In Pursuit of Peace - Honoring Shedrick Sanders - Amplify RJ (Restorative Justice)

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everyone, welcome to this restorative
justice life.
My name is David Ryan, barcage,castro, Harris all five names
for all the ancestors, and it'sbeen a minute since we've posted
in this feed.
There are reasons for that,which I'll get into, hopefully,
in the coming days or weeks, butI wanted to reshare an episode
very early on.
It's my conversation withShedrick Sanders.

(00:22):
Shedrick passed away this pastweekend and he's been on my mind
a lot.
I'll always remember Shedrickfor a couple reasons.
One he would often say you know, as I was growing up, I just
wanted to be the crazy old guywho would tell stories that no
one would believe, and I thinkthrough this rollicking
conversation, you'll see some ofthose things.

(00:44):
And he always brought so muchlight and levity to what he was
doing, wherever he went.
And I guess that's the secondthing that I'm always gonna
remember about him His light,levity, joy and playfulness that
he brought to doing veryserious work, whether that was
schooling or peacemaking.
His mentorship was reallythrough the way that he modeled

(01:05):
play and joy in all of ourinteractions.
The third thing they'll alwaysremember about Shedrick is
during the summer of 2020, I wasfacilitating healing circles
for black men and he wouldalways show up and he would
always stay late and in thoseconversations after the fact, he
would always be checking in onme, making sure that I was
taking care of myself.
And you know, part of thereason why I haven't been in the

(01:28):
speed recently is because I'vebeen doing a lot better job of
taking care of myself, balancingout some of the other things
I've got to do in my lifeoutside of this public-facing
work.
And so, shedrick, you'll alwaysbe remembered.
And for those of you who knewhim and you're in Chicago, this
Monday, november 13, at 4 pmCentral, they're gonna be having

(01:51):
circle for circle keepers atPrecious Blood Ministry of
Reconciliation, and the circlethis month is going to be about
remembering and celebratingShedrick with a circle full of
music and laughter.
For those of you who know, youprobably already know, but if
you need more information, emailCJYIPeace at gmailcom for more

(02:12):
information about that.
I hope to be back in this feedin the coming days and weeks
because there's been some reallyexciting work going on, but for
now, enjoy this conversationwith Shedrick.
Rest in power, friend.
Welcome, shedrick.
Who are you?
I'm a father.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Who are you?
I'm a grandfather.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Who are you?

Speaker 2 (02:41):
I'm an elder.

Speaker 1 (02:42):
Who are you?
I'm crazy.
Who are you?

Speaker 2 (02:54):
I'm a husband.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
Who are you?

Speaker 2 (03:02):
I'm a peacemaker.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
I think this is a seventh one.
Who are you?

Speaker 2 (03:11):
I'm a fun lover.

Speaker 1 (03:16):
You are all of those things and more.
Shedrick, it's been a hugeprivilege of my life to get to
know you over the last coupleyears.
Do you remember exactly when itwas that we met?

Speaker 2 (03:29):
I guess maybe another meeting for the alternatives
when you first came on board, Iguess.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Oh.
So my memory precede yours andmaybe we didn't like officially
meet until then, but Idefinitely saw you and played
with you at circle for circlekeepers down at precious blood
one of those times, you bringingin one of your toys and
ensuring that with the group.
So my first memory of you wasdefinitely like who is this guy?

(03:56):
Who's this fun loving?
I think for anyone who evermeets you, like fun loving might
be one of the first things thatthey that they ever think about
, because whenever you walk intothe room you're you're carrying
that light with you and whetherthat light is in the form of
juggling balls or one of those,those wooden toys that you know

(04:17):
you're trying to connect withkids with, it's very present.
So, but yes, we did really getto know each other when we were
working together at alternatives, doing restorative justice work
.
But you've been doing this worka lot longer than you even knew
the word restorative justice.
So, in your own words, howwould you describe how you got
into this work broadly?

Speaker 2 (04:41):
Oh, it's fascinating really.
It it just started with.
It's actually started with mymother and the kids that she
used to have in the house.
She said take care of kids.
And there'd be kids in thehouse and I'd come home from
school or and see them and takethem to the playground and do
things with them.
And I always had this kind ofstress when I was around kids,

(05:03):
like hey, I gotta watch them,they got to take care of them,
so it's gonna happen to them andI haven't said the stress, but
I take them to the playground,do things with them.
And then one day I was, I wasfeeling bad.
I was feeling bad.
One day this little boy, joy,came in and said can we go out
and play?
Go out and play.
I said, joy, I feel terrible, Ifeel terrible, he's.

(05:25):
And he put his hand on my head.
He says, oh, okay, I'll go back, I'll come back later.
I said okay, good, and I fellasleep and he came back and I
opened my eyes.
He was standing up there it,you know it's, it's a bed
looking at me, and he said areyou all right?
I said yeah.
He said you just rest.
Now you rest, I'm thinking wait, a minute wait a minute.

(05:48):
This kid's taking care of me.
I say I gotta worry about thesekids.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
They take care of me how old are you at this time?

Speaker 2 (05:55):
I must been about.
I was about 18 oh, okay 19,something like that and so I
just started just relaxingaround kids.
It just happened a good timeand I was also learning how to
play the recorder, so I wasplaying with them doing that and
just found that I just enjoyedbeing around the kids a lot.

(06:16):
So at school they also let mebe a like a toot-a-bra.
My scores got real high andthey finally let me talk to
people and become a toot-a-bra.
So I used to fight a lot when Iwas in elementary school but I

(06:40):
felt so bad and my grandmothertold me to come from ten
backwards whenever I got upsetand I started doing that and
things I changed right afterfighting no more.
So from there I just startedworking with kids a lot.
I just started to work withkids and I wanted to be a

(07:01):
teacher, but I did not like theway kids were treated in school.
So I consider myself a streetteacher.
On the street I see kids bedoing all kind of things with
them and I read this book calledteacher effectiveness training
and it talked about circles, adstatements, active listening, a

(07:24):
process for resolving problemsand conflict, and it said it's
not your class, it's our classand that really agreed with me,
that I didn't have to be thetyrant, I didn't have to be the
boss, I could be part of theclass and I got away from saying
a teacher is more of afacilitator of learning.

(07:46):
So I started doing that and Istarted substitute teaching and
I bring origami into theclassroom, I bring juggling and
all kind of crazy stuff and Iwould I say this is a party, my
classrooms a party.
And I bring albums and I askthem where's the record player?

(08:11):
And I put the record player onand I put on music, like like a
sliced stone and different stuff, and I put this music on and I
said look, you can do your work.
Here's the work that yourteacher left for you to do, this
whole list of stuff here, andyou could do anything that you
want to do on this list and whenyou want to take a break of

(08:31):
stuff, go dance.
And they come back and do thework.
But come, come through me everynow and then just to check and
see how it worked and it wasphenomenal.
I had this one class one time.
It was like 12 kids beforelunch.
This is the time we had 9 to 12and it went for lunch for an
hour and they came back withthese kids.

(08:54):
It was 12 in the morning, inthe afternoon was 30.
So what happened here?
So we heard.
We heard that was having a goodtime up in here.
So we sat to come to school.
I say, oh, okay, good, and Iasked people who had snuck out
of other classes to come inthere and we were jamming,

(09:14):
having a good time.
I said this is our schoolsupposed to be?
People supposed to want to comeand have fun and learn some at
the same time.
So then I went off to Brazil andI had gotten a degree in
engineering with an elementaryschool minor and I had taken

(09:35):
things like children'sliterature.
I've taken music for educationmajors, I took art for education
majors and all the teachersreally liked me and said I
should be in teaching because Iacted like a kid, you know, they
put a lot of clay in front ofme and I smacked it.
I said I suppose to look at itsmacking.

(09:59):
So I had a good time with that,but I still hadn't taken the
teacher path.
So I went to Ghana I'm not wentto Brazil on the way to Brazil.
It took seven months to getthere and I met all kinds of
people and that all the kidswere attracted to me and I had a

(10:21):
, had a recorder like that thatI had been taught how to use in
my music education class and I'dbe playing little things like
you know, michael Roe, yourboard of show, of
puffed-the-magic dragonprimitivo, all kind of song, and
people would come around andlisten to it and kids would come
, they take me home and theparents would feed me and

(10:44):
everything.
It's like, dang, that's how Ishould be a teacher.
So I went back to Chicago, Iwent to my music teacher's class
and told her about myexperience with the recorder
which is a whole other story tostay with the recorder and she

(11:05):
let me talk to a class about itand she said she had you should
join teacher school.
I said okay.
She said office is down thehall, okay.
So I went to the office.
It was closed, but I knocked onthe door and somebody was in
there.
They let me in.
I saw an application forteacher core.
They said yeah, but uh, theprogram's closed.

(11:27):
I said give me an applicationanyway.
He found a top application.
I took it, I filtered out, sentit in and they sent me a letter
two weeks later saying come toTampa, florida for a teacher
core Peace Corps program.
Earn a masters in scienceeducation and a teacher
certificate and go to Ghana as aPeace Corps volunteer.

