Episode 14: A Symphony of Leaders - Amplifying Voices That Deserve to Be Heard - Isaac Alferos

00:00:00 - What is up, everybody? I'm here with Isaac Alferos, who I'm super excited to talk about, who I was actually able to meet because of Michael Weoffe. How are you doing, Isaac?

00:00:14 - I'm doing pretty good. Thanks for having me on. Overall, it's been a pretty good day, so that's great.

00:00:20 - Yeah, of course. I actually have been able to, you know, look at the website that you've built and the organization you've built, so I'm super excited to talk about that because

00:00:27 - I know the issues that you're going to be talking about hit home for me, and I'm sure hit home for a lot of people. So with that, do you want to just get us started with who you are and, you know, how do you identify yourself and so on and so forth?

00:00:40 - Yeah, my name is Isaac. My pronouns are he, him, his. I identify as a Black and Filipino, specifically El Cano male, and I hail from Southern California, specifically in Buena Park, which makes me a proud Buena Park coyote as well.

00:00:58 - That's great, and so do you want to start us off with a little bit of your past history and, you know, how that influenced on who you are as a person today?

00:01:06 - Yeah, so I think my past is a little interesting. I grew up with two other siblings in a, obviously a biracial household or multiracial household, and I am the only, I would say visibly the only Black identified of my siblings. So growing up in elementary school, we went to a private school, a relatively conservative Christian private school, which led to a lot of the formative issues of my youth in terms of tokenism that I had to deal with and the racist biases of my teachers. And so a lot of that, I would say from preschool to like sixth grade, was just filled with these influences. And I remember even being a kid and recognizing that I exist in the world in this bubble of the world is being curated and created for me by these people and recognizing that I was the only, you know, technically my siblings, but I was the only Black student in the school. So it wasn't just in my class, it was in the whole campus. So we didn't see, or I didn't see people who look like me. And that always, like looking back, I think that that really affected how I viewed myself, how I viewed my identity and how

00:02:22 - I affiliated myself with my culture as well. And I think the only saving grace I really had from that was my music class and my music teacher, who I was lucky enough to be studying the kind of the basics of music all through elementary school and learning how to read music and understand it and read rhythms and being in show productions and like musicals and stuff that they had all the kids do. And that was like the only expression I really had. And that really, I can like think of all these standout moments. And like, I remember in fourth grade, we had to do a project where they asked us to write a report on a role model we had. And it couldn't be anyone in your family, but had to be someone you saw yourself as. And I couldn't write this report, because I didn't see myself in the media I was watching. I didn't see myself in anyone I knew. And all the, all these people that my classmates were pulling out were people that they identified with,

00:03:14 - I couldn't find anyone. And conveniently, that was the same year as the election of Barack Obama.

00:03:20 - And that made a huge impact on me and seeing myself in media as something beyond just an athlete, which I am not, as well as just an artist in general. And I think that that, like coming out of that and having to write that report, looking back really alters a lot of my future too, and where I see myself and where I align. But music has always been that foundation for me. That was the place I got to be myself. Why do you think joining band was so liberating for you? I, you know, I think that there's a lot of individuals who do something and that something helps them become something else and something greater. I want to hear like how that affected you. Yeah, so I realized like, coming from that elementary school, I switched into a public junior high school. And I went from being the poorest kid in the school to one of the wealthiest kids in this public school that was down the street from my house. And it was this huge mind shift. And going from junior high to high school, the only thing that was consistent was band, I joined band, I am a saxophone player, similar to Michael, except we have different preferences and which saxophones we like to play, but very similar. And that experience was transformative for me, largely because of the people I worked with and the people I met.

00:04:42 - Coming into high school, literally, a day before, I think a lot of the band kids know that you have a band camp typically before you go into band and every summer. So coming in as a freshman, a day before band camp, my grandfather and a huge role model in my life, who's lived my whole life passed away. And that was this huge loss that I felt and this huge loss of family and connection, someone I saw as an advocate for me. And really, the center of my world was gone.

00:05:09 - And so now I'm going to this band. And what I quickly found was a family with folks that really cared and really loved each other. And it really helped transform my view of love and support through this community. And so because of that, I became obsessed with band, obsessed to the extent of I wanted to make the best experience for everyone who comes into this program and experience as good as I had coming into it. So I think at that point,

00:05:36 - I was probably off. Somebody had told me to run for a leadership position. And that probably that was the shifting point in my life. I got into leadership positions.

00:05:48 - I was the president of that program. And then later, the drum major. And I did so much there in terms of building up leadership programs. I created that program's first leadership program. Because when I came, it was new. We had none. We had a lot of titles, but really nothing. So I created an actual structure of leadership and trained leaders with this fundamental belief that if we give these amazing kids, these amazing people, the opportunity and the investment to become leaders in their communities, that they can do more than just tell people how to play an instrument. They can become the leaders in the community that we all needed. And so I would say we're pretty successful at it. That program is still running. And I graduated a couple years ago. So I would say that was relatively successful.

