Speak For Change With Thomas Sage Pedersen
Welcome to Speak for Change with Thomas Sage Pedersen! Our mission is to inspire and promote positive and lasting change in our local & global communities.
Speak For Change With Thomas Sage Pedersen
Ep 117 Eric Butler: Forgiveness (Trigger warning)
**Trigger warning, In this interview we do talk about domestic violence and abuse so please feel free to skip this episode if you are vulnerable to these topics. **
Find Eric Butler
www.talking-peace.org
Instagram.com/wearetalkingpeace
About Eric
Eric Butler is an award winning Restorative Justice activist and educator. Eric Butler believes in the power of relationship building as a healing practice. An educator and activist, Eric's ability to overcome life's hurdles propels him to make a difference in the lives of young people across the U.S. and beyond.
Eric began his career as a domestic violence counselor in New Orleans. After surviving Hurricane Katrina and relocating to Oakland, California, Eric successfully facilitated Grief Circles. Trigger warning, In this interview we do talk about domestic violence and abuse so please feel free to skip this episode if you are vulnerable to these topics.
Welcome back to Speak for Change Podcast. I'm your host, Thomas Sage Petterson. Our mission is to inspire and create positive and lasting change in our local and global communities. We broadcast from the Tannery Arts Center in Santa Cruz, California. I hope you enjoy the episode of Speak for Change Podcast. Have a beautiful and impactful day.
SPEAKER_00:Hi, Speak for Change community. This is Sky Bronhat. I am so excited to introduce this next episode. Eric Butler is an award-winning restorative justice activist and educator. Eric Butler believes in the power of relationship building as a healing practice. An educator and activist, Eric's ability to overcome life's hurdles propels him to make a difference in the lives of young people across the U.S. and beyond. Eric began his career as a domestic violence counselor in New Orleans. After surviving Hurricane Katrina and relocating to Oakland, California, Eric successfully facilitated grief circles. Trigger warning. In this interview, we do talk about domestic violence and abuse, so please feel free to skip this episode if you're vulnerable to these topics. In this episode, Thomas and Eric explore the concept and power of forgiveness.
SPEAKER_04:This episode is brought to you by Two Birds Bookshop. Two Birds is located in Pleasure Point, California, near the end of 41st Avenue. They have new and used books and also fun gifts, cards, puzzles, and journals. You can also purchase books on their online store at TwoBirdsbooks.com. As many of you know, I am obsessed with journals, books, and office supplies, and I can spend most of my day in a bookstore. Two Birds is one of those places that I feel right at home where I can just get lost in deep conversation with one of the amazing owners or just enjoy the environment of this cozy and creative spot. These kinds of stores are becoming more and more rare, and I personally will only get my books from Two Birds because I want to see them flourish and grow so that many more children and people can experience the magic of this space. I'm also excited to announce that they have a Speak for Change podcast section in their in-person and online store. For more info, please go to twobirdsbooks.com. Thank you so much for your time. Eric Butler, welcome to Speak for Change Podcasts. Honor to have you on.
SPEAKER_02:It's a pleasure to be here, bro.
SPEAKER_04:Man, it's so good to have you, man. From everything I've been seeing you do on social media, you're you even featured in a documentary. Maybe you can talk about that too. Um, you're you're just doing a lot of stuff, and um we met in Selma, and man, right off the bat, you have been an impactful force, at least in my perception of you. And so, you know, I appreciate you coming on here to speak some words of wisdom. So when I reached out, um, the topic you kind of chose was the power of forgiveness, and I think that hits hard, and I just want to give you a chance to kind of explain you know what that means to you.