(11:50):
And it made.
I had written those threethings down as my goals before
that happened what they think goto Ghana, get certified to
teach and get a masters.
I'd read those three thingsdown and when they invitation
came I said I'm gone.
So in Ghana I really got to putinto practice a lot of the

(12:15):
stuff that I've been workingwith the circle up we'd be to
meet.
I take.
The first two weeks was alldealing with the conflict
resolution.
I statements, active listening,how we're gonna treat each
other, team activities, get toknow each other really well,
name games I got to know, I gotthem, but at one point I might

(12:37):
have got to know about 90 kidsnames in one day.
I'm playing name games whichyou kept repeating all the time
and they come back in the nextday.
I saw Kwame how you doing, oh,you remember my name.
Oh, yeah, remember your name,and so that really got me into a
more of a facilitator mode andthe Ghanaians fought me to for

(13:00):
nail the kids.
They fought me and they thoughtthat I was trying to impose
American style teaching on themand they wanted me to lecture
and write notes on the board andI wanted to do the problems.
And this is, this is math, thisis a participatory thing, we do
math.
And they would leave the room,go through the assistant head

(13:24):
master's office and complain,and I'd go down and say can I
come in and say no, no, no, wedon't want you to come in yet.
And so they talked to me andthey need to come and talk to me
and they were basically doing arestorative conversation with
both of us and allow me to vent,and then they bring us together

(13:44):
to work out a solution.
I said, oh man, these folks gotit.
They got it down pat.
And this happened to me severaltimes and I really stopped
paying attention to learningwhat they were doing.
And so I say these people knowthis stuff.
So when I came back, I went toGhana, then I went to Western

(14:07):
Samoa and Western Samoa and I'vebeen doing yoga all the time.
I always taught my kids yogaand meditation, but in Samoa I
learned transdental meditationand I had my class taught
transdental meditation and thatfreaked them out.
They got the highest scores inthe country and it wasn't

(14:28):
because I taught them any math,I just taught them how to relax
so that the math would come outof them.
So I got really good at it bythen.
So by the time I got back tothe States I was a Peace Corps
recruiter so I didn't teach.
But then I went to Pakistan andI was doing the same kind of
things in Pakistan.
It was working real well.

(14:48):
And then when I got back toNorth Carolina, when my wife
wanted to go to school NorthCarolina, I got in North
Carolina and I was teaching andsubstituting stuff and I passed
by this place called the DisputeSettlement Center and I said
what did they do in there?
So I walked in there and askedthem and what it was?
A senator was set up.

(15:08):
They trained volunteermediators from the community and
they also went to the courtswith, with with a volunteer
mediators and anytime a case canbe mediated, the judge was sent
it to them and at the centerpeople can refer people in any

(15:29):
situation.
They didn't have a problem withtheir neighbor.
They can come down and thecenter would contact the
neighbor, let them know what wasgoing on and tell them about
mediation.
They come down and twovolunteer mediators would
mediate for.
So I say, oh, this is fantastic,I want to do that.
And they say, and we also trainkids in nonviolent conflict

(15:53):
resolution techniques.
And, by the way, you programcoordinated is leaving and we're
looking for somebody to take aplace.
I say that's my job, I can dothe conflict resolution without
worrying about the math, becauseit is math anyway.
So I did, I said, give me thatjob, that's my job.

(16:15):
And they gave it to me and theytrain, they train, they train
me as a mediator, a facilitatorof meetings facilitator, a
victim offender, mediator and a.
And they got to pull what theystarted, using me on the
difficult cases I still no kidand in cases things they were

(16:39):
teaching you in there oh well,what?
basically?
Active listening, how to takewhat somebody's saying basically
and turn it into an assstatement for them.
So you listen for what thefeelings were and you start off
with this what happened?
This is a real story ofconversation.
What happened?
How did it make you feel?
What did you feel about it?

(17:00):
What concerns you the mostabout it?
What do you need?
And they would go down at thatpattern and then we determine
whether they really needed amediation.
We bring them together andmediate.
We try to get the demographics.
You know, if it's a black andwhite guy, we try to get a black

(17:20):
and white mediators.
If it was a male female, try toget a male female or that kind
of thing.
And I saw some.
I saw some fantastic stuff,especially with the, with the
marriage situations where peoplewere they would come in and
they may have divorced already,but they want to get the custody

(17:42):
thing right.
And we had people they got upfrom the table, said, damn, if
we had done this, we wouldn'thave got divorced.
We're mediated, we would.
They got divorced because theythey found out what they were
really needing but wasn't ableto communicate to each other.

(18:02):
But in mediation they talked tothe mediators first and the
media kind of translates forthem.
And it can't get prettycomplicated because some people
talk in terms of how they feeland other people may talk in
terms of what they see.
You have to kind of pick up onthat and change it.
She saw anger, she saw that, oh, and so he do all that and it

(18:31):
was just phenomenal.
So I thought so I would.
My goal was to expose everychild in Orange County to
nonviolent conflict resolutiontechniques when they say to
train them, but to let them seeit, let them know it exists.
And I was.
I was free to go everywhere andthis lady, miss Thompson, who's

(18:56):
on the board, she paid mysalary, she paid the position
salary, pension, vacation,everything.
She even made a bag for me tocarry my, my posters in, and so
I didn't have to worry aboutanything and I just had a ball.
And and it was situations whereit's one situation this was

(19:20):
phenomenal to me.
It was a school in Hillsborough,north Carolina.
There was a group of kids fromthe projects who was driving the
school crazy and my mother linefor the same family, it was
about 12 on my thing and theycalled me and said what can you
do with these kids?

(19:41):
I say, look it, give me, give,give them to me for five days in
a row, all day.
What it's all day.
Five days are all day.
I said, hey, and don't tellthem what it's, for there's
somebody coming in with me.
And they came in.

(20:02):
I say, first, three days we dida little bit of play Group
juggles, disc, that, all kind oftag, all kind of stuff.
And then we went into theconflict resolution piece and
they got into it and then we didthat can we talk baseball?
And I was screaming and yellingand that and that and stuff,

(20:24):
and they was eating it up,eating it up, and it was this
little bitty girl.
She must have been about secondgrade or something.
I'm towing over and I'mscreaming at and stuff.
And she says can we talkbaseball, can we talk about this
?
And they had video, they hadvideoed this thing and they used

(20:46):
that for fundraising for years.
That little girl saying, can wetalk about this?
And when I left, the feedbackcame back to me that these kids
had become playground mediatorswithout even the title or the
training for it.
They had learned this conflictresolution techniques and they
started seeing people havingconflicts on the playground and

(21:10):
because they had the skills,they would go in and help and in
the next year they weren't aproblem anymore.
They were an absolute asset tothe school.
And so there were some schoolsthat would have me come and
train mediators in the schooland train the teachers, and it
was this one particular personwho swore by it and he moved to

(21:33):
Chapel Hill.
He brought his secretary withhim because his secretary was a
trained mediator and by the timewhen people came to his office
upset, she was able to calm down.
And then in his office he had arefrigerator with drinks and
stuff.
He had stuffed animals all onthe floor Because he said, when

(21:55):
an angry parent comes, theyusually have an angry child in
tow, so let them.
So that's where I got myofficial start in.

Speaker 1 (22:05):
North Carolina, that mediation right and I think,
even with the training that theygave you with eye statements
and reflecting back thosefeelings to people, when you
went in with those kids forthose first five days, the first
thing that you did was playwith them.
Why is that important?

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Because relationship is everything.
Building the team, building arelationship, that's the thing.
So it's like in Ghana they talkabout it.
They had a different phrase forit, but it's like a term I
heard recently.
It's like if a child doesn'tfeel a part of the community,
they will burn it down.
Say that again If a childdoesn't feel a part of the

(22:47):
community, they will burn itdown.
So the thing is to bring allthe kids in, make them feel as a
part of the community.
In Ghana they had a differentphrase for it, but it's similar,
like that.
And every child is yours.
You got to take care of them,you got to look after them.
So in Ghana I saw it.
I saw this at work and that'sbeen my vision.

(23:08):
That's one of the things thatmade me realize this could work.
Now I'm frustrated.
I may get.
I saw little kids in Ghanamediating.
I saw them mediate with olderkids.
I saw them mediate with adults.
I've seen young kids Say canyou go over here?
Can you go over here?
Come over here, come over here.
So I go talk to him, talk tohim.

(23:29):
And I said what?
And I had a situation.
This was interesting.
I was in Ghana.
They sell boiled eggs and thewomen had these big old trays of
boiled eggs stacked up in apyramid on top of their head
balancing it, and people standin a long line to get these eggs

(23:51):
.
She'd take an egg off, she'dpeel it, slice it open, put some
pepper sauce in it, tomatosauce and give it to you and you
pay up.
So I was standing behind one ofmy seniors and he said some bad
things to the girl and wouldn'tpay her and I said that's

(24:13):
really out of character, becauseGhanaians don't usually act
like this.
I don't know what's going on.
So I asked him what's happening?
Nobody's talking to me, don'ttalk to me.
I said whoa, whoa, whoa, wait aminute.
I said let's go inside and talkabout this.
I ain't going nowhere with you.
And he started acting all crazyand he brought out this crazy

(24:34):
Chicago enemy and I grabbed himand kind of a sleeper hold, but
I didn't put any pressure, but Ihad control of him.
The whole school stopped, notabout 500 people stopped, and
they hit somebody holding thatboy.
The farmers came out of thefield, the teachers, the

(24:57):
students came out, everybodycame out.
And I looked at myself oh hell.
And they say Quacy, becausethey call me Quacy, quacy, let
him go.
Oh OK, I'm not hurting him, heall right, I just take him to
the office.
No, no, here, here, here wewere taking him, let him go.
So they let him go and theytook me to one room, took me,

(25:19):
took him to another, and I washere.
I said why do you do this?
Why do you separate us likethis?
And he said, out of anger, youmay say something and he hears
it and hates you for the rest ofhis life.
We're going to take what yousay and translate it into
something palatable to his earsand vice versa.