00:06:30 - But it was transformative for me because it reminded me of the power of your community and the power of people in that community and the desire to do something good and your ability to mobilize with the folks. And that has always been essential to me, even in the work that I do now. That's great. I do want to ask about, you know, you said you were from a multiracial family.

00:06:53 - How do you think that skewed your perception of life? And maybe can you talk about an experience you had that was different from your brothers and your sisters and yourself? Yeah, I would say that, in my opinion, coming from a multiracial family, it's really hard to accept racial binaries.

00:07:13 - A lot of times, especially when we view and understand race in America, we see it.

00:07:18 - It's really easy to characterize Black and white issues, and everyone else is to fall in between.

00:07:23 - But when you're multiracial, you understand it's a lot more complicated. It's a lot more complex than that. And the cultural part of those, these two independent cultures weren't meant to work well together. So there was a lot of parts, I think, interestingly, in my household that we were,

00:07:38 - I would say, culturally void. There was no inherently, this part is from a Black culture, and this part is from a Filipino culture. It just wasn't. We didn't name it. We didn't always put titles to things. And so that, I think, made my house and my home a little bit more liberating.

00:07:54 - Because I didn't have to view things as, I do this because we culturally do this. Because it wouldn't make sense when you're working with multiple cultures. So it was just what we do.

00:08:05 - And it was also just as easy to change, because there's no cultural ties to it.

00:08:09 - But that being said, I still recognize my siblings don't look like me. And where we live, and also, I would say, ironically, the last bastion of conservative viewpoints in my city has really changed how I walk through life compared to, I have a twin brother who looks completely different than me, how he walks through life. And that's always been an interesting thing to look at. I remember how teachers used to treat him, and when we would go places, and the assumption that we weren't siblings always made it so, even to this day, whenever we have to work with customer service folks or work in stores, he'll go and talk to them. I don't like talking to them, because there's a huge difference in how they work with both of us. In a lot of everyday interactions, my brother Isaiah is easier to get across, in part because he's also just inherently nicer than I am. But also, there's the racial biases that come with it. But that also changes, I would say, what physically existed, how people see me wasn't really mirrored in how I saw myself. So I struggled seeing myself in

00:09:16 - Black-identified spaces and Filipino-identified spaces, because my home didn't identify like that. We didn't split things up like that. But also, because I grew up, I went to school at a very young age for so long in a white conservative area. So it's really weird to then see myself within these communities that I know I'm a part of, that genetically I know I'm a part of, but that

00:09:40 - I don't identify with, I don't feel identified with. And so that led to its own journey. I would say my first year of college of trying to find what it meant to be Black, what it meant to be

00:09:50 - Filipino for myself. How do you think you, you know, I guess what I'm asking is, what advice would you give to those who are going through the same issues right now? It seems like, and I don't know if this is for sure, but if you found your space, you found that you were able to achieve and succeed and succeed and be successful somewhere else, what advice would you give those who are struggling in the same position that you were in maybe not too long ago? Yeah, I would say, especially for multiracial and multicultural folks, nobody else gets to decide what your culture is or isn't, right? So I think it goes a little both ways. Nobody gets to tell me whether or not I am or am not Black enough. We don't get to decide whether what I do is or isn't

00:10:38 - Black. It's just what I do, and I'm Black, and that's how those connect. It's what I do, and I'm

00:10:43 - Filipino, and that's how those connect. So, but what it also taught me is to break down a lot of that internalized policing that I had accepted of viewing, looking down on folks in my own community who may follow whatever stereotype other people set and looking down on them, because that was common in where I grew up, and breaking down that internal perception and going, they can be whatever they want to be as well, that nothing makes that inherently better or worse. What I think is most important when you're trying to come to terms with who you are and feel at home in your community is create a space that feels like home. Find that space that feels like home, and that's where you're supposed to be, and if no space you can find looks like that, make it, and I, in my experience, that's been a lot more fun to make those spaces. That's great. Can you talk a little bit more about those experiences? Because I think that there's this notion that it's almost impossible to create those spaces, but I feel like once you're in it and once you're in that process, it's so much easier. Can you give us a little bit more of that insight that you had? Yeah, I would say it probably, for me, this process started in high school and has continued into my college career as well. Post or expanding past band, in high school, probably my junior year, our arts programs were constantly at war with each other. Didn't really get along together, even though most of us shared the same or similar passions, and so I organized with some folks and brought all the student leaders together with this idea that we, as students, have the ability to change the culture within which the art students operate. Our school was trying to get accredited, so at the same time as this, we're trying to get accredited. A lot of these arts programs, including my band, was new, but we had a lot of people, and so we saw a couple of these problems where certain groups couldn't bring in as many people to their events as others, and that meant that they had less funding and all of it, so it was organizing student leaders to get together and say, well, let's create a community that changes this culture. Let's genuinely support each other, your choir's running an event, now my band is staffing it. When we're running an event, then I have some theater folks staffing and supporting each other that way, and that created a habit of mine. Following that, I think I created our school's first student senate, and in the constitution that I wrote up, we gave back power to students in terms of power to make decisions that are sent directly to the, I believe it's the board of trustees, but sent directly to leaders past administration about what students view are happening on their campus. We helped organize protests. My senior year, we had the March for Our Lives protest, and we helped organize it and do it in a way that protected students from being expelled or suspended for participating in their first amendment rights. All of that was about creating spaces for students in a community that felt like home. I love my community, and even though we all come from very different backgrounds, that space felt like home, and it was incredibly important that not only do we support each other, love each other, and affirm each other, but that we use this collective view to create structures that also continually support each other. We created a structure so students have an actual voice and actually have abilities to weigh in on decisions, because at the end of the day, your experiences are incredibly valid. They're the most valid in order to determine how life carries on, so I really believe in the power of sharing one's voice, and I think that that existed in high school. I started in high school, just continues into college about creating spaces. It's not usually, in my opinion, it's not an issue of whether or not you do or don't know or do or don't have the experience to do it. The only difference, I firmly believe that the only difference between what is idealistic and what is realistic is how many people you can get to buy into it, so if I can get you all to buy into this idea of what we can be, then that's what we can make, and we can always figure out the kinks along the way.

