have a civilian review authority that would hold the minneapolis police accountable obvious and it was obvious that it had to be controlled by citizens not  police obvious right arm vs we won the creation of a civilian review authority but in order to win it it was controlled by the police so that a victory or not i'd say no it's not that's a no it's not it's not a victory if it doesn't work part of our conditioning is if we get anything at all yeah  optation that's a form of weakness when we're when we say stretch and say what are the demands that make us feel whole and how do we win that if you just take the well i mean the energy of all of those demands all of those basic needs in just the pinky they're not there we have to do the deeper work we have to win all of it going back to the french revolution we used to believe that the revolutionary process was to first take the state and then design the new society first you take power and then you organize a different form of power wrong if you aren't already actively being that new form of power you can't create it once you have power all you can create once you have power is the same thing so healing is fundamental in this work healing shapes your sense of what it looks like to create a new society in the skin of the old in healing you create interstitial spaces in society where people are practicing this new way of being in relation to each other so again going back to north minneapolis looking at this toxic industrial food system and its consequences on our bodies in our lives in our families we have imagine that we can create a local food system that by twenty twenty cold produces community health and community wealth and i see paris that here in the audience paris downing is working with me on this campaign in north minneapolis thank you  michael chaney was here last night you know speaking you know after the the movie that people want your last night he's working with us on this campaign so we've got a growing network of people who are taking on this work we have built ten built the capacity of ten black farmers in north minneapolis who are growing food on twenty five urban lots because of the tornado there are eight hundred seventy three vacant lots in north minneapolis and we met with the city and asked the city to give us access to as many of these lots as they could it's of the city went through its little discernment process and what it offered is the lots that it can build a house on the lot that it can't define and possible economic so we're like you know thankful ok so we can have the right of way the easement land along the highways and along the boulevards we'll start there but we in the community have to get to the point of saying when we grow our own food like they did in the victory gardens of you know the world war two era during world war two urban gardens grew forty two percent of the length of the of the food and in america urban gardens grew forty two percent of the food so we can grow an abundance of food right in the inner city we have to heal our relationship with the land we have to build up the soil we have to stop putting pesticides and fertilizers and urban sides on it which is like toxic and killing of the soil and eco sidle of our natural way and we have to learn how to do it in an organic and healthy way healthy for the soil is healthy for our bodies when you take good care of the soil and you take good care of the plants those plants talk back to you because what stays in your body is in the nutrients defined in your relationship with that soil in the first place if you have not taken good care that soil what comes out of you on the back end is a whole lot of stuff that wasn't nutritious in the first place and your body feels starved because it's still looking for the nutrition and so you eat more you eat more you eat more you get bigger you get sicker healing our relationship with food is fundamental so in north minneapolis we have a vision that we're going to grow one of food right in north minneapolis that everybody can have five or more servings of fresh fruit and vegetables every day grown by local farmers that live on their blocks those farmers are going to take their produce and sell it at a growing number of farmers markets in two thousand and ten we had zero by the end of that year we had one so two thousand and eleven we had one farmer's market now we have four farmers markets in north minneapolis and we have a whole lot of streetside farmer stands we had no food trucks in north minneapolis now we have one by next year hopefully we'll have fifty right we've got twenty five urban farms hopefully by next year we'll have fifty hopefully by the year after that we'll have a hundred and these are quarter acre size lots so right now we have three acres under production we're trying to copy the example of the wedge co op that has its own farm its farm does ten thousand pounds of produce per acre we want to get to the point were black farmers in north minneapolis can grow ten thousand pounds per acre that's what we're striving for g own food process our own food right in north minneapolis develop more five star restaurants that all of you come to fuel our local economy right and then we begin to create a lot of closed loops a lot of relationships into all of those relationships so a whole lot of beautiful singing healing sharing of story and a new community is emerging in the skin of the old that shows an example of the healing of degraded habitat by people who are part of that habitat saying we are regenerators