(25:40):
So they go back and forthtranslating.
So I vet, he understands wheremy situation was, where I was
coming from.
He vet, I understand where hewas and his situation was.
He and that girl had had a bigfight in their village that
weekend.
They never got resolved and hewas still upset about that and

(26:04):
it was really uncharacteristicof Gnane and so let anything go
and resolve like that.
And he was really upset aboutthat and I just you know, I was
really upset seeing you treatthis girl this way.
So we said, and he put ustogether, we apologized to each
other.
I apologized for grabbing him.
He apologized for beingdisrespectful to me and that
would never happen again.

(26:25):
And then we had to apologize tothe whole school at Morning
Assembly.
How did that feel?
It actually felt good.
Actually it felt empoweringthat I was being held
accountable for my actions andto make things right by the
whole school I disrupted thewhole school, what caused all

(26:48):
kind of commotion and to be ableto apologize to him and let
them know that I have learned alot from you Because you know
how to deal with conflict.
I'm learning a lot from you andthat really motivates me.

Speaker 1 (27:03):
You talked about like the Chicago came out of you,
and one of the things that yousay a lot in Congress is when
you're introducing yourself topeople.
When you're introducingyourself to people is you're
from a small African village onthe south side of Chicago.
Talk about that village and yousaid that you were someone who
used to fight all the time.
Right.

(27:23):
Oh, yeah, one of the things thatyou talked about.
You're a peacemaker.
Now, that was one of the firstseven things that you identify
yourself as Like.
What was that shift for you?

Speaker 2 (27:32):
Well, essentially I'm the youngest of four in the
family.
It's a big, large, extendedfamily and we was in a
neighborhood of people who hadimmigrated from Mississippi to
Chicago and they're all forcedto live in the same geographic
area.
You had all kinds of people.
You had rich folks, you hadhouses, you had kitchenettes,
tenements, all kinds of stuff upin there.

(27:53):
But all of them had theattitude that we got to protect
these kids Because they had justcome from Mississippi where
people was getting lynched andthey wanted to take care of
these kids.
They wanted the kids to get agood education and we had a lot
of good teachers who could havebeen something else if they had
been allowed to.
And they said, well, since Ican't be this engineer or I

(28:16):
can't be this stockbroker, I'mgoing to help my kids be in a
position to, when that comesabout, they'd be able to get it.
They took after us.
Now, one of the sports in ourneighborhood was boxing.
We liked to box and we watchedSugar Ray Robinson on television

(28:38):
and all kinds of boxing, floydPatterson and stuff, and we
watched these boxing and groupsof kids from different
communities would actually meetin the yard and we would fight
and we'd pay up by size and wewould fight.
And we were actually too youngto hurt each other and we was

(29:03):
fighting by Marcus theQueenberry rule.
If I say I quit, it's over.
So it wasn't a personal fight,it was a sport fight.
So it was fighting.
And so I was a little bitty guyand at school you had these
bullies who thought they couldpush a little bitty guy around

(29:24):
and my two older brothers saidhey, if anybody mess with you,
hit them first, because that wasa no, no kind of thing.
Don't hit first.
I suppose hit first.
They say no, you hit first anddon't stop until we pull you off
of.
And that's what I would do.
And I got to a point where if Isaw somebody bullying somebody

(29:46):
else, I was fierce in stoppingit.
So I'd be the one boy real bad,and I felt so bad I said I'm
not going to do that anymore.
That's crazy.
I'm not going to do that.

Speaker 1 (30:05):
What was different about that time than all the
others?

Speaker 2 (30:09):
I had a ring on my finger and I hit him and that
ring cut his face and blood.
And the thing is I got off fortwo reasons One, my mother is
who she is.
Everybody knew my mother andanyone my mother coming up to
school upset about nothing, andthey know she would whip out a

(30:33):
butt right there to school ifshe was really upset about
something.
And the other was this kid.
Everybody saw him started,everybody saw him attack me.
So it was my self-defense, sothey let me off on that.
So actually about I'd say maybea year passed, but I hadn't had

(30:54):
a fight in a year.
This guy was doing real good andit was this beautiful girl
named Janet Beck in the class.
She was overdeveloped andeverything.
She was beautiful.
And we were in the home-ecclassroom and we were making
something out of wood and wewere standing in a line.

(31:16):
I had my piece of wood and shecame up and pushed me out the
line, called me a little shrimp.
I said that's all right and Ideal with.
My grandmother told me I startedcounting, walked away.
She followed behind me.
I'm going to get you afterschool, you just a shrimp.
I said oh Lord, have mercy,what am I going to do.
So I said OK, I'm going tosneak out the back.

(31:39):
So after school I said, I gotthe back door and she and a
friend a couple of them outthere waiting for me.
I said, oh hell, what am Igoing to do?
So she started messing with meand talking to me.
She was beating me up.
So I turned and walked away.
I started stepping and she cameup behind me and scratched me

(32:04):
across the front of my face andground by my eye and knocked my
glasses and everything off and Iturned around and hit her and I
hit her a couple of times.
And then I walked away and Ipassed by a window and saw the

(32:24):
reflection on my face and theblood streaming all down and
stuff and I went berserk andwent back and hit her again.
So I came home my mother sawthe scratches and stuff on my
face.
She said what happened.
I told her.
She said well, you've got todeal with that.
You've got to go back to schooltomorrow and deal with that.
I said, oh shoot, so I go backto school.

(32:47):
Janet and her father were there.
She had a huge black eye andthe father was livid and he
wanted to kill me.
I said, oh dang, and he took usto the office and, to her
credit, she told the truth.
She said I did everything Icould to try to get him to fight

(33:10):
me and he did everything hecould not to fight me until I
scratched his face.
And they saw the scratches onmy face and they said go to
class.
They said go to class.
Now I later found out that shedid that because her father had
whipped her and told hersomebody, better than nobody

(33:33):
else, touched you, better thananybody else hit you, and so she
went out to get somebody to hither and that was me.
So I use that story a lot when Italk about Angle Mountain,
because she scratched me.
I went up that mountain realfast and I exploded like a

(33:53):
volcano and then when I wascoming down and this happens
sometimes when you're comingdown, if something happens to
remind you of what took you upto the first place, you might go
back up there.
And I saw that blood and stuffon my face.
I went back up there.
You talk about feeling bad.
I really felt bad about thatand I never got in the fight

(34:16):
again.
I got beat up again, but Inever got in the fight.

Speaker 1 (34:20):
What took you from you know, stepping away from
fighting to actively being apeacemaker.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
I think even though I was a fighter, I was pretty
much a peacemaker in the system.
You know I'd try to break upstuff, but the bullies was the
ones that would take me off.
And then once I started, Ireally got a real big leadership
role in school.
I was a patrol boy, so then yousee the kids fighting, you know

(34:52):
breaking up and do things withthem.
Then it was like I was anoutdoor messenger.
I was a projector boy.
I mean I didn't go to class ineighth grade.
I was always doing somethingpainting something, doing
something but my scores were sohigh I did like an 11-7 reading
score and a 12-9 math score, soit was like we ain't got to

(35:16):
worry about him and I wasteaching other kids all the time
.
So when I got to high school,the interesting thing about high
school was that it was about50% black and 50% white and it
was a really good school and theteachers were really good.
They kind of believed thecommunity.