00:14:48 - Oh, that's super powerful that you say that, because I really do think that if you're able to, you know, sell an idea, you have so many more people on board, and then you're like this big weaponized boat that's just going and changing things. I think it's super amazing and inspiring that you created a constitution for your school to give power back to the students. Can you talk about that? Because I'm super interested in that. Yeah, so it was an interesting experience.

00:15:15 - Essentially, what had happened is our administration had called a bunch of students together.

00:15:20 - This was post-Stoneman Douglas High School shooting. It's about a week and a half after.

00:15:27 - Had called a bunch of student leaders together, and they gave us this idea. It was a mass email sent out that said, hey, we want to bring students together to create a student senate, and I was like, okay, when the administration asks you to show up, you have to show up to these things.

00:15:40 - So we have, oh gosh, I could probably say a couple, at least 100, probably close to 150 student orgs on campus at this time. That includes clubs, that includes everyone, and I'm already used to working with arts folks, and just by nature of being a student leader, we tended to have connections with some folks. Oh, you know this person's ahead of this, and this person's ahead of that. So I get a text, I think I get a call the night before, and it was from our ASB president who essentially said, hey, this event isn't what you think it is. It's a wash. The administration just wants to get us all together and have essentially a kumbaya moment when students are actually trying to do stuff, but she wasn't in the ability to do something. Her role meant that she had decided with the administration, had to work with them. She was like, I just don't know what to do, and she was like, do you think we can organize something? And I said, yeah, we can figure something out, and so I worked with her, and that whole morning we were doing essentially roll call. I was calling up and contacting every single leader I have, working in between classes, getting a, hey, something is about to happen. I can't tell you exactly what's going to happen, but it's my, I'm notably good at this in terms of we're going to jump, I'm going to jump off a cliff, and I need to know if you're going to jump with me. And so it was just this, yeah, sure, whatever happens, we're good, and so we walked into this meeting, and it's an hour-long meeting.

00:17:00 - It's the same day my band is supposed to go to a festival, so I have to leave them preparation, like preparing and setting up the bus and getting all the stuff in the vans and everything so I can go to this meeting. We spend 45 minutes of the hour-long meeting on an icebreaker, and then he has us all sit down. We're sitting in the gym, so it's this long tables, and he's talking to us in the center. The principal is talking to us about all the things he wants to do, and I'm realizing we're running out of time. There's now 10 minutes, and he was like, so with that, I think we're done because I don't have any questions, and we're looking around, and everyone's kind of uncomfortable because we all recognize the elephant in the room was none of us has talked about the protests that we want to do. That's happening nationally, so I'm not going to take credit of organizing a national protest. It was just on our campus, and so I stood up, and I said, you know, I said, we've, we all had to be here for an hour. We wasted our time for 45 minutes doing an icebreaker. Realistically, I want to know what's the administration's stance on the protests that students want to do. That's the only reason we all showed up. I was like, the big elephant, that's the only reason anybody showed up was to do this for our students, and he tried to placate me and essentially say, oh, he wants to do this memorial thing, and he wanted to move on, and he tried to push me aside, and I said, you know what? That's inherently disrespectful to folks, right, because people are, they're going to protest regardless, so having this memorial at the same time is obviously a tactic to pull students from it, and it's disrespectful, and so I'm saying, I'm like, my band, at this point, our art center was being renovated, and we were in temporary buildings where the ceiling caved in because it rained too hard. These buildings were dilapidated. They weren't used for actually holding classes, and they were so small that you couldn't practice in them. Otherwise, you would damage your hearing, and they're out in the parking lot. I remember I said, you know, my band's working out of broken classrooms where the ceiling caves in, and when it rains, water leaks in. We can't practice in there, so I don't know how the hell you're supposed to have a band in a room you can't practice in. Every, continually, every week, something else breaks, and we have to fix it.