SPEAKER_02:Right on. Um I grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana, man, in a um in the desire housing projects, which is the third largest housing development ever built in the United States. Um, so it was it was a huge development, and they probably called it a project because it was an experiment for black folks. Um, and if you've never lived in the projects before, it's a big box. And what they do is you put you put drug addiction in this box, and you put you put gangs in this box, you put um resources in this box, you never let anybody leave the box, and you continuously shake the box up. So you never know what you're gonna get. Um when I was a kid, being that we was always trapped in this box, um, there was never any talk around the dinner table about values, um, such as forgiveness. Um, I was taught that um boys don't cry and um you don't do anything that leads you up into those emotions, like um like forgiveness. It's always replaced with something else. Um usually in our communities, in our community, forgiveness will be replaced with anger or confusion, um, ill will intent, revenge is is the biggest one. Um well, never experiencing um using my values in any other way but how I was taught how to do it. Um, I went throughout my whole life doing I even played some football because football kind of reminded me in an organized way that when somebody does you something, you do something, you do something right back to them. Um so that concept never kind of left my mind. Um there was a time after Hurricane Katrina, like all this crazy stuff happened to us. Um, we were actually some of the folks that were trapped on top of those um buildings. And um, I moved to Oakland immediately after that. I'd never been to Oakland before, and um I found the job market like wide open in comparison to um Louisiana, yeah. Um, so I could almost work anywhere, especially coming off of the um, and I had like a pretty good resume, and coming out of um Katrina, everybody wanted to help. Um, I ended up getting a job at Catholic Charities, where I helped other Hurricane Katrina victims or survivors, and after that, um I worked at Youth Uprising, there was all social jobs. Um and finally landed a job with um Fanya Davis working with um RJoy. Um and through that experience, I had learned a lot about community, and I wouldn't even say learned, just relearned, because I had already learned that stuff from Selma when I was a kid, um, which I'll talk, we'll we'll probably talk about that later. Um in the midst of me learning restorative justice values, and um I learned a lot about myself. Um and I remember I was in the classroom. I was I was not in the classroom, I was about to go to school. It was about six o'clock in the morning, which which turns eight o'clock in the morning in New Orleans. Yeah, and I got a call from my sister. My sister told me that my youngest sister had just been murdered, and um now a little bit of background about my sister being murdered. Um I come from a household where I had four sisters, two of them was adopted. I live with my four sisters, my grandmother and my mother. Now, my two sisters that was adopted are actually my cousins. My mother adopted her cousins' babies because she was addicted to crack. Um, and the crack epidemic was huge in my era. Yeah, when it was just being started. Um, uh not only that, I have 15 girl cousins. So I'm the only boy. Now, my whole life, my only responsibility has been the nourishment of these girls or um taking care of these girls. And the main way I was supposed to take care of these girls is to fight for them and to defend them. There was no other talk about um education or um making sure they had good role models or nothing like that. My job was to make sure that they came home. Um in this instance, um, after Hurricane Katrina, my sister moved to Florida and she met this guy who had um who wanted to control her. Now, thing is, my sister never told me about this guy. And the reason why I think, I mean, and I'm only guessing, yeah, is because she she knew that if had she told me that this guy was hitting her, I would have wanted to fight him, and he probably would have killed me. Um, so one day in the middle of the night, she decided that she had had enough, and she drove her car from Florida to Louisiana to go stay with my other sister. And um back then you would go on on computers and you would um map quest where you were going and just save the paper and go away. Like you didn't have you didn't have it on your phone back then. And um, so he retracted where she was going and followed her. Now, where she was going was an apartment complex in Louisiana. Now he knew the apartment complex, but he didn't know the apartment. Um, so he stayed, he stood outside all morning waiting for her to come outside. Across the street was an elementary school, and my sister's plans were to um register the babies into the school across the street. On her way to registering the kids to school, this guy ambushes her and shoots her in the face in front of the babies and everything. So when I got that story, and