(35:38):
All the divisions stayedtogether for four years and,
depending on the teacher, theymay actually have a club or
consider themselves a littleorganization with officers and
stuff in the class and the classactually ran things the way and
we really were able to get intoreally good conversations with

(35:58):
kids from all over the city,because that's what a school,
came to kids from all over thecity and Martin Luther King came
through then and that's myPolish friend.
I said hey, man, did you throwrocks at Martin Luther King when
he came through yourneighborhood?
Oh, no, man, I wouldn't do that.
I said some of your friends did, didn't they?
Yeah, yeah, I said if I come inyour neighborhood to visit you

(36:22):
and your friends attack me,would you help me, would you
save me?
No, I said no, why not?
I got to live there.
They get me.
I said what would you do?
I said I just tell them you gotbrown ass.
He said what I said you gotbrown ass.
I said all of us got somebodyin the family that's light as

(36:43):
you with brown ass and I canpass you off as a brother.
He said no, kid, you know.
He started coming by my houseregularly.
I wound up going to thegraduation dance in our
neighborhood he the only whiteguy there, and we drinking wine.
The white folks used to drinkat beer, so he discovered wine,

(37:05):
so he was happy as a lot.
But we got to learn a lot andhere other people's story and
the situations that they're in.
And then my mother also told mewhen I was ready to strap on
the gun and start the revolution, she said look, you can go
shoot all the white folks youwant to, but I'm going to tell

(37:26):
you, most of them are right,most of them are good people,
but they're afraid of the sameterrorists that terrorize us.
And she told me about therelationships she had in
Mississippi and how our unclekilled a white chef and it was
white people that saved him fromthe lynch mob at their own

(37:50):
peril, and he wound up going tojail, staying in jail for
20-some-odd years, and he gotout and came to Chicago.
So those kinds of experiencesmade me realize that there's a
different point of view to besought out and everything is
what it looks like.
Like another example, there wasa Polish guy named Chalupa and

(38:14):
Chalupa had this real badstutter.
I was helping with his math andstuff.
He introduced me to somebody.
This is chef, this is my boy,this is my boy.
And I looked at him like huhand I was ready to snap on him.
I said, wait, wait, wait, wait,wait, wait, wait, wait a minute
, let me see what he means, letme watch him, let me observe him

(38:38):
.
And I heard him introduce awhite boy asses, boy, this is my
boy too.
I said oh, okay.
And so I asked him what does myboy mean to you?
You're my boy, you're my friend, you're my Okay, okay, good,
let me tell you this, thoughSome people think a boy has been
a derogatory term.

(38:59):
You see, you used it to a blackperson.
I was just going to tell youthat and he said no kidding.
I said yeah, I said so, becareful.
Now Everybody could be like meand listen to you.
And so I learned thosedifferent points of views and
stuff.
It got me really interested.
And when I got into college,going to children's literature

(39:22):
classes and stuff and trying tofigure out ways to get kids to
read, the fact that I didn'thave a lot of conflict
resolution skills or formalityand stuff stopped me from
wanting to go into a classroomand teach.
But once I learned those skills,like a kid come and cuss you
out.
You say, huh, there's a bookcalled how to Talk to Kids so

(39:44):
they Listen and Listen so theySpeak.
That was a really good book,still is a good book.
And a kid come and cuss me outand I say, ooh, tag, tell me
more about what that is.
It's got to be tough for you tocome and cuss me out because
you know I love you and they gohuh and they tell me what

(40:05):
happened.
They calmed down and I said,okay, and that's when I realized
how important listening to kidsis, getting down on the floor
at Ad Level with them andtalking to them.
So a lot of the stuff came frombooks, teacher Effectiveness,
training, how to Talk to Kids sothey Listen, listen so they
Speak, mom, we know it's aparent and child, parent and

(40:29):
teen, and then I would applythat with the kids on the street
and substitute teaching andthen perfected it more and more.

Speaker 1 (40:39):
I know you read it from books and I think a lot of
times when people think aboutdoing this work they're like,
okay, well, I read this book andthen they're afraid to try it,
because sometimes the first timeyou try something like that, it
doesn't go well.
Has there ever been anexperience like that, where
there was something that you hadlearned, you tried and it blew

(41:00):
up in your face?

Speaker 2 (41:01):
Oh yeah, a lot of times.
A lot of times it blew up in myface, but it's like I'm a, I
pride myself on being kind of ascientist and being involved in
science all the time.
It's like you're going to makea lot of mistakes before you get
it right.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:18):
You know, make your first million mistakes as fast
as you can.
And I grew up around a lot ofreally nice black men who would
tell you first you know, succeed, try, try again these things,
take practice.
And then playing football.
My first year playing football,I was terrible.

(41:39):
My second year, I was a star and, like my brother knew they
would track that progression.
So, yeah, your coach told youto start watching pro football
and college football andtelevision, but only your
position, and that's a wholedifferent thing.
The ball is going one way andI'm looking at what the fullback

(42:00):
is doing, who don't have a ball, what the land back is doing,
and it's like that helped merealize that it takes practice
and other things is learning toplay the piano when I learned to
play the piano.
you start off with a piece ofmusic.
You don't know nothing about it.
You start practicing it, tryingto play it.

(42:20):
It's terrible.
You keep practicing, keeppracticing and then one day you
get in front of a whole bunch ofpeople and do a recital and
blank completely out and standup at the end of it and take a
bow and talk about how wonderfulthat was because you had
internalized it in a footballcoach.
Over and over, practicing what?

Speaker 1 (42:42):
was one of those situations.
You said there were many.
Is there anyone in particularthat stands out?

Speaker 2 (42:47):
I tend to forget most of the bad ones.

Speaker 1 (42:55):
I appreciate that short memory and try again.
But then how do you take thelearning from that and implement
it the next time?

Speaker 2 (43:03):
It was interesting.
I used to do an imagery.
I used to imagine myself doingit over again.
If I mess up something, Iimagine myself doing it a
different way.
A lot of that came from myshyness with girls.
I would like a girl and I'd beafraid to approach her or say
something to her, but anothergirl that I didn't like, I would

(43:26):
talk to her easily.
I'd go up and say something andtag.
I should have said this anotherway, and a lot of times I might
be very angry.
At first I sit down and thinkabout it.
Why am I so angry about this?
It's not about what she did.
It's about what I didn't do andwhat should I have done.

(43:50):
I start playing the tape adifferent way and get it like
that, but I'm trying to thinkwhat?
Oh, oh, oh, I tell you what thegap would feel.
Good, it's a simple camp.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
We was up in the summer camp that you've been
going to for years, every summer, right?

Speaker 2 (44:12):
Right, right Over 25 years going every summer, we had
these kids, big group of kids,over 120 of them, and he was
this boy.
What's his name?
Oscar, I think his name was andthis boy was seasoned.
He was a young, I want to say.

(44:37):
He always had to protecthimself.
He was a little guy and he hadto protect himself a lot.
He knew how and he rubbedpeople the wrong way.
So I'm working with him.
I was talking to him, listeningto him and we were out hiking.
He said something to one of theboys and the boys was going to
jump on him and beat him up andI broke him up and said come on,

(45:03):
come on, come on.
I said come with me.
And he started screaming in thehall of the can on.
I said come on.
I said come with me.
And I grabbed him and said comeon, boy, come on.
And Oscar had these big oldbrogans that he wore.
He knew exactly what to do.
As soon as I grabbed him, heraised his foot up and smashed

(45:24):
it down on my shin.
With these brogans, he's metaland I wanted to kill him.
I just grabbed him in a betterway and drugged him away, cried
and hoped don't kill him, don'tkill him.
I wanted to kill Oscar.

Speaker 1 (45:43):
We had to send Oscar home.

Speaker 2 (45:45):
He was so bad we had to send him home.
My leg hurt that whole summer.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
Looking back on it, what would you have done
differently?

Speaker 2 (45:58):
I wanted to grab him.
I wanted to grab him in thefirst place.
I wanted to grab him and Imight have worked to have a
better relationship with himbefore that particular time for
that thing happened.

Speaker 1 (46:14):
One of the things that you said a little bit
earlier about when you have akid cuss you out and it's like
man.
I know that must be tough foryou because you know how much I
love you.
You've already built thatrelationship with that child.
And now when you're talkingabout Oscar, maybe Oscar doesn't
know that you love him.
I think there's something inthere for adults who are working

(46:36):
with children.
You can't expect them torespect you without the
relationship.
You can't expect them to knowthat you care about them without
showing it to them over andover A lot of times.
I think people are just likeyou know I'm an adult in the
space.
Respect me, right, or I'm ateacher.
Automatically you should knowthat I care about you.

(46:57):
People don't know that untilyou show them.
And it's not just children,right?
That's people in the world.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
And listening to people is so powerful.
Just listen to them and most ofus don't take the time to
really listen to people.
So Oscar taught me a lesson.
He taught me a lesson and it'slike okay, I'm not going to let
that happen again.
So one of the things from thatpoint on in camp, my job was to

(47:31):
get to know them kids reallywell and I started going into
cabins and doing activities anddifferent things in the
different cabins so they knowwho I was.
And then we actually starteddoing conflict resolution
classes at camp.
I started doing that, but theywould come to me and I would
teach them active listening andwe'd do role plays and different

(47:53):
stuff about what would happen.

Speaker 1 (47:54):
And I'd tell them about.