00:19:02 - My students are locked out and unable to get into their rooms, and you can see it in their faces, and so my, I said, my bigger question is, not only has administration never been out there, but how the hell do you want me to lie to my folks and tell them you care about them when you don't, and so I said, you know, and I was like, this whole notion that students can work together, we've already been doing. You can ask every one of the arts leaders in here. We've already been working together for the last year. Any other leaders, you know we have connections. We all already work together. There was no problem of us working together. The issue was whether or not you had control of that, and so I remember I said, you know, essentially, I don't have the time for this. I got to go help them back, and honestly, none of us have the time for it. It's inherently disrespectful of all of us that you guys together for a kumbaya moment when we all know each other, and I said, so if we're not actually going to deal with the protest that is going to happen, it will happen. There's no need for us to be here, and I got up and left, and so that next week, I work with folks, and we drafted up a constitution. We went, okay, what's most important to our students? What matters the most? What is the structure going to look like, and so it was, it's a democratic body where students have, every student leader has a vote for their organization, and included in the beginning of the class, at the very beginning of the constitution is that no administrator can come to any student senate meeting unless explicitly invited, so there is no intimidation of how students operate. All recommendations made by the student senate are sent to this, it's the, I think it is the board of trustees as well as administrators, so students have a direct connection to folks who actually are able to change their education process without anyone mitigating how they feel and what they're hearing, and so that was the whole process. It took, it takes mass mobilizing. It took students recognizing that we inherently do have power, and that nobody's going to do this for us, but it was the most thrilling experience. It was way too much fun.

00:20:54 - And I know you've already done so much from ASI to, you know, band, art, all of these things.

00:21:01 - Do you have an example or maybe an experience that you think your work has impacted the most that you can talk to us a little bit more about?

00:21:08 - Yeah, this last year, I worked as a lobby coordinator at Fullerton's, or Cal State Fullerton's ASI, and as a coordinator, I was tasked with working with the Cal State Student Association.

00:21:20 - That's the organization that Michael was president for, so as a student at large, I was there every month for the plenaries. I sat on our SJAC committee, Social Justice and Equity Commission, and, but the large bulk of my work was on voter engagement, getting folks to be engaged in voting and understanding what the census is and all of that, and so I saw that with this role, I have two major opportunities here through CSSA and through Lobby Corps, and so I took my passion of bettering the support of our students and changing the structure of higher education to better support historically marginalized communities like mine, and decided that instead of just talking to folks about how you get able to vote, like how you register to vote, what's on the ballot, that was something we're going to talk about, but we're also going to talk about what I, what's called essentially voter education. We're going to talk about why communities like mine and a lot of communities of color historically don't vote and honor that because there are valid reasons why that happens. We're going to educate folks on the barriers to voting because there's so many of them, so that way it's no longer a question of why aren't you voting, it's how can we better support your ability to vote. Fullerton has a huge amount of undocumented students who aren't able to vote, and so that is also something we have to work with, is how do we talk about engagement that isn't just voting. How do we get people to be part of the process, and then through CSSA, it was sharing that information with other campuses and collaborating with other leaders, so that way they can take a lot of the work that we're doing and bring it to their campus as well, and then we can collaborate and share ideas. I think in addition to that, there's the ethnic studies bill that came up this year that would mandate CSU students have to take an ethnic studies course, and we worked on that. I worked with a group of students to really bring that to

00:23:09 - CSSA's forefront. It took a lot of months because it was important that CSSA takes a stand because they represent the only stakeholders in this, or the primary stakeholders. This only affects CSU students, this is the official voice of CSU students, and we haven't said anything, and so it was working with a lot of student leaders from a bunch of different campuses, meeting with them, talking to them, this is what the bill says, this is what it doesn't say, let's break down these misconceptions,

00:23:33 - I was so happy. I want to say about February or March, we were able as a body to vote in support of this piece of legislation, so that meant we could use our lobbying power to help push it through the legislature too, but that took a lot of work. It took a lot of emotional work too, which I think is we don't often account for, and all of that kind of led me into the work that I do on the project as well. Cool, so before we get to the project, I do want to ask you some speedy questions to get us and our audience to get to know you a little bit better, but also to lighten the mood knowing that we just talked about a lot, and after we're going to talk about a lot more. So my first question to you is, other than what we already talked about in terms of the constitution, which is a big one that's going to stick with me honestly for a long time, is there anything that you were the first to do? Yeah, I found out a couple weeks ago actually. I work at a research organization at Cal State Fullerton, and I found out that one of the projects that took months to do just got published, so now I'm the first in my family to be published, and that's really cool. Wow, congrats. What was the piece? It's this really long report, but it was essentially on teacher, peer-led teacher development to better support their students. Wow, that's great. So you were working on that throughout your junior year, correct?