I and and and and mind you, I'm getting this story in pieces. Yeah um the first story was are you sitting down, your sister's been murdered, and then throughout the day, I'm getting pieces of the story. Here's another funny thing, and I don't know why this happened, but that day I still went to school. Yeah, so I went to school and had a circle with um with some of the girls, and it was um the circle was on um teen teenage dating violence, and I remember it because it was that day, and and these girls like held me in this in this space. Um they they transferred the energy from themselves on to me once they found out that my sister had just passed away. Um anyway, a bunch of folks, because I didn't have any money right after Katrina, right? And a bunch of folks had um put some money together and they got me out on a plane and flew me out to um to New Orleans, I think the very next day. Um now, besides me being that person in my family, which is the only boy and the oldest, I'm also responsible for the financial things that happen. So, like if something uh abrupt happened that way, it's gonna be my responsibility to make sure that there's a funeral.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Which wasn't a big problem. Um, I used to play professional football, so I have like um do boys. Um, and if you don't know what that is, it's just somebody that would do whatever you want them to do because the expectations is that you're greater than they are, and somehow you can pull them out of poverty or whatever situation they need if um they need you. Now, good news is I am kind of that person in my community. So, like, I mean, just a couple of days ago, my cousin called because him and his brother was having a fight, and I was the only one that could talk out of it and work or whatever. Um, so I've always been that type of person, and um so my boys felt so bad for me that they would say things like, Whatever you want us to do to help you through the situation, we'll do that. And it's just to um to make you feel better. And honestly, I wanted my court of blood. I wanted I wanted this guy that murdered my sister, who I had no idea who he was. There's no relationship. I wanted him to feel what I was feeling. I wanted to rumble, but he had already been caught by the police, so there's nobody to rumble with. So I'm sitting here with all this pimp-up something. Now I don't know what it is. Yeah, I do know it's a mixture between anger and a deep, deep hurting, but it's a mixture of it, so it doesn't feel like one thing. And in the belly of my stomach, I'm feeling like what I really need is um, and and mind you, I've been practicing on figuring out in situations what is the need and how do we address the need.
SPEAKER_05:Right.
SPEAKER_02:And for me, the need was revenge because forgiveness has never been the piece that played a part in between a wrongdoing and a solution. There's always been revenge or harm. Somebody has to hurt, even if I even when I was a kid and I did something bad, the idea to make me um to correct my behavior was always harm. Yeah, so I didn't know any other thing. And luckily, my friends didn't either. But the problem was we didn't have anybody to rumble with. So um I started thinking about what that does or what that was doing to my body, and um it's crazy because in my mind I couldn't stop thinking about this need, it was like an itch that you can't scratch. Yeah, and it was constant, it never went away. Now, what I noticed that was what's happening around me is when we have funerals in New Orleans, it's it's it's mostly a celebrity a celebration. So it's like a celebratory kind of um event. Um, well, you you see some mourning, which is the reason why there's a thing called the second line. The first line is the mourners, and then right after that are the people that celebrates the um the life of the person that you lost. So most of it looks like, and since it's in New Orleans and it's mixed with drinking and that kind of stuff, most of it is um a celebration.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:So around me, I'm watching a celebration with with faces of sadness. Um, when you're not in the culture of New Orleans that looks really, really sad. So being away for so long and then and watching these people hurt and dance at the same time, and they were my people, and watching this a look on my mother's face where she felt like well, she looked stuck, she looked like she didn't know how to feel, right? And um and all that stuff burned, and I didn't know what to do with that emotion. Um, but still, in the pit of my stomach, I'm wanting revenge. So um a few a few moments pass by, and um I get a phone call, and this phone call is um the guy who murdered my my my sister's mother. And the reason why she called my phone was because it was the number that she could she can contact somebody. Like I said, like I'm I'm sort of the leader of the family, so yeah, she she she found me, and um she said she she she she told me who she was, and she said she wanted to come and see my family. And so now here's where the rubber meets