Speaker 2 (47:55):
Oscar, tell them about Oscar, my tail.
So yeah, so I've been aconflict resolution man at camp
ever since and we had asituation I think it was a
couple of years ago now wherethese two boys had a fight in

(48:16):
the cabin and he knocked the boydown on the ground and he did
one of those you know like killpunches on him, like you see in
the video games, and we'd takehim out to the cabin and we'd
just kind of separate him fromthat group and just put him in

(48:41):
the kitchen and let him clean updishes a little bit and we just
kind of waited until he kind ofrelaxed and I started talking
to him and just got talkingabout all kind of stuff and I
said, but what happened in thecabin?
And he told me what happened inthe cabin and it was a

(49:04):
definitely two-way street and wehad a talk and I said well, do
you want to talk to this boyabout what happened?
I said I'm going to talk to himand if he wants to talk to you,
would you want to talk to him?
He said yeah.
So I went and talked to theother boy and they agreed that

(49:29):
they wanted to talk, but theywanted to immediate it.
They wanted somebody to bethere with them.
So me and the barber, who wasanother elder at the camp, who
was ahead of the camp, we satdown with him and all kind of
stuff came out.
So they cried and apologized toeach other and promised not to

(49:51):
do this and how to make thingsright.
So the next question was well,who else was affected by this?
It was all the boys in thecabin in the tribe.
So do you think you should talkwith them if they want to talk
with you?
So I went to the tribe and theysaid, yeah, they brought them

(50:13):
in and we had a circle and Ididn't have to say much.
I asked a couple of questionsand the next thing they did was
they were doing it.
They passed that talking piecearound talking and all the stuff
came out.
The apologies came out, theassumptions that they made came

(50:35):
out, and then they invited theboy back into the tribe and so
he came back.
Now this was done in front of alot of people, actually a lot of
adults, and they saw it andthey were amazed that these boys

(50:56):
could sit down and work outthis problem like they did.
They were amazed.
So I really like the idea oftaking kids out of their comfort
zone, take them someplace elseand then take them out as a
click-stay in and form a newteam and really get to know each

(51:17):
other, go on ropes courses andstuff, go swimming, do all kind
of stuff, and we do this thingcalled the man in the Box by
Paul Keval and he's got a lot ofgood stuff in there about the
power grid, the power structureand stuff, how power works, and

(51:37):
we used that.
We've been using that for thewhole time.
I had gotten trained in NewMexico and Baba had gotten
trained in it someplace else,both from Park Q.
Can you explain what it is?

Speaker 1 (51:51):
a little bit.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
It's called.
What's it called?
Men's Work, I think it's namedthe book and it's a role play of
a man and his son and the son'sgetting bad grades at school
and the father comes in reallyupset Ask the boy to talk to the

(52:13):
television.
The boy didn't hear him and hestarted screaming and yelling
and telling the boy to you knowwhat kind of dummy are you?
You're getting all these badgrades and the whole scene.
And it ends with him.
The boy starts to cry and itends with him talking I told him

(52:33):
be a man and he hits him withthe paper be a man.
So we debriefed that by askingthe group what did this man show
his son?
What a man is.
And we put it in a box, draw abox.

(52:54):
You gotta be strong, you gottabe the provider, you can't show
no emotions, all this kind ofstuff.
And so then we start talkingabout well, what, how do people
act outside of the box?
And he's talking about that.

(53:16):
And you say in your middleschool and stuff, when you see
people that act like thisoutside of the box, what do you
think of them?
What do you call them?
And they might call them asissy or something.
So we go into this wholediscussion about how we
socialize to be men and becausewe will attribute female sex

(53:45):
parts and look at them as beingfeminine.
What do we think of the femalesin our life then?
If you call somebody a pussy,you come out of a pussy.
Why would you disrespect apussy?
So we talk about that.

(54:05):
And then we have the women inthe flower where we do a role
play of a man doing a similarthing to his daughter, calling
her a whore and stuff, and shegot out of the door and got to,
and how does that socialize us?
And then we get to talkingabout how this messes up our
relationship between the womenin our life and the boys start

(54:28):
seeing how they treat theirmother, how they treat their
sister and the women in theflower we have women actually
talk about how this affectedthem being treated this way by
men and they do a stand up.
They do stand up and differentthings and they do this thing
where they I forget the dangling, but I know you know it where

(54:50):
people tell you what they needfrom you as an ally and you have
to repeat back what you heardthem say, the whole thing, and
we do that with them and by thenwe just soften them up real
good.
We didn't have to know eachother, trust each other, talk
about all this kind of stuff.

(55:10):
And then we do what's called apain fire.
We take them deeper into thewoods, dark, make a big bonfire.
We all get around the bonfire.
We get them a piece of wood orsomething and whoever wants to
come and throw their pain in thefire can do that.

(55:33):
They testify about it and wesay that's when Simba comes,
that's when the lion comes in,because all kind of stuff come
out All kind of crying and stuff.
And one of the things thatreally broke me down is this boy
got up and he talked about howhis father, through his mother,

(55:57):
out the window.
The police came and got him,the ambulance came and got the
mother and he was standing thereby himself and some of the
neighbors came and got him butthe pain and stuff that he had
experienced was justoverwhelming and there was a lot

(56:19):
of kids that had that kind oftrauma and for them to be able
to talk about that and be in asituation where they trusted
people with that information.
And then, after the pain fire,we changed the whole village
into an African village.
We put all kind of Africanstuff up.
They learned in Guzussaba theseven principles of the Kwanzaa

(56:43):
stuff and how that relates andhow we can use that in our
everyday life and what kind ofthings we do.
And that's how camp went.
Every year we do that.
I really miss that this yeartoo, because we do that every
year and now we've got peoplewho were children when we

(57:03):
started, who are adults now, andthe guy who runs the camp right
now he actually he would beyour boss probably where you
work at and he donates money andstuff to us and he donates his
time.
He's a fantastic person.

Speaker 1 (57:27):
Yeah, so you've done this work in schools, right when
you've, in community contexts,in this camp.
I think one of the things aboutthis podcast is restorative
justice life, it's in all thoseparts of your life.
So the first things that youidentified and who are you as
father, grandfather, husband,right?

(57:49):
How has this work been a partof your family?

Speaker 2 (57:54):
And we have round table in our kitchen.
My kids have round table.
Now, my mother was a goodlistener.
So was my father.
Actually, he's a good listenerand the only thing that they
would my father really might hityou about is lying.
So honesty was really valuedbeing honest and other than that

(58:21):
, he would listen to what youhave to say and say okay, you
understand what happened.
My mother's biggest thing washer worry about you and she
thought that whooping you wouldchange your behavior.
And this is my last statementin a deduction.

(58:41):
All the time, my mother told usto come home.
When the street lights came on,I must have been about six or
seven years old.
She tells me to come home.
I go to my friend Percy's houseafter school and we play a
monopoly.
It's the winter time and it gotdark and I was winning.

(59:03):
I had boardwalk and I justlanded on park place.
I'm good, I look out the window.
It's dark.
I'm going to get a whoopinganyway.
I'm going to finish this game,so I get to finish in the game.
So on the way home I said Ibetter put everything up, did
you win?
Yeah, I won.
I won Okay.
So I put everything in my backpocket that I could.

(59:27):
I know I'm going to get awhooping.
I come in the house.
Mama got the rubber hose in herhand.
I go oh yeah, this is going tobe it.
She says I'm going to whip yourbutt.
I say yeah, she said before Iwhip your butt, I'm going to
tell you something.

(59:47):
I'd be so worried when you outthere because all kinds of
things are happening to youngkids out there and I want you to
come home before the streetlights come on and I'm going to
whip your butt.
Make sure you come home.
Well, she whipped my butt butthat didn't change my behavior.
What changed my behavior wasthe fact that she told me she

(01:00:10):
worried.
It wasn't in my imaginationthat adults worried about kids.
I knew I worried about her.
If she went to a churchfunction or something and came
home late, I'm at the windowpraying please bring my mama
home.
God, I'll be good next week ifyou bring my mama home.

(01:00:32):
And because I could empathizewith her.
And I said I would not let thathappen anymore.
And she was 92 when she died,you know it was the year 2000.
And she never had to worryabout me needlessly.

(01:00:53):
If I was going to be out allnight.
I'm going to call her and lether know I'm going to be out all
night and I ain't going to beout all night with no bunch of
dudes.
I'm with a woman, mama, I'mwith a woman.
She said, okay, good so, butthat's.
And we had a lot of people inthe neighborhood.
I had to live in newspapers andpart of the good business was

(01:01:15):
the customer's always right, youlisten.
And you had old people give youadvice.
We had one guy from the WestIndies.
He said y'all, walk past me.
Y'all didn't say top of themorning to you.
You ought to say top of themorning to the adult, you see.
And so we started saying goodmorning to all the adults and
they thought that was the mostwonderful thing in the world.

(01:01:37):
Oh, these are some polite kids.
Oh, give them a tip, give themsome.
This kid's got sense.
And they said oh, you betterlisten to some of these old
folks.
And so, and they're alwaystrying to teach you something,
even the wide heads would pullyou to the side and say look at
me.
You see, I am Alcohol.

(01:01:58):
Did this to me.
Leave it alone, don't mess withit.
And like the drug addict thatrobbed me, who showed me the
tracks in his arms and told meyou'll never be free until you
can say no to your friends,because my friends stuck these
needles in my arms, not myenemies, so they will always

(01:02:18):
teach you some kind of lessonout there in the street.
So I picked up a lot like that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
Yeah, what about, like as an adult in your family,
with your wife, with your kids,with your grandkids?
How has this work been a partof that?

Speaker 2 (01:02:35):
Oh, this is business fantastic.
My wife was like my wife wasgoing through some kind of
change and she didn't want tohave sex no more.
And I said wait a minute.
I said something ain't right.
So I made an appointment totalk to her.
I said I want to make anappointment because I'm going to
talk.
I put the flip chart up.

Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Sorry, you have to walk me through, like how did
you decide to like go aboutmaking this appointment?

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
Because that's good conflict resolution.
I was having a problem.
I had a problem.
I was feeling lonely, Iwouldn't be in touch, that had
no sex what's happening here?
So I got the flip chart up andmade notes and everything.
So it was baby.

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
We're having a problem.
Can we set aside time a littlebit later to have this
conversation?

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
Mm-hmm, make an appointment, give me an hour.
We're going to do this.
And we talked about it and it'sinteresting because she
oftentimes wouldn't tell me whatwas happening, but it would
usually come out later.
And it was one thing thathappened to her but her father

(01:03:53):
had died and we were at thetable and the death certificate
was in the mail.
And she opened the mail and sawthe death certificate and
started crying.
I've only seen her cry once in20 years and I'm wondering what

(01:04:17):
happened.
And I turned my daughter andsaid what happened?
What's happened?
What happened?
What's wrong?
Again, my daughter died.
Happened.
So she said she was mad at mefor a year because of that.
Her perception was.
I said what's wrong with her?

(01:04:37):
That was her perception.
I said what I said you was madat me for a year.
You treated me like this for ayear.
And uh, didn't say that to me.
You know you can smack meacross the head and say fool
what you doing, don't talk to melike that.
You know you can do thatBecause she was having some

(01:05:00):
medical issues as well and someother stuff was going on and her
father dying.
It was a really tough on her.

Speaker 1 (01:05:08):
So have you done that work?
How have you done what we'recalling restorative justice
broadly in your relationshipwith your children?

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Put that book out of talk tokids so you listen to them and
use that with them.
And it is a book calledSiblings Without Ravery by the
same people.
I use that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:32):
Yeah, what are some of the highlights from there?

Speaker 2 (01:05:35):
Oh, Siblings Without Ravery say when the kids start
fighting, go to the bathroom,shut up, let them solve their
own problem, and that's how.
I do it.
I said look, I know y'all loveeach other.
I'm out of here, Y'all can workit out and have the faith that
they will work it out.

(01:05:55):
And then my wife and I agreedthat we was going to have a
round table in our kitchen.
So no power.
The kids had just as much poweras we had and every major
decision we had to make, thekids could have vetoed it.
Like what?
Just moving to New MexicoBehind a new car, we bought a

(01:06:21):
new car.
My wife had wrecked the car andwe had to get a new car.
Every time we went to a cardealership, all four of us went
and we checked out the car, thegirls were getting the backseat
and said no, not this one.
He said, oh no, this backseatain't right, this ain't no good,
we wouldn't buy it.

(01:06:42):
We got to the Honda place.
They got in the backseat of theHonda and said this, is it?
Get this one.
We got it.

Speaker 1 (01:06:53):
How do you differentiate your role as an
adult who knows better, ericwhich are the people who are
only listening to this betweenbeing an adult who knows a lot
of things that young peopledon't know and still sharing
power?

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
One is asking the right questions Because they're
a lot smarter than we think theyare.
You're telling them how youfeel Because their sense is that
it's okay, they may know itbefore you do, but tell them how
you feel.
And then it's amazing because Itell this story a lot.

(01:07:34):
I'm watching a Super Bowl game.
My daughter she must have beenabout, she wasn't a good year
yet she comes in the room andshe starts blablabla and my
first thought was I'm watching aSuper Bowl game.
I thought, oh, wait a minute,wait a minute, wait a minute.
This is my daughter.
I turned off the television,laid down on the floor and got

(01:07:58):
right, right, little faces, shetold me blablabla, blablabla,
blablabla, blablabla.
They said hugs me and run off.
I don't know a damn thing, shesaid.
I don't know what she said, butI sure tried to listen to what
she said.
Now I got so bad.
Now I try to listen to what ababy's crying means to them.
I try to listen.

(01:08:18):
That's a pain sound, that's anuncomfortable sound, that's a
hungry sound.
I try to hear that.
But the thing is, when I'mreally listening, they come up
with solutions that's sometimesjust as good or better than the
ones that I was told.
And when they say it, they say,oh, thank you, dad, you're a

(01:08:39):
genius.
Oh, thank you.
And then the other part is whatI call an OG call.
I don't, look, I'm making thiscall.
This comes from age andexperience.
You're going to do this for me.
An OG call.

Speaker 1 (01:08:58):
Don't do that often.
How do you decide when it's anOG call?

Speaker 2 (01:09:03):
It's really important .
It might be life or death orreally something, but it was
like walking to school.
It was one would walk threemiles, the other would walk two
miles to school.
I said, yeah, he's walking.
I said you can walk, you're agood leg, you're healthy, you're

(01:09:24):
walking to school.
That's the end of the problem.
So they walked to school, therewas no problem.
And then jumping double Dutch,that was one.
We were living in Durham, northCarolina.
We was living in Chapel Hill,north Carolina, and in Durham,
north Carolina, they had aprogram called the Jumping
Bulldogs and they performed andstuff and do games and all kinds

(01:09:48):
of stuff.
It was really fantastic.
And I saw them and they weregiving lessons to their
workshops a week long workshopand I said this is an OG call.
So what did I say?
Two black girls supposed toknow how to jump double Dutch.
That's it.
You're going to learn how tojump double Dutch and jump rope.

(01:10:11):
And I took them to Durham for aweek.
I learned as much rope jumpingas they did, but they loved it.
They were so glad that I dothat, so I didn't make too many
of those.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
When did you first learn the word restorative
justice?

Speaker 2 (01:10:32):
You know, I think it was when I got here to Chicago.
It was that time when Irestored the justice, because
there was always conflictresolution.
Before, in New Mexico I wasdoing all kinds of workshops.
It was called conflictresolution.
I got here.
What was?

Speaker 1 (01:10:45):
it that you came back to Chicago?

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
2000.
And I was.
They had a thing up in Chicagostate Pam and Aura and Cheryl, I
think Chicago state, and youknow I'm nosy.
So I had to go see what theysee.
That's what they're talkingabout.
And I wound up in a circle withPam and I saw this.

(01:11:10):
I'm thinking this ain't nothingnew, this circle thing ain't
nothing new.
This ain't no big deal.
I've been doing this for years.
I would bound boys scouts, wedo this.
And with indigenous people.
I did mediation with indigenouspeople.
We actually did a circle.
So I said that ain't no big deal.
We did start a restorativejustice and then how to use the

(01:11:31):
circles.
So I thought, oh, I need to gettrained in this.
And I talked to Aura and I said, but I ain't got no money.
She said, well, come on anyway.
And she took me into a classand took that class.
I said, oh, and I was kind ofresistant in a way.

(01:11:53):
You know all this ritual andstuff.
Now the main thing I like isthe mindfulness and the
meditation.
So I always did that with kids.
I think they really need that.
So I really liked that part.
But the centerpiece and allthat stuff, I said, oh, that
ain't necessary.
And even getting in a circle.
You ain't got to get in acircle and I thought no, there's

(01:12:13):
some real benefit to doing thisthis way.
You know indigenous people didI would bound.
We did a round campfire all thetime Boys got to do it, I said
okay and I started more and moreand then met Kate Prentice and
the blue book.
When I started going throughthe blue book it was like they
got me.

Speaker 1 (01:12:32):
You're talking circle forward right, Circle forward.

Speaker 2 (01:12:35):
I was looking through that I said there's some deep
stuff.
I like this and there aredifferent circles and stuff.
And after we got trained it wasa situation where a kid got
killed at the playground andthey asked us to all come over
and do a circle with the kids.
And that was so powerful and wewere there.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
You're talking about that finger?

Speaker 2 (01:12:55):
Uh-uh, uh-uh, this was.
It was elementary school.

Speaker 1 (01:13:01):
Oh, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:13:02):
And they sent word out to everybody anybody that
could come and do this and Icircled around about eight kids
and some of the kids they werereal close to the person who got
shot and so it was powerful.
And it's like you know, wereally do need to take a whole
lot more time to help these kidsdeal with this stuff.

(01:13:25):
You know, instead of trying torush new math and trying to get
them to do calculus by the timethey're in ninth grade.
It's like I took a whole lot ofcalculus and I ain't using it
on a job yet.

Speaker 1 (01:13:42):
I stopped at a pre-cal.
That wasn't enough for me.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
Uh-uh.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
And no, haven't used a bit of it.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Uh-uh.
They need finance.
They need to know how to rule a72 and all that kind of stuff,
how money works and how they canyou know that borrow so much
money and get trapped Likethey're trapping kids now.
They're trapping kids likecrazy now.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
Yeah, so in 2000,.
That's when you started tolearn about circles and the word
restorative justice through theframework of you know what Cape
Harness has taught fromindigenous folks in Northern
Canada.
Um, what are you doing now?
You're still in Chicago.
Uh, you're still doing thiswork.
How is that?
How is that happening for you?

Speaker 2 (01:14:30):
That's fascinating.
I'm so sorry you left.

Speaker 1 (01:14:37):
Oh man.

Speaker 2 (01:14:41):
It's a it's an interesting situation right now
because it's so much in flux.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
So so for context, um for people who are listening,
who don't know, you still workat this organization called
Alternatives.