00:25:00 - Yeah, well, I was working on that my sophomore year of college. Okay. I just ended my sophomore year, so that took about four months, and I did it with an amazing team. Love them. So it's at the

00:25:12 - Center for Research on Educational Access and Leadership at Cal State Fullerton. Absolutely love working there, and so finally getting that work published was really, really cool to see, and then my boss, funny enough, sent me an email just one day that said, we're published, and it just on it is a screenshot of the first page of the report, and my name's on there, so I got writing credit, which was really, really cool. Wow, that's great. Congrats, by the way. That's really awesome. Our next question is, who is your favorite artist? Yes, oh my god. As far as music artists, I would say No Name is definitely one of my favorites. Love her work. I have invested so much money into the No Name book club and buying her books, so I'm a big fan of No Name as well as Amine and Kehlani. I'm a huge hip-hop and R&B fan, so those are my top three artists.

00:26:05 - After COVID happens, whose concert would you go to first? So Amine's dropping a new album, and I'm just waiting. It's dropping in August, and so post-COVID, if that's the first concert that's coming out, my first paycheck post-COVID is going to that. Wow, that's really great. It's great to hear that a lot of what you've been doing and a lot of your interests overlap with the organization that you've started, and I see that with, you know, what you read, people you listen to, so on and so forth.

00:26:34 - So, I mean, can you get us started with, you know, how you take a stand with mental health and how you're currently working on that with your project? Yeah, so I am really proud to be one of the founding members and the executive director of the Black Brown Healing Project, and so as a project, our goals are kind of split up into three pieces. So we recognize the history of trauma in our communities as well as the stigma that discussing that trauma has, and we also recognize that a healing journey for each and every one of us is necessary in order to continue to thrive through life and not just survive it. Our second goal is we try and create content and bring information that not only helps support us all on that healing journey, but also gives us reason to celebrate the beauty in all that we are and that all exists in our culture, because I think that that's really important, is to remember that joy is a radical thing, and the third thing is to help support and instigate action and activism that centers mental health at it. So that's centering healing in terms of growing and what develops the overall healing for our community.

00:27:45 - So all of that's pretty broad, but it's definitely mental health is a huge piece of what we do, because there's a huge lack of conversation in our community about that, as well as a lack of support, right? There's even for folks in our communities, for let's Black and Brown folks who want access to mental health and mental health support, excuse me, we don't see effective access because of biases in like the medical field and a lack of trained professionals who know how to work with folks, but what was also really important is that what we do is as accessible as possible, which is why the first two series, which are still live on Instagram and they should be going all the way through the summer and then we're going to see how they go into the fall, but are about film and music that centers our community, because it was really important for us and the amazing creative directors that helped me, you know, guide the project and where we want to go.

00:28:41 - Understand that film and music is probably the most accessible form of mental health support we can get. When you're stressed, when you're anxious, when you just, when you feel like the world around you is not really reflective of how you feel inside, it's easy to listen to music. It's easy to turn on Netflix and watch something. And so we can get folks to start seeing in our community, hey, that's mental health support. You know, when you are, when you had a long day at work and you're driving home, you're listening to music in your car, that is mental health support. That's dealing with those emotions. Now that we're having that conversation, we can get to more of the other pieces that we can do to really develop that healing process too. But we're starting with what's most accessible and we're doing it in a way that also gets to celebrate all the beauty in our community. So I really love it. We can get like one stone. Yeah, that's so awesome. I want to talk a little bit more about the way you actually do it in terms of your medium.

00:29:28 - Can you explain maybe like in a very simple, like the simplest term possible, how you do that and maybe talk a little bit more about the resources on your website? Yeah, so I think the best way to explain it is we are a platform for our community. That's how we like to align ourselves. So we do multiple different series on our project because we know that just one approach probably isn't going to reach as many people. And then sometimes you may see the right thing at the wrong time.

00:29:57 - So we want to make sure that we're trying to be as accessible as possible to our community.

00:30:01 - So we have series on Instagram and then we have our website as well. So our series on Instagram is usually ran by our creative directors. They come up with different ideas for things they want to highlight. We're currently in the works planning out stuff too. That's covering my whiteboard in the back. And so that's really fun because that gives us the ability to celebrate parts of our community too, as well as inform people in a way that doesn't feel like a textbook because the last thing I want to do is feel lectured at. But then even on our website, we have a couple other resources. Usually we update our website to remind folks of some of the stuff we're doing on Instagram. We have a huge section. The project originated with a blog and that blog anybody can write on. And I advocate for anyone and everyone in the community to write as a form of expression because narrative writing is something that's important to me and has been really helpful in my own healing journey. So it's a space for anyone in our community to write about whatever they need as a way of healing. And we do it. It's really simple. You go on, you make an account with an email and you can write as much as you want. It can collect all of your writings under your profile so people can follow specifically you and get notified when you write. We try and affirm that by also highlighting writers every week on our Instagram. We try and highlight a new writing piece on our website. But it's open for anyone and everyone in the community because I think it's important and I enjoy doing it. And I think it's important that we see our narratives and who we are as important to be published. Because when you write it on the website and it's published and it's valid and it's important and it affirms your community.