the road because in my gut I want revenge, and in my mind, I'm reminded of all of the gangster movies that I've ever seen in my life, where revenge feels so good when when Denzel Washington gets his revenge and all this other stuff that even happened in the hood when um little little Peter got his gun stolen, his brother got it back, and there's a um it's like like what the movies tell us like there's a um there's a feeling of glee when you're when somebody gets their just due. So my bright idea was we can kill his mommy. If I tell if I tell these boys that they're going to at least plan to do it. Um, I don't know if you ever have friends that once you tell them to do some bad shit, you can't go back and say, hey, remember the bad shit I said? Let's not, let's not, let's, let's forget about that. Yeah, it's too late now. So once those wheels are in motion, they're in motion. So I took a deep breath and I told them, this woman is coming over, she should be here in like five hours. She's driving from Florida. When she gets here, have your way. And they're like, Are you serious? Like, you can't turn back. And I'm like, okay, do what you want. Um, in the midst of these um stares and uncomfortable um dances, my mother is looking at me, and I've never experienced a time in my life where my mother stares at me without saying a word. She usually has something to say, and it's usually something sarcastic or um smart-mouthed, um, for the lack of a better term. Um, but she's she's staring at me, and if I was to read what I think she was thinking was don't do anything dumb. Now she doesn't know what's going on. Yeah, five hours pass by, and um before this time, I have changed my mind. I've been thinking about this, and I and I want it to happen, but I don't want to be responsible for it. So, like, I'm thinking about how is guilt going to feel once this is over with. And is this going to solve the problem? Is my pain gonna go away like it goes away on the movies? But I also know that I can't tell my friends that we're not doing this anymore. Yeah, well, anyway, this lady comes in all alone, and she's she's about four foot something. She has on a moo moo, and she's holding it together like this because she doesn't have like the buttons as worn off on it. She has nothing on under it, and she has on some slides, and she slides up the driveway. And I'm watching her, and um she knocks on the door, and she knocks on the door in a way where um how you like like you like you go to somebody's house, but you you want to be um polite, but you also you're a part of this community, so you walk in, so like she knocks and opens the door at the same time. And um, when she did that, she looked at me and she kind of looked me up and down, and she just kept walking. Now, she's in the four year air section of the house, and if you walk straight to the four year, there's a couch that my mother is sitting on, and I don't know how, but somehow they both knew who they were. So my mom stands up in between two of my sisters, and they embrace for a short period of time, and um my mother starts to wipe her tears, and she um the lady introduces herself, she says who she is, and then she says, Um, I belong to you. My son took your daughter, and I belong to you, and she got on her knees, and my mom picks her up. Now, the thing is, if you knew my mom, my mom's not the Christian, she's the shell of a Christian woman. She cuss and um drinks a lot and smoke weed and all of the stuff, but she does have the shell of a Christian woman, so she knows the words. She picks this lady up and she tells this lady that she's been forgiven way before she even decided that she was gonna come over. And um the whole house is silent. There's there's like 40 people in the house, and nobody's saying a word, everybody's and here's that this is the part that sounds weird, but I know it's real. Everybody's soul, I mean, and that's the only thing I can call it because I don't know what it is, but everybody's soul is fixated on that moment, so like there isn't a physical reaction, yeah. And and that's the reason why I say it's something else that was inside of everybody because there was no physical reactions from from anybody. It was one person say, Do y'all feel that? And it was one of my friends, and um when he said that in this odd situation, it made me think about what I was feeling and what everybody had to be feeling, and the um and the feeling was um endorsed through these two women who had to be feeling the same thing at the same time, and to look at them, it was like looking at two people falling in love, yeah. And and what I mean by that is when two people fall in love, it's a moment when I don't know if you ever fell in love before, but I've done it hundreds of times. It's a moment when you think consciously that this other person thinks the exact same way you're thinking in this moment, yeah, and it feels like love, or it's something else and you call it love, yeah. And um, so that question combined with the feeling that and we were witnessing their um them speak their vows of humanity to each other. Um, that