so think about that we generator and i just want you to sort of take that word into your heart regenerator regenerators of our relationship with earth regenerators of our relationship with each other regenerators of our relationship with self meditating on those three things i want you to just sort of say it out loud we are re s little minnesota make say it like you're at a new year's eve party in now say it like you have sitting in your kitchen is fear all of the babies all over mother earth that were just born just no all right the baby is going to feel that everything is energy and everything feels energy so my question to you is how do you bring that energy out in every single thing you do we need you to be healthy we need you to be an agent of healing in your relationship with the rest of us anything less is committing it's actually committing colonialism and if you can't then just hang out at the dance while the rest of us do it and wait till one of us draws you in because we're so beautiful you have to come to the day but at least stay back at the wall until you're ready to dance according to de colonizing because we cannot afford any more colonial energy on mother earth it's formally outlawed right now by decree of the people it's outlawed so i'll tell you another story i had a young student from ethiopia come into my classroom and say and i said well tell me what it is and has told me her dream of you know healing the habitat in her own country in ethiopia and she had a particular way of doing it i said well that's exciting let's make it a class project so we made it a class project my students that semester didn't really get it so i said ok that was probably my fault failed as a facilitator let me try it again so the next semester i made it an invitation for all of my students to partner with her and we did a summit here at metro state university on healing this particular pattern in ethiopia that in order to eat people are cutting down all of the trees and now we're in a situation where people are living in environments because the trees are gone the trees are gone there's less water so people are living without access to water without electricity so they can't talk to us by internet great sin because we all have to talk to each other right so their lives are blocked in many ways even the most basic way because now with the trees gone their soil is getting worse and worse so she brought in images of the country and one of the images was of a woman bending over her to cook food for her family  imagine what would be like in your life if you had to bend over like this every day to cook three or four or five meals a day and be in between meals you had to go gather the water and gather the wood so our first impulse was to focus on a solar cook stove strategy but after more conversation about it one of the women in the room from ethiopia said people are dying we've got babies dying because they're drinking water that's not healthy so we have to heal the our relationship with water first so water is life is one of the things you learn from our indigenous relatives and they're organizing all over the planet water is life so we said how could we design a strategy that would heal the water rebuild the forest and give people an alternative economy in the skin of the old because the mainstream economy doesn't work for them so we created a model of integrated watershed management in reforestation that starts with a simple technology of an a robot digester that a colleague of mine in ghana created that we can get access to the first one hundred households so by march of this year our fantasy but it's a fantasy because we don't have the money to do this yet that's where you guys com we have a fantasy that by march of this year we're going to get these aerobic digesters into the homes of the first one hundred families and because these families are poor we're not going to say they have to pay for the aerobic digester they have to rebuild the forest so we're giving them credit for reforestation in exchange for cash to rebuild the forest and teach other villagers how to begin to heal their habitat create a watershed governance model right as opposed to the kind of democracy we have a representative democracy where you get to vote for people every few years who will represent part of you right so our model of democracy is an apartheid model of democracy it's not a genuine democracy worthy of the name any politicians in the house i love you and i look forward to you being a partner in generating the healthy participatory direct democracy in the skin in the old that's worthy of the name because this one is not this democracy allows the continuation of eco side genocide and colonialism so that's an acceptable we have to have a democracy that reaches us  a deeper place not just where we're at but in a deeper place that helps us become our greater self and moves us all from there so it makes sense so this is exciting just to think about how students while their students are changing the world now we're not saying finish our classrooms get a job work for seven years and then maybe you will emerge as a leader you already are so as the song from sweet honey in the rock says you know we are the leaders we've been looking for already right here right now don't look anywhere else for the power to change the world look within and look in relationship and look to the plants in your yard we have to be healing in every second in every interaction otherwise we're getting in the way of the possibilities that the universe