Speaker 2 (01:14:53):
I'm still an alternative.

Speaker 1 (01:14:54):
Yeah, and I'm kind of a rogue at alternatives.
Yes, you are.

Speaker 2 (01:15:00):
They don't know what to do with me at alternatives,
so they have.
They have what they.
These are called Shedrickschools.

Speaker 1 (01:15:08):
What's a Shedrick school?

Speaker 2 (01:15:09):
That's a school.
They have a whole lot oftrouble and they want me to come
in there and help them, to helpthe staff, help the kids,
whatever, and I go and ask themwhat you need.
I try to give them what theyneed and it's it's.
It's awesome, because a lot oftimes just having a black male

(01:15:30):
in the building is helpful andto blow the stereotype that they
might have.
They're going to see me, see mejuggling, like I'd be juggling,
doing that kind of thing.
They don't have to say too manyblack men do that kind of stuff
and they sit down and talk tome and you know I'm listening to
them and talking about all kindof stuff and it makes a big

(01:15:53):
difference.
A lot of times the teachersneed support and I would say a
lot of the times all the timereally.
I would get the principal to letme do great level meetings and
I do the blue book CircleForward.
I think if you were a chapter,it's chapter two, something, two

(01:16:14):
one or something.
They got an introducing circlesto the staff or restorative
justice to the staff and I woulddo that with them.
They get hooked on themeditation For somebody to just
say close your eyes and relaxfor a second, just like yeah, we

(01:16:37):
need that.
And then they ready to listenand they say oh, there's nothing
like I thought it was going tobe.
I got to know other teachersand why they came in the
teaching and their experience,you know, because they don't
have time to talk to each otherlike that and so and the biggest
problem is for the principal toallow me to keep doing that

(01:16:58):
Plus, they got to know thispacing in this town can strength
all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:17:04):
I think I'm thinking back to you know, the kids that
you were working with you knowin North Carolina or in Ghana or
in Pakistan.
You know you have to build therelationship first before you
can really teach them.
Right, when we're doingrestorative justice work with
adults, we have to help thembuild the relationships, to help
them feel the work, before wecan teach them.

(01:17:24):
Oh, this is what a restorativeconversation XYZ is Like.
That stuff is like pretty easyto get once you're in good
relationship with people.

Speaker 2 (01:17:35):
But often they're not giving the time to get this
good relationship.
It's like I used to take twoweeks.
In every class I taught I'dtake two weeks.
When I got to Chicago I did itat Inglewood High School.
I took two weeks.
We would get a big circle everyWednesday and have a class

(01:17:58):
meeting.
One of the kids told me sister,please be careful with that.
Tell them I can't do that.
I said what's your problem?
You can't do that.
It didn't matter that.
I was an old teacher experienceand know what I'm doing.
You can't do that.
So I did it anyway, but theydidn't like it.
And then I did something reallycrazy.

(01:18:23):
I had a poet, a rapper, that weused to camp all the time.
He doesn't even walk in thereTo come to my class and teach
them rap the way he did at camp.
And this guy was awesome.
He's awesome and I'm teaching amath class and we doing rapping

(01:18:46):
.
I said, well, everything'smathematics.
The English teacher brought herhonest class into that class to
be involved in this.
She was the best thing that shesaid.
She's been around a long time.
Oh, they hated that.
Then I got in with the footballteam and was tuned in the

(01:19:07):
football team after school andstuff, and I would go through
the games and I'd play my drum.
It seemed like I'd play my drumand they'd score a touchdown,
and it was happy.
And I was there one day with mydaughter and I was playing the
drum and the principal was there, and the principal looked up to
me and my daughter said you'redone.

(01:19:28):
I came to work and they told meI was through.
I said what do you mean?
I had too many math teachersand my pay was too high.
I was uncontrollable.
I was just crazy.

(01:19:50):
Luckily for me, though, it was agirl who used to come and curse
me out regularly in one of myclasses, and I would really
listen to them, and theprincipal's didn't like to say
you're not teaching, you'reactually listening to a student.
I'm teaching them somethingreally important how to deal
with people who have a difficulttime and so they would watch me

(01:20:14):
deal with this girl, and thisgirl would come in and she'd
curse me out some terrible.
I'd give her that.
Let me have it, I can take it.
She'd tell me, and then she'dcry, and then she'd hug me and
say can I go see Miss Brown?
I said yes, of course you cango see Miss Brown.
Miss Brown was a dean of girlsso she'd go out and see Miss
Brown.
I had to teach her that.

(01:20:35):
A few times Miss Brown came upand thanked me Because this girl
had been sexually abused byfathers and uncles and stuff.
And it was days.
She came in where she hated me.
If her to be able to come andinvent at me was really good for

(01:20:57):
her, I didn't try to punish heror try to attack back anything.
I would just listen to her andfor her to be listened to was
really therapeutic for her andMiss Brown would appreciate it.
So when they let me go, missBrown was at the office waiting
for me to take me to anotherschool that she had gotten a job

(01:21:17):
as a assistant principal to putme to work at that school.
And they let me do my thing.
And they wrote the curriculumfor the class for the now.
And they said let me do mything.
And then I was going to quitteaching Because I really didn't
like the way kids were treatedin the schools and everything.
And they came and got me tocome to Robeson to teach it

(01:21:42):
Because there's a new program.
They said you like this newprogram?
It's got the same attitude,thinking that you have it.
So I went there.
But they reneged on it.
They didn't do what they saidit was going to do.
So I left for an elementaryschool, a Harvard elementary
school, which is down the street, and my sister taught there and

(01:22:05):
I taught a third grade class.
It was brutal when kids wouldcome to class bloody in the
morning, fighting in the lineand stuff, so they would throw
things.
If I turned my head, they threwnuts and bolts and all kind of

(01:22:28):
stuff.
They hit somebody, the personwould get hit and run back and
stop beating them, whoever theythought could do it.
So I said, oh, this is going tobe interesting, this is going
to be fantastic here.
So I put them in a circle or asemi circle and we'd get in the
circle.
It was really easy and I couldwalk around and see who had the

(01:22:50):
nuts and bolts and the desks andtake it out.
They would see each other and Istarted doing routine building
and stuff and things weregetting better.
I brought a humidifier and putit in the room Because it was so
dry and stuff in the room and Ibrought water all the time and

(01:23:13):
so my kids drank a lot of water.
So we had to pee a lot, whichthey supposed to, but they were
not supposed to go to thebathroom.
Once in the morning and once inthe afternoon my kids was going
two or three times you got togo to the bathroom.
Oh, that made the principal mad.
She was mad at me.
She came in one day and told methat I could not have my kids

(01:23:35):
seated that way.
The district what's the name?
Said you got to put them ingroups.
You got to do this, and that Isaid groups.
Both of me got into groups.
That's all I got to do.
Oh no, she gave me a holy hail.
I said dang.
I said look, I'm not going tolet them.

(01:23:56):
If you go, if you go, I'm notgoing to be a part of hurting
the kids.
So at the end of the semester Isaid I'm not coming back.
But I went to the parentconference thing and I went
there because this head guy fromthe district was going to be

(01:24:19):
there and so I talked to him.
He said I wouldn't do that, Iwouldn't micromanage a teacher
like that.
He said I've heard that fromother teachers too, and that
principal got fired.
She was gone.
So this is the outside of my ownbusiness in Potapot, peacemaker
, and I would go around and getbusiness most of these charter

(01:24:44):
schools and I was working withthe Black Star Project and this
is phenomenal because they hadwhat's called a prayer
university and I would go andteach conflict resolution with
the prayer university and how tohelp your kids with math and

(01:25:07):
science and the conflictresolution was the most popular.
But they cut the time down.
They say like two hours.
They cut it down to like anhour.
So that made it a little moredifficult and they had a summer
program and they had a tutoringprogram and they asked me to
train the tutors for thisprogram.

(01:25:30):
So I did what I usually do.
It's a game called For the Kind.
When I put them in groups offour, they get to know each
other, they name themselves andanytime I want them to reflect,
they have to go to their groupsand reflect and talk about it
and report it out.
And when we played, can we TalkBaseball?
That was the group that said,well, we played, can we Talk

(01:25:51):
Baseball?
And Kirsten, you know Kirsten.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
Yeah, oh yes, yes, yes.

Speaker 2 (01:25:58):
Well, kirsten was the program director at Black Star
so I was like working under herand she would be at these
trainings and stuff and she wasreally impressed by it and she
was can I improve that drawingfor you?
And like my boxes and stuff shewould improve and all that

(01:26:20):
stuff.
She called me one time and saidthey got a position up here at
our tutors.
She had left and went to ourtutors and she said they got a
position up here at our tutors.
I think it'd be perfect for you.
I said, oh, so I applied for it, but they gave it to Marcia.
With Marcia and Ali they gaveit to me.

Speaker 1 (01:26:40):
Yeah, I'm wearing his shirt right now, actually.