was good. Um they were falling in love, and immediately they were um involved in a marriage of humanity where we understand that we feel the same values, that punishment isn't the thing that's going to heal this situation. This was also the first time I experienced true restorative justice, and um from that moment I decided that I could never hurt another person out of anger ever again. Um, because I don't want to have to wrestle with the idea of somebody forgiving me. Um for her not to receive that forgiveness in that moment would have been injustice for her son not to receive that justice is injustice. I meant not to receive forgiveness is injustice. Um being murdered because he murdered is dumb. Um so when we went to his trial, and we're expected to um to be so angry at him. In fact, the judge probably didn't have to say anything, but the judge kind of entered his two cents and talked about how much of a menace to society this guy was, and it was almost words of encouragement for us to hate him. Um now, my idea of justice is having the freedom to exercise your values. Think about that is folks don't want you to exercise your values, even the ones that that love you the most. Um, I have family members still angry at me to this day for saying to this man that I forgive him, and on the on behalf of my family, we forgave him, and we hope him, we hope he has a good life. And I never want him to go to jail for the rest of his life. In that moment, now here's the here's where the freedom comes in at. Um my family, I can see that that they don't like what I just said. So if I don't say it, I'm not free. Now, he's he isn't free either because he has to maintain a hard exterior. So what he said back was bitches should learn their place, and um that is a way to imprison me again. So I've already freed myself of my values, my value, I have forgiveness in my values, yeah. And him not um, he's a gatekeeper of evil, and it might not be in his heart, but but in his mind, he has to gatekeep evil, so the intent of harm always has to be there, it always has to be, and the motive is always to lock us up in our cages of injustice. Um, and and I understood that immediately. I understood the resistance from um my family was a normal resistance where we've been taught to be the gatekeeper of injustice and to make sure those things happen. Um it's the reason why if we're in schools, one of the things that I've been criticized for the most working in schools is showing compassion, giving the kids a hug. That's that that that that's against the law. It's so we are gatekeepers of our injustice, so to the point where even showing compassion in places where compassion should be appreciated is against the law.
SPEAKER_04:Man, thank you so much for sharing that story. I am I I have to admit, I almost teared up there a couple times in that counting on, you know. So I guess my my question is how do you because you you work in the community, you work with these kids, and probably hard kids who have that hard exterior as you're talking about, how do you teach them about forgiveness and how to have compassion for one another in a society that compassion, like you said, in schools is illegal, it's not looked highly upon in like giving like physical connection and and in a um society. Where a lot of people have to be hard. They have to have that harder exterior and not be vulnerable.
SPEAKER_02:I have also have three kids who are all adults now. My youngest kid is 20. And I learned this raising my children that as adults, we have historically been lame. And my parents was lame. So when I when I had kids, my grandmother was lame. When I had kids, I wanted to ask myself, like, why is it we were cool one moment, and then when you have kids, you become lame. And sometimes only to your kids.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:I'm still kind of lame to my kids. Um my approach of not being lame to them makes me lame. Um, so I think that in a school setting, algebra isn't sexy. But if you can make algebra sexy, kids would do it. Um, so the idea was if I'm teaching um just anything about justice, to make justice look good. And what I mean look good, I mean like the way I show up, the way I present justice should be a way that they can see it, that a way that they can hear it and receive it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, so and a way to do that is to always share, and um um with the intent being building community, always be willing to share pieces of myself. Um, I remember um thinking about how do I do that? Um, first day of school, and these kids are told that um pull your pants up. Yeah, first thing, before good morning, pull your pants up. Um just something as simple as that. Like, where's the injustice in just that? Um, and there has to be an injustice in it because one person's mad and the other person's has the power. So where's the injustice in that? And it takes me back to my own childhood. And I remember MC Hammer pants was in style, and everybody was wearing the MC Hammer pants. My mama hated the MC Hammer pants to the extent that she banned them. She wouldn't buy them, so I had to I had to get my own money and buy them. But even when I did that, she would take them away and I would sneak them to school and I'd wear them anyway. So I remember why she didn't like them. And she didn't like them because she said it showed my stuff.