we all three of us are members of a group called the men of the middle passage and this is a group that meets once a week every phil would you like to come in and minister let me let me add that i've been involved now for four years and at the beginning it was the understanding that we needed a safe place to come together to be able to talk about what happened during the week because you know we have lots of issues that seem to affect us based on the structures that we work in that we live in there we have to navigate and sometimes we call it micro michel aggression right and and so having what i call that safe place to sit in a circle talk about what's going on and have other brothers give a perspective of how you might address that the following week has really been a a source of strength for me so we meet every friday every friday you know what six o'clock and we leave that eight o'clock suppose there but the this ceremony or the ritual that we have at the end when we say i am and everybody says that and then together we say we are has a real powerful vulnerability and i have never been to a place where men fail safe to cry now that's the power of being together when we can allow our emotions to be same by others and not let the eagle get in the way of sharing those stories that cause disease they cause mental anguish and we ask that they are many created make this show a success and that we reach out to those that need help me and me yeah i phrase it like that needing help when i really meant by that is that  min grown men choose to come to our meetings as opposed to going to the club you know or going to other things it's friday night people do you know and so that's that's the powerful thing because you can tell a lot of people are really searching to get their heart rate there so let's talk about you guys personal on a personal level  the reason why i asked you to to come is because i was i was reminded of a work our hero and the hero from where i understand it is the one who leaves a situation this uncomfortable or detrimental and they go out and gain some understanding then they want to respect and help those rather than just keep going to say well i'm just going to get about though it's called a hero so the way i see you guys is  choose you chose a path or self development and then you chose to reach back and reach out to help others as here and so i would like to start with my brother work and stuff but i looked at what he was doing trying to go to school you know trying to work and makes a film of itself and growing up without a father that was obviously good role modeling for myself then as i began to matriculate through life and kind of move on through you know i like most people i got influenced to do various things and i wasn't such a good student through basically middle school high school things like that so i was just sort of wandering you know around with not a lot of positive things going on and so i read to a man actually got a phone house about eighteen so i showed up at the next day sort of may have put me to work and he start checking me out my temperament my behavior stuff like that i didn't know he was doing all this assessment of me and so after i worked with for several months he came in he says you know so you're too young to be out here you know working like to go to school  an engineer well live he knew i hated school is the last thing i ever wanted to be a bob it was school education and things of this nature so i continued to work with him about four or five months or so and then i was working in his house by myself and this man stressed all the time  safety so i saw a board on the floor with a nail in it and i was carried a piece of sheet rock it might sit well you know put it down pick up the bore so forth but i didn't do that so i stepped on the board on the nail right so the mail goes in my foot i dropped a sheet agonising no no pain meds in the x rays any of that but so that if it had occurred i thought school so soon as i got that they all out of my foot i went to seattle central community college and i registered to go to school and the unfortunate thing was when i got in there they just don't let you in school they test you so they tested me out i was doing third grade math and reading writing comprehension of a fifth and sixth grader and my grades were so low that they said there was no classes will be detained in the building so i had to start outside in the portables but little did they know over the time i was with this man and he gave me motivation gave me purpose i took those things and i started applying myself and i went up there and i got some of the best grades course i ever got during that time and eventually went on you know to pretty decent career as an engineer down it boy along with a whole lot of things work with the community reaching back helping other people students you know going out to all the schools all the high schools i would go there participate the mesa programs junior achievement anything i could do to kind of get in manager in progress about five years but because my grades were so far down it took me a whole bunch of years just to catch up for it but i was taking you know sixteen twenty critic orders every quarter or just because i want to get this thing done you know what we're trying to speed it up when he was a little youngster and i was a young man was probably an eye opener because that's when i discovered that i wanted to work with children what's really interesting about my experience which is similar to yours is that i was acquired was when i was in elementary and middle school and my best friend t j bassam bless his soul who is no longer with us was someone that i always want to be light because i remember when he went to lakeside school to get educated and i so so bad wanted to go to but i wasn't chosen and so i always had this feeling that i wasn't smart enough i had this feeling that i didn't deserve some of these opportunities that tom de lay before me so when i went to high school i dissed dia when everybody else would doing all this stuff so i have my own report card and i use it as an artifact to show children my pass because there is purpose in showing the bypass as it compares to my dissertation that i wrote because if you look at that report you would think that i could write your book that report  think that i could think if you looked at my report you would believe that i could get along with folks and so when i went