is asking of us is making sense into it's kind of wild when i go improv but i think i'm kind of covering the waterfront of what i want to share with you so here's the most simple points number one you need to make the commitment that you're not going to be a resource for racism you need to make the commitment that you're going to be decolonized anti racist in the way that you live every second of your life since you are a relative and you can't do that by yourself you have to organize your life in circles that hold you there and it has to be true for your circle for it to be true for you once you have a circle then you have to recognize that your circles can very easily get trapped to be a part of apartheid you have to help your circles connect to all of the other circles so everybody struggle is your struggle hundred eighty s i went up to canada to a fourth world congress of indigenous people from all over the world gathering and talking about their work to heal their habitat reclaim their culture and then be a resource for the healing of all of us and one of the elders who had called that circle and was one of the organizers of the conference said very simply the heard of one is the hurt of all are you aware enough to recognize that any one's hurt is yours are you aware enough if you're not you're practicing apartheid it's that simple so that doesn't mean i'm sitting in judgment of you it means that we're on a journey and take the message of increasing expanding connecting more deeply your awareness and get more connected get more connected as you get more connected you're going to run into patterns because we've all been trained so the very first time i went up to the leech lake reservation in the one nine hundred eighty s they were organizing a constitutional convention because they felt like their own tribal government which had been colonized wasn't respecting engaging the people on terms that work for the people so erma visitor and you know who is now the you know the chairwoman of the of the of the of the white or the nation was one of the people who was agitating and organizing with ojibwe people for justice at this time and i went up there to bring food from all of our local co ops in my cool little truck the set official indian truck on the back and i got it from a friend of mine on the reservation for five hundred bucks and so i went to drop off the produce and i felt like the energy there was so rich i had to sit in that circle and as i began to walk to the circle somebody ran over and put his hand on my chest and stopped me and said we don't want your kind nationalist so if you saw that spirit of revolutionary black nationalist in my walk then you have a reason to be concerned because our b n is like you know it's a little bit like a black panther kind of thing part of the black panther kind of thing which was willing to stand out on the street corner  the beautiful beautiful black you know attire holding a gun and a constitution right so he saw all that he assumed that's the energy i was bringing this is we don't want that gun militant energy here we're trying to heal here and i said i hear that i respect that i was invited by you know my friend over here so why don't you guys talk to each other if you guys agree that i should go all go but talk to each other so my friend said no he needs to be in the circle for his own healing and his healing is part of our healing we need him here so my friend who would put his hand on my chest notice my friend right he is my friend he is my relative he's not my adversary he's not my any enemy he gave me his truth i gre his truth with my truth as an opening not as a construct of against neither one of us for practicing apartheid we were practicing truth and we had the awareness to move there and so we move past it i sat in that circle i began to get some insight listening to the elders sitting around that circle and talk about their dreams for this generation and i recognized other ways i could help so i called a friend of mine over on the wider earth reservation and said here we are in this tr and we don't have a toilet you guys have any old port to port potties you're not using up there and my friend said yeah you can come get one so i drove up there in my pickup truck and i picked one up put it in the back of my truck and i sped down this dirt road between whiter than least like one hundred miles an hour  porta potti flew up in the air and out of my truck onto the road but it was really well built it didn't break got a few dents so i got it back in the truck and took it over to the encampment and people are laughing as they see me come up with this dented thing saying sammy what happened what is that they told him the story and one of the old indian women there just started laughing and she gave me my indian name sam goes too fast and that's really stayed with me because i the greatest blessing in my life is the blessing of being a father and my daughter is my greatest healer because with her i bring my greatest self out constantly without fail with everybody else is open to question but with her it's automatic and on lock perfectly so i know perfect love i know perfect love and i'm thankful for that so she has my teacher is helping me on my healing journey and now that i know what it's like to be in that space with her i have something to offer as i come out to the world and greet with all of you all of my relatives so i want you to think about that place in your life you know that abundant love that just pours out of you and let that sit within