00:31:34 - So that has been like the core root of what we do. And I think the last thing, the most recent thing we've done is a podcast series that I'm running. It's a really short five episode podcast series called Black Leaders Matter. And it was born out of the continual press for the Black

00:31:49 - Lives Matter movement that we've seen recently, as well as my own experiences in leadership.

00:31:54 - And what this does is we try and highlight, support and affirm leaders or specifically

00:32:01 - Black leaders who are trying to move into different spaces. And so I essentially got five folks that have been instrumental in my own leadership journey that have really changed my perspective about things. And we just sat down and I was like, I just want to talk to you about some things. I want to break this down. And so it's a conversation. Each one's around an hour long, so they're a little lengthy, but there's only five episodes. And so far, we've gotten really good support from that. And a lot of people have liked it, which is really great to see.

00:32:26 - But I wanted to create a space that created the support we needed for Black students that I know

00:32:31 - I needed when I was in various leadership positions, as well as talked about a lot of the things that we, I think that a lot of folks don't like talking about or may not recognize in a way that seemed convenient and seemed comfortable as a conversation.

00:32:44 - Yeah. So before we dive into actually what, you know, talking a little bit more about specifics of your organization, can you explain how you came up with the idea, who's helping you, and maybe like big vision things like in the future, number one, Black and Healing Project, who are you?

00:33:01 - So it came up, it came to me, it must have been like 1am. It's during COVID. So time is elusive and doesn't matter anymore. And classes are already done. So my sleeping schedule is off.

00:33:15 - And I think at 1am, I probably called one of my really close friends whom I love dearly.

00:33:20 - And I was like, hey, I have this idea. Tell me if it's bad. Because there's a lot of times 1am ideas are horrible. So it was a good idea. And I told her, she goes, Oh, no, I think we can definitely do something. And it was just the blog. That idea was just let's do this blog.

00:33:38 - Let's essentially what is now on our website is called our identity series. It was just let's take nine weeks with a small group of folks in our community. Let's look at different art pieces and music and literature that just speaks to different parts of our identity collectively.

00:33:54 - And each week, we're going to get together and let's talk about it. Let's talk about it and break down how we view identity, how much of how much of our identity do we give up control to.

00:34:02 - And then we'll ask people to write about what they're thinking as we go through those nine weeks and see what we get out of it. Maybe we get some really insightful information.

00:34:12 - At the very least, it's a really healing restorative process. It can be really fun.

00:34:15 - We have nothing to do. We're stuck at home. And so we got a group of folks together. It's like eight people, amazing people. I've known them for most of them. I've known for a really long time that actually a lot of them came from my high school. Some came from college, but just great people. Honestly, a lot smarter than I am. And as we're working and I'm like telling them, here's the idea of what we can do. They go, hey, we can do a website or, you know, hey, we should do an Instagram. So the project would not have been what it would not be what it is now without these amazing people. And that's why I rely on them to help figure out the direction we go in. Because now in a matter of three weeks, this is right about the time of the death of

00:35:00 - George Floyd. And it was about this time that we realized there was a bigger need in our community.

00:35:04 - There's more we can do. And why the heck not? We have a bunch of free time now.

00:35:09 - So the project went from a blog and a discussion on books to a platform where we can have real discussions we need to and support and affirm our community. And that really fast paced three weeks where everything transformed. And it was a lot of phone calls late at night to go, hey, why don't we try this? Why don't we try this? And just tapping in on Instagram to see, okay, what does our community need? What are they telling us we need? That kind of brought this project to fruition. That's great. And then what's like your big vision? Like if in 10 years, you know, where do you hope this project is going to be at? I'm not too sure. Honestly, we obviously, we want the project to grow. We recognize that folks will come in and out of helping us as we go through that. There's always the possibility we grow, we develop a nonprofit and we continue our work. I want to use the work that we do on the project to help highlight the needs in our community. So right now, working with folks to try and plan more events, collaborating with other groups, but we really want to grow our network to collaborate with other folks to continue this conversation of how we center healing in our advocacy work, but also how we break down and destigmatize it within our folks or within our community. And I would say something a little more recent, hopefully that's coming up, but still in the future due to COVID is we're trying to start some programs with public schools and high schools to bring in college age students, folks who are studying in higher education, but also align themselves with the project to come in and do meetings with students after school to help facilitate the conversations that we look at, like we needed to have these in college. These are the conversations that I needed or I need to have these in high school and to be there and to help facilitate that and to also use that as an opportunity to mentor folks into higher education, but recognize that we can do it in a way that actually supports them when they get there instead of supporting them up until they get there.