Speaker 2 (01:26:42):
Yeah crying pigs.
Yeah, so they gave it to him.
So I was all right with that.
And they asked me aboutcoaching.
Now that type of coaching wasreally loose.
You know, we didn't have theinitial visa.
The initial visa was me goingin and talking to the person,
talking to the principal andworking things out with the dean

(01:27:03):
and doing all kinds of stuff,and I was walking Basically it
was a self-supervised kind ofthing, and at the end of each
month you had to get the personto sign this thing that said you
had been there and I was at DuSable and I had a good time

(01:27:24):
there and I went to severalother schools I went to at least
20 different schools that I'vebeen to but they got tighter and
tighter and tighter and moreand more supervision to a poor
one.

(01:27:45):
It's like dang, and it's likeyou know the feelings.
You supposed to have a meetingwith somebody and they'll show
up.
It's like dang, I don't knowwhat I'd do.
I ain't got to wait for thisperson for an hour or so,
whatever.
Now I would go do something.
I go grab a kid at the hallway.
What you doing out here at thehallway?

(01:28:08):
You in trouble?
Tell me about the trouble youin and they say, no, they throw
paper airplanes down the hall.
I just got a book on paperairplanes today.
Two couple of things about it.
You really helped me a lot.
No joke, because when I saw itat the Circle Keepers it was

(01:28:33):
like, oh hell, this stuff works,this could work.
It might work better in someinstances because it's like I
don't have to go nowhere, Icould sit there, I don't have to
put pants on either, and so itmay be easier to get to people.
I'm not going to ask you ifyou're wearing pants now.
I got pants on.

(01:28:54):
They're short pants, but youget these.
You can get eight or ten peoplearound real easily and do a 19
minute circle and it's less timefor me to go someplace that I
will do the circle and come backand you don't get paid for the

(01:29:17):
transportation, so just do it.
And so I did a circle today.

Speaker 1 (01:29:25):
Yeah, what have you found that's been able to
translate?
And then, what are you stillmissing?

Speaker 2 (01:29:32):
Being in a room with people.
I think really has beenofficial, but I think one of the
things you can, you can stillsee the people's faces and
hearing voices and stuff likethat and the meditation part I
think is pretty easy.
But actually before and afterbefore the circle.

(01:30:00):
We're talking doing stuffeating.
You know the circles.
The circles keep.
You know the precious blood.
We're talking having a goodtime here.
They had to ring the bellseveral times to get us to come
in, come on, come on stuff.
Then you go into the circle.
After the circle you're talkingand you're walking with people
and going back and makingconnections and making plans and

(01:30:21):
stuff, all kind of stuff.
So I miss stuff like that, likeeven now, like what's that old
lady named purple all the time?

Speaker 1 (01:30:29):
Oh, Mama June.

Speaker 2 (01:30:30):
Mama June.
I miss Mama June.
Mama June being her presence isfantastic.
I don't know if that wouldtranslate so well over Zumba or
she might have had a handle onthe Zoom thing.
That's the one piece, I think,because that before and after is

(01:30:51):
effective.
It really helps and people canmake personal connections with
people and things like that.
But I think the circle forwardI think works well with the Zoom
.

Speaker 1 (01:31:12):
Yeah, I think like when you know how to do a circle
and how to do it well, you'reable to translate it to whatever
medium.
Because when we do a circle atcircle for circle keepers, at
precious blood, that's differentfrom what we do at schools.
It's different from what you dowith students versus staff.

(01:31:35):
You have to make it work inwhatever context you're in, but
there are just certainprinciples that you know how to
show up and you know how tocreate the space.
What are the most importantpieces of that for you?
What's the most important thingto do when you're creating that

(01:31:56):
space for people?
What's the most important thing?

Speaker 2 (01:32:00):
for you, to me, the meditation, the meditation and
the opening, opening and closing.
That's real important to setthings up and get people ready.
The check-in, that's a realcheck-in.
How you're feeling is thatanything you want to share

(01:32:22):
people need to know and notworry so much about.
Am I going to make it throughthis whole circle thing If I got
an hour?
If it takes me 45 minutes forpeople to get comfortable
knowing each other and feel goodabout that, okay.
The other 15 minutes we can aska couple of questions.

(01:32:43):
It's going to work out alright.

Speaker 1 (01:32:45):
The relationship building piece making people
feel safe in the space is thework right.
It's not the pre-work, that isthe essential part.

Speaker 2 (01:32:55):
That's the work, that's half the circle on that
thing.
That's half of it At least.
Getting acquainted, buildingrelationships, because that
fills open until the after andinto the before People leave.
They feel they're connectedwith somebody.
They might ask a digitalquestion after they leave, or

(01:33:16):
they walk into the bus stop orgetting in the car.
Can I get a ride with you?
Oh yeah, in the ride you'retalking about all kinds of stuff
that might have come up intothe circle, so that relationship
building is powerful.

Speaker 1 (01:33:30):
But I do have a couple quick questions that I
want you to respond to.
The first thing that comes toyour mind as we start to close
out you ready, Ready?
What is restorative justice?

Speaker 2 (01:33:45):
To me restoring a relationship that has been
broken, and it's in pata po.
That's what in pata po meansthe peacemaker.
It's a Ghanaian phrase and it'sa Dinkal symbol, and the symbol
represents the knot of arelationship that has been

(01:34:05):
broken and then tied backtogether again.

Speaker 1 (01:34:08):
What is one place where you wish people knew this
work?

Speaker 2 (01:34:13):
Place where people knew this work.

Speaker 1 (01:34:15):
Knew this work or were doing this work, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:34:21):
The juvenile justice system, the police and the
family Families.

Speaker 1 (01:34:34):
I mean everywhere, right but?

Speaker 2 (01:34:38):
if we thought in terms of restorative justice as
far as our justice system isconcerned, we wouldn't have so
many jails, we wouldn't bespending so much money on
keeping people locked up,Because the first time they make
a mistake they have a chance tomake things right, and I think

(01:34:59):
there's a lot of selfsatisfaction in making things
right.
If you make a mistake, when youfix it up it's like oh man, it
makes you feel good.

Speaker 1 (01:35:14):
If you could sit in circle with four people, who are
they and what would you talkabout?

Speaker 2 (01:35:23):
Wow, four people, maybe my family my two daughters
and my wife.

Speaker 1 (01:35:34):
What people are you talking about?

Speaker 2 (01:35:36):
Just talking about finding the grandkids.
As a matter of fact, we do thatevery Sunday.
You can go to Messenger.
I had to stop myself fromfacilitating that.
My wife does a good jobfacilitating.
We talk about it.

(01:35:57):
Get the kids on there and getthe message you like.
Message because you do theeffects.
I can become a unicorn.

Speaker 1 (01:36:05):
Yeah, definitely, circles with filters.
That's what they're missing.
What is one thing you wanteveryone listening to this to
know?

Speaker 2 (01:36:18):
I want people to learn to take care of themselves
, how to breathe, how to relax,so that when things come at you,
you can take that breath andsay, okay, I can listen to this
and not get defensive.
I think we're so stressed outon how to do the basic things

(01:36:44):
we're grieving, like the 478breath, things like that Just
counting your breaths, countingthe 10, what that'll do for you.
I really think that if we teachour kids this and learn this
ourselves, we won't needmarijuana.
We won't need all thesedifferent drugs to make

(01:37:07):
ourselves feel good.
I can make myself feel goodanytime I want to.
I feel good most of the time.
Somebody offered me a joint.
It's like that's going to sinkmy boat.

Speaker 1 (01:37:19):
I'm doing good, I'm all right, I don't need that.

Speaker 2 (01:37:23):
I don't need that.

Speaker 1 (01:37:26):
I think.
Finally, where can peoplesupport the work that you're
doing?
If you were to point people ina direction to support your work
, how would you ask them to dothat?

Speaker 2 (01:37:46):
They can give some money to the alternatives.
Give some money, some time, toalternatives.
Don't put any shackles on themoney.
Do what you need to do.

Speaker 1 (01:38:01):
Alternatives and the Simba Camp right oh yes, yes,
yes.

Speaker 2 (01:38:06):
Give us a million dollars so we can build a camp.
We can bring maybe a thousandkids a year up in there.
That would be fair.
I'm so glad you did.
I don't know why.

Speaker 1 (01:38:19):
I thought for sure, that's what you were going to
say.

Speaker 2 (01:38:22):
Simba, simba, simba, and Simba is referred to as
rescue, release and restore.

Speaker 1 (01:38:30):
We'll put links to that in the description of
wherever that you're listeningto this.
I want to thank you, Shedrick,so much for spending your
evening, sharing your story,sharing wisdom with us.
You and I we have conversationsoften, but maybe we'll record
another one of these foreverybody else to benefit from

(01:38:50):
as well.
Thanks for listening.
Everyone, Take care and we'lltalk to you next week.
Like what you heard, Pleasesubscribe, rate, review and
share this podcast on whateverplatform you're using right now.
It really helps us furtheramplify this work.
You can also support us byfollowing us on our social
platforms sending up for ouremail list, rocking our new
merch, joining our Patreon orsigning up for a workshop.

(01:39:12):
So many options, Links toeverything in the show notes and
on our website, amplifyrjcom.
Thanks so much for listening.
We'll talk to you next week.

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In Pursuit of Peace - Honoring Shedrick Sanders

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}In Pursuit of Peace - Honoring Shedrick Sanders