you every second of your life as you're doing your day to day work because that's not colonise of love is the greatest force of transformation so be love b love in every interaction every time you're sitting in a circle every time you're in your classroom every time you're at the dinner table every time you're in a meeting that you don't want to be yet be love in transform that space and ask everybody else to be it with you so one of the mistakes we make we again in the individual is and we get caught up in we have to do it but we don't we all have to do it so as the bigger me emerges the bigger me necessarily invites the bigger you the bigger us necessarily invites a healthier discourse in the world and that shapes a new future so before i wrap up and close i want to come back to some more indigenous knowledge in one nine hundred ninety four duren she  movement which is still unfolding you know dynamic they talked about this practice of intercultural ism into culturalism one world in which many worlds fit one world in which many worlds fit how does that relate to our understanding of assimilation and in integration it's a fundamentally different fundamentally different paradigm intercultural isn't world where many worlds fit says let's sit in a circle with each other and share our stories but i'm not trying to be like you right so frak that are in freck is racial equity i talked to an indigenous brother about structural racism and he said i'm a little hesitant with that language sam because for me it's more important to talk about genocide because racial equity is what we fight for after you've taken my land and killed my culture and you're asking me to fight for equity for jobs for access to health care for so and so all in a colonial contract i don't want any of that i want my land back brother i want my songs back i want my language back i want my grandmas back i want to hear can you help me with that you can't help me with that if you're a colonizer as the aboriginal woman said a number her name right now but she said if you've come here to help me leave but if you've come here because you well being and your liberation is inextricably caught up with mine staying let's work together let's hear all together let's change the world together each one of you ha to sort of notice all the ways you're holding colonialism all of the ways you're holding racism all of the comforts that you refused to interrogate every time you turn on your your  who in the world doesn't have water every time you turn on your light switch who in the world doesn't have electricity the president united states china just had this so called historic gathering where they agreed to do all of this great stuff by twenty thirty so again addressing climate change by twenty thirty is unacceptable we need to address that right now we have to heal the fossil fuel addiction right now we can't wait but oh wait a minute i got so many benefits from everything that is maybe tomorrow maybe next week it's got to be right now it's got to be right now in my own life i'm an example of this extreme pitiful so i have empathy for you we're in the same boat so it's not white versus indigenous versus black versus mister versus asian it's all of us all of us as human beings are participating in something that's hurting the earth hurting each other and hurting ourselves we're in different vantage points of the pattern but all of us are holding the pattern so my prayer my wish my hope my dream my dated a practice is to remind you encourage you partner with you in being transformation actively being transformation this is the work that we have to do so i want to ask you again because you know in in my community w a whole lot of call and response i'll say will you be transformation and you say i'll be transformation will you be transformation i say will you bring everyone with you and you say everybody's coming we we are on a journey together and this journey requires a self on us a way of being together that we have participated in blocking let go of your blocking posture take the stance of vulnerability and be liberation as a dialogue we need to have each other about what freedom looks like force in the twenty first century can we create a world in which everybody can have what american south what the middle class suppose that a middle class americans have and what is that it's another you know mythical construct as we see more and more of our relatives living in their parents basements or parents living in their kids basements right which is actually a good thing when you know the circle comes back together again but not because the economy is making it together let's come back together because we love each other and we enjoy each other's company let that be the reason we come back together i want to win for time good  awesome all right so this is part of the dynamic of apartheid excuse me of improv isn't that funny sammy and slip yeah thank you to the organizers for starting it off with the indigenous space and bringing us all into it in one thousand nine hundred three my brother who is now the president of white earth tribal college  was from the pine ridge reservation talk about juxtapositions and you know just how wild the world is want went started to get on his healing journey to go to sweat lodges and he asked me to come with him because he was a little nervous about and he hadn't been  on his brother so of course i'm going to say yes so i go to the sweat lodge with my brother and i meet this elder who is running the sweat lodge amos own and