00:37:11 - Yeah, you talk a lot of ways of, you know, it seems like the organization is very rooted in healing, you know, what do you think you've done for yourself to heal and how can you give tips to other people so that they can heal themselves? So full disclosure, I come from a trauma and abusive prone background, so healing was necessary for my survival, but looking back,

00:37:38 - I saw music in elementary school as just a way to express myself was really also a form of healing.

00:37:43 - Music connects with you emotionally and art in general connects with you emotionally in ways that we may not recognize. It's why you can watch a really good movie or listen to a really beautiful song and now you're crying or you're laughing and you're like, I don't know where this came from, but it's just there. It's hard to resist because I really believe an artist's role is to remind us of how we're supposed to feel, remind us that we can feel, and so that was the first step in this healing journey. I am currently going through my own process with my therapist, which has been really fun. She's really great, but also using this platform has been helpful because as we facilitate this organization, we're all broken, right? We're all not perfect, so as we're facilitating the project, there's a lot of accountability, and I really believe that at the center of healing is this love and that love first and foremost is accountable.

00:38:34 - We're going to hold each other accountable to be the better person, to wake up every day and realize

00:38:38 - I try and wake up every day and trying to be a better person than the day I was before, and that's my progress. Today, if I can do one thing better, I'm trying to be a better person.

00:38:47 - I'm trying to learn a little bit more, and in that process and that pursuit to be the person you want to be, being able to surround yourself with folks who support you and recognizing that there are sometimes folks in your life who don't support you, that don't support who you want to be.

00:39:05 - They don't support the growth, and I'm a person who really wants to grow and continually grow, so having folks around me, especially in the project, who are all for that and see the importance of that and recognize that healing is a journey. It's not a straight line journey, but it is a journey, so sometimes you try something and you go, hold on, wait, this didn't work, and to have folks that are okay with you taking a step back, figuring out the next step, and moving forward has been probably the most important part for me.

00:39:32 - Definitely, definitely. Yeah, I want to dive in a little bit more about the project and each medium because I know that you have a variety of mediums, so can you talk a little bit more about your website and what the website holds, then move on to social media and the podcast, and then maybe even some future ideas that those who are listening may be able to help you in or just they can actually participate in? Yeah, so first, the website is probably, the website's probably the most accessible to folks in terms of what you can change and alter. Our blog on the website is for our community. Anybody can write on it, and the people who run it are folks in the community. Our entire staff are Black, Indigenous, people of color, so we, as members of our community, are trying to create that space, so we go through and moderate it to make sure that we don't have hate speech that is there, but it's the easiest way for anyone to participate in it, and we're trying to use this to create a platform to write your narratives. I really believe in, there's a quote, this idea by Toni Morrison, where she talks about essentially if, as a community, if you don't write your narrative, someone will write it for you when you're gone, and it's incredibly important now as we're going, I think a lot of people, especially via Instagram, it's been beautiful to see that people are unlearning a lot of things, that we take this time to write our narratives, because other people are going through your own, who may be going through similar experiences, or may not have seen things eye to eye as you, but are from your community can read that and go, hold on, I see myself in that. I think one of our most popular pieces is written entirely in Spanish, and I love it. Granted, I don't speak Spanish or read Spanish, so I had to go through the translation process, but love it, and I think what was really cool to see is how many people really saw that and shared it and identified with it and loved it, because it was finally, it was a piece that didn't normalize and center English. It was for a specific community. It was written to support her, the writer, and it was, we have this idea, and I firmly have this idea, that when you write to support yourself, when you write with the intended audience of yourself, it's the most honest and authentic form, and you need that honesty and authenticity to heal, but that it can also be more raw, and that people will naturally gravitate to it more, because it doesn't feel like you're trying to be somebody. You're just trying to be as much yourself as you can, and so that is my favorite part of the website. Anyone can write on it, and I strongly urge folks to get on there and share their stories, because I love going through and working with our team to highlight the amazing writers we have. That's my favorite part of everything we do, is highlighting writers, and so that's what we see on the website, and then if we go on to our social media. Actually, really quickly, can you just simply, just like give us the URL, so those who are listening, and then we'll add that to the comment in the bio after. So it's blackbrownhealingproject.com, and if you go on our Instagram, it's in the link in the bio, which is our Instagram is blackbrownhealingproject.

00:42:28 - Try and keep it real consistent there. Yeah. But on our Instagram, we have a lot of our,

00:42:35 - I would say, relatively more creative ventures. Our website, I think, is more informational, and our Instagram, because our demographic tends to be younger folks who use Instagram, is a lot more creative, and we try and create content that is easily shareable with folks.

00:42:49 - So when we highlight writers, we take quotes from your writing, and then we link your full piece, and we cite who wrote it in this really beautiful template that someone on my team made, that I am not creatively inclined enough to do, so I'm so thankful for her. It's really beautiful.