to college leaving high school i would say i was still you one phone call and you know who had to make that phone call to that was mother and that was the most difficult phone call i haven't had to make plus it was slow because they had the dial you know the things you d something different but i didn't know what that was until i was a junior in college and the fact there was two things that were significant because my grades were so low i received a letter from sam said you want to go to vietnam and i said oh really really and so it seemed like this little miracle happen when i ran into a mexican who happened to be a man teacher and he saw something that me that i could not see in myself and for whatever reason just like with you he adopted me and said i want to help you get through then again if you look at my report card you would say oh lord have mercy why is he stand up here teach a bad person you say have been there to have mercy but nevertheless i got through it and and what became very important in that whole process is that i learned that i could become smart and in that process also figured out that i had to sacrifice for things that i want it and then it was then i met my wife believe it or not back there and that was probably a good thing because she didn't believe in all that we smoke in the drug and alcohol and all that kind of stuff so i lost all the friends who were corrupting my mind and so were my friends left so that the alcohol so that we and then i got on this path where it was straight narrow and i was really clear about my purpose which led to me and rolling into a teacher corps program which led me to being surrounded with some of the greatest teachers of that could ever imagine who once again adopted be because they believe that i could be a great teacher so in teach for five years in the juvenile justice system but eventually i became the principal of the school in which i was managing programs of children who were just like me so when you talk about he  wrote my case i went out there figured out that i could in fact be smart but my mission was to take care of the children who sometimes didn't have opportunity and so even today  up but i still go wander into some of these schools to advocate for the children some time don't have voices or sometimes are invisible to the teachers who stand before them yeah and once again i had there was a young lady you know as you ask this question it makes me reflect and say now i have some people who were in my life a short period of time and some folks came into my life who are with me for five six seven eight years to help me get through the challenges that i encounter to eventually get their ph d one one aspect of that journey is that is that when i decided to be vulnerable again and open up i had folks who didn't look like me didn't have skin color but folks who say i will help you get through this  this moment i mean it took almost a year for me to honestly believe i had a ph d and i and i think because i was living in the old world of mine not thinking that i was smart enough not thinking that i could have this ph d and so when you say dr felder it's affirming that you are smart enough and that's a story that i would that i'm telling you that i often don't tale is that you when you become vulnerable people come into your lives when you state what you want and when it becomes important to you then it becomes important for others little miracle start to happen that allows you to walk the land of trouble that brings you to your destiny so part of my my process now is to when you talk about giving back is to continuously question why black children are not being educated in these schools why is it that s and i think about when i came through school right when i was over there in the central area and all black folks in the central air went to the same school but i can't think of one black aspired by reading and part of part of my goal is to create avenues for children to understand that that's where your options come from the ability to work with others and the ability to read in those areas because they know you know it in the you know they think he looked at him as a homosexual all this kind of stuff he said he used to get a fight to go to jail and everything and then he said that he chose the path of education to remake himself he started on that path and then he found that the military was offering these opportunities to get an education you know so that's why he got his degrees he been all over the world etc etc et just to him said it to a lot of people who had a problem you know i think i go to monroe every once in a while to talk to the to talk to the young men who are in prison and one aspect that i always walk away with is the notion that when one becomes stable they bloom and so when i when i think about what goes on in our schools for example and think about the impact of poverty for example you create this instability that exists not only on the inside but where one laser head and we ask ourselves the question well how do we help these children bloom become the best of who they are naturally should be when in fact their life is in chaos and then when you have school settings where the structure is chaos then you have this pathway to prison that people now talk about so the ideal is to  one to do work in the community a very specific way and the second is to put structure in the school and i believe that all children and our children in particular are just as bright as all those who sit in those segregated classes apart from the black children who crossed the hall so so my thinking is is as long as we have individuals who are in position to maintain the school to serve the privileged few then we will always have this prison system for the children of color so there's not only some actions that we need to take but those actions have to have to precede be preceded by a believe that they're  you can believe it i believe you can achieve it but there's not a voter it's good when you say to yourself this is what i want to do i believe that you know god will put certain people in your path to help you to get the residents and the individuals who are elders and you know how we sometimes talk about baby children i'm watching the baby children become scholars when they're in the presence of elders and so what i see is this exchange of wisdom that occurs between these two groups so sometimes i think we have to look for our answers outside and for young