that was one of those moments that changed my life because at the end of you know the sweat amos says i really like the way you pray and you bring the whole world in this is beautiful for me to listen to it but i notice a profound discord in you i can feel how divided you feel and i want you to say i want you to acknowledge that you have a choice to make about whether you lean into truly being healthy or whether you want to let your anger control you so being at that sweat in making a commitment to being on that healing journey i would change my relationship with anger and i have to acknowledge it's been a slow process to change the relationship with anger enough that i don't see that the mouth as much i'm not done on that healing journey there's still triggers that catch me right so to tame that and indeed i am saying that so the indigenous people of ecuador in their practice of intercultural ism have come up with this construct of in their own language which i can't speak to on paper it looks like some mock casi but i don't know how to say it right but that's what it looks like right so it's about living well as opposed to being acqui because instead of have more want morse have enough will shares so we need to create a world of have enough will shares and heal through that pattern of have a lot and still want a lot more because as long as it's about getting more we're going to keep burning all of the oil we're going to keep getting all of the coal and we're going to keep facilitating eco side and genocide until there are no relatives left so yes this basic pattern that we carry all of this technology of wanting to control part of what we have to let go of is the need for control and focus on relationship as opposed to control thank you for asking i do have a question but i'm actually kind of concerned that we have two white men asking the only question so i just want to make sure that that there isn't anyone else  question thank you so much i was just cringing at that so i appreciate that hey sam i love you you do a sweetie my name is ana if there are any arabs here i'd love to connect with you it's pretty arab free zone besides me so far that i've noticed my question for you is i really appreciate your for the interconnected loops of healing and community and being activists and change makers can you point us towards says i work for the government you know that so it's all about tangible tangible so what are some specific healing practices you talked about singing and dancing and acupuncture but what are some other healing practices that you can point us towards thanks the most important healing practice is tapping into your own body wisdom so if you ask your trap how do i heal you won't get a useful answer because i'll probably say excedrin something like that but if you come down here to your solar plexus and you ask yourself where do i need healing and how do i begin to heal and you just do this back and forth back and forth you let your body tell you what medicine you need right now in your own body will tell you we don't talk to our own bodies you don't need a doctor that's a really important question i think most of us no longer living in the natural way have you know what this great scholar activist you know called the net natural deficit disorder so it's like it's a common human ailment that we you know live in heat islands we live in concrete jungles we've removed ourselves even if we live in rural america we're part of the industrial food system and we're living our lives in ways that don't allow us to have a deep inherent relationship with all of our relatives so i think it's important that people heal at the cosmological level so as indigenous people who are involved in the great lakes commons so google that great lakes commons in that's a law that's the basis of life so if we begin to live by the basis of life how do we juxtapose neo liberal world capitalist system within that where is the relationship there's a lot of interesting scholars who are saying that we can have both we can have our cake and eat it too we can have capitalism and we can also have healthy nature so all of the work on natural capitalism is trying to you know look at how do we do that i want to say well imagine maybe not open your imagination you know maybe to an aspect that will work but we need to open our radical imagination and we need to think about how do we come back to nature i  to where something close to my neck because of the lynching so i can't wear a tie except when my mother tells me i have to the only time i do it but otherwise i can't wear a tie i can't have anything tight on my neck when i used to talk to black boys and girls and indigenous boys and girls about coming back out to nature the black boys and girls know me and the clan is out there i can't be around trees kids today are saying that kids today are hungry to connect to nature and it's the adults that are blocking them so what we have to do is help the adults heal so that all of us are reengaging ourselves in nature so it's exciting right now to get kids back involved and have the kids be agents of the rest of us getting involved in our healing journey so just start to do the math in your own life how much time are you spending outside how much time are you spending talking to plants how much time are you spending looking at the earth worms and the stuff you can't see the invisible realm in your soil how much time are you taking care of water and thinking about how every aspect of your life is ecological and it must become ecologically