00:43:02 - I just want to mention that. We spend so much time on the aesthetic piece of it, and making sure that everything from the colors and the fonts we use to the overall content is in line with our values. At no point when you come onto our page does it feel harsh or uninviting, that it should always feel inviting. It should always feel easily accessible and exciting to share. So that's what our social media is doing. We currently,

00:43:27 - I don't, yeah, so currently we have three series that are running. I'm like, I had to double check for if we have anything new, but we have a series on music called Mestizo Mix, which is really great.

00:43:40 - We have our Film Friday series that helps unpack films that center people of color, either in folks that are writing it, or acting in it, or the storyline. Most of the time it's all of them.

00:43:49 - And then we have our Black Indigenous People of Color business. So we highlight businesses and nonprofit organizations that are doing great work for our community. And what I love about those series is they're very unique to the creative directors running it. You get to see how they talk, and you get to see their mindset, and you really get to meet and be with these amazing people who run our project. Without them we couldn't have literally any of this. So we wanted to make it as human-centered as possible, and just fun. So I always love going through them, even though I know them. I just love going through the content, because I think it's really fun, and links to the playlists and stuff for the music and the films are all in those series as well, in the stories. And then I think the last thing is we look at the podcast that I'm doing.

00:44:34 - It's just another part of that series. So the Black Leaders Matter podcast, like I said, was born out of better supporting Black folks who move into spaces. Because I'm a firm believer it's not just about moving folks in your community into spaces of power or spaces of leadership, but it's about what that environment is that we're putting them into. So I think about it, if you put, if you put, let's say, like a small fish in a fish tank, cool, that's where it's supposed to be.

00:45:00 - You put that same fish in predatory waters with sharks, obviously they're not going to thrive.

00:45:04 - It doesn't matter if that's a space they're not normally in. So it's all about the spaces we're putting people in. And so there's a lot of questions that, especially in ASI and CSSA last year, that I'm like, I wish people knew about this, that the podcast gets to highlight.

00:45:20 - And I want to do it in a way that also helps take away that ivory tower feeling for a lot of leadership positions to make people see that this is accessible. All leadership positions are accessible because all power comes from community. So every person, I wanted people, even if you didn't identify, if you're non-Black and you're listening to this, I want you to be able to relate to folks who are talking and to see yourself also moving in those positions too, because we all have very unique perspectives that need to be heard.

00:45:47 - Plus it's just a lot of fun. Overall, just enjoyed recording it because these are really great people. Even if we didn't record it, I would have already been talking to them about this anyway, so it just made sense to record it and share it with folks.

00:45:59 - And so for those who are wanting to write a blog on your website, can anyone write on that?

00:46:04 - Or is it only set to a specific amount of people?

00:46:07 - So I would say our target, because of the work we do, is for Black Indigenous people of color, folks in our community, because I think that's where the biggest need fits.

00:46:17 - If you are white identifying, would love to see your narrative, that's just not what our platform is for. So it's not, I don't like to say it's exclusive, but it's specifically for our community because that's where we recognize the need is. That's where equity, I think, exists, is creating that space. So anyone who identifies that way, that's what the space is for.

00:46:37 - That's cool. That's great. Is there anything else you want to mention to us before we log off?

00:46:42 - I mean, we've already spent, I think, over an hour talking, and I'm truly amazed by, one, the person you are, and also, secondly, the organization you've built. You obviously are looking out for the people who are like you, and you want to be able to help, but not only help them, but help everyone in the surrounding spaces. Yeah, so you want to mention anything else as we leave off? Well, thank you. I would just, I don't know, I would remind people that everything that

00:47:10 - I do, everything we do on the project, at the end of the day, it's all about how you work with people. It's all about how you connect with your community, and from, I really do believe in seeing needs and being able to fill them through your community, but it's impossible to do it alone.

00:47:27 - So for anyone who may be interested in doing work that better supports your community, where you see a need and you think that there's someone who needs to do it, nobody's going to be able to do it like you, and that's just a fact. So honestly, we say this juggling the project, but it's like, it's me, it's a bunch of the homies, we get together, and we go do, and we actually get shit done, and that's honestly the philosophy of how we run everything. We pair it down and make it look good, but I'd love to see folks writing on our website and just interacting with our staff, and we would love to see, essentially, you come and look at the stuff we do on the project. That's so cool, and I'll make sure to add all those resources down in the description below, so that everyone can get a chance to like them, even if you're not BIPOC, knowing that, you know, you are still able to support individuals from this community, and once again, I just want to thank you for taking your time and actually creating this organization, because especially in the times of today, these problems always existed, but it's today that we're looking to take action, and we're looking to progress moving into the future, so I really just want to applaud you for that.

00:48:33 - Thank you. Yeah, of course, and so I hope you have a great day, and thank you for coming on to the podcast.