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And um, so I remember as a child investigating the things that she wore when she was a kid by asking my grandmother. And my grand, and she did the exact same thing that I did. So, like, it's a cultural thing for us to not like what our kids like and try to take it away, not understanding that that is the thing that's going to create their culture, and I can't dictate the apparel for their culture. Now, what I can dictate is what's inappropriate. As an adult, I can say like that's inappropriate, but then I still have to have a reasonable conversation and ask the right questions.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, a kid that doesn't that I can't dictate his culture, the apparel of his culture. So by me immediately saying, pull those pants up sounds like an attack on his culture. But if I ask why and where did it come from? And I did, and the kid asked, and when I asked that kid that, you know, he said, This came from you. And I'm like, what do you mean by that? He's like, my uncles, your age, used to wear their pants like this, um, and we copied that style. And I thought about it and I was like, I didn't, but I remember I grew up in New Orleans, so I remember the Hot Boys. When the Hot Boys first got on the scene, it was Lil Wayne with the Hot Boys, they all wore their pants down, the behinds. And I remember in high school, I didn't, but I remember other cats copying them. And I knew why. The reason why was because in the projects, you're not given much to shine on on the on the inside. So you shine on the outside as much as you possibly can. And if that means pulling your pants down to the extent that people can see the polo underwear that you just that you just bought, and that was the reason why we did it. An equal dumb reason, and it created a culture um that could be sold. The problem is the wrong people sell it.
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_02:Um, smoking weed was a big thing. Um, so I had to think about that. I smoke weed every day, so how hypocritical would it be for me to talk to these kids about smoking weed as if it's wrong when I do it every day? And I can't hide it anymore because they sell weed at the store. At some point, I'm going to be at the store with the kid, they're gonna see me and my transaction. So, how do I make this conversation make sense? Um first of all, I use the we in the question, why do we do this? And what is what is the um what's the benefits of smoking weed? And um what are the non-beneficial factors about smoking weed at school? Now that makes sense. That's a conversation that I can win because it makes you tired, it makes you hungry, and it makes you giggle. So, can you have those three qualities while you're in Miss Smith's English class? No. So it probably wouldn't be a good idea to smoke weed before you go to school. So we came up with an idea, and this conversation went on for weeks. There's a time and a place to smoke weed, which turned into there's a time and a place for everything. So, like when you think about it, is there a time and a place for everything? There absolutely is. So we got t-shirts made that said a time and a place, and now all of the kids at the school want a t-shirt, but in order to get the t-shirt, you have to have the conversation.
SPEAKER_04:I love it. Oh man, that is beautiful. I love this idea of how you meet people where they're at, and how authentic you are and how curious you are, right? So, this idea that you go into these communities and you don't because I feel like a lot of people who are doing this work they come in with these ideas of I want you to be this, I want you to be that. Um, but from what I'm hearing you say, and you know, correct me if I'm wrong, is that you come in and you meet people where they're at, and you really start to investigate like what's the deeper root of the cause and what's the deeper meaning by um really trying to build that rapport and connection with these with these kids on a real level, not just uh superficial, uh performative level.
SPEAKER_02:I think the first thing that I want to do is selfishly win. First thing I want to do is I want to win. So like I want to go into the place where they say you're not gonna be able to get to these people. Yeah, I want to be able to come out of that thing and say, I won. Um, for instance, where we met, um the reason why I was there is to do a training with the teachers on restorative justice. Now, the thing that halted that was they couldn't get over the Jesus aspect of so so so it wasn't going to be restorative justice, it was gonna be Jesus and restorative justice. Now, I understood early that my fight wasn't going to be against Jesus, I'm gonna lose that fight. So I'm not gonna go into a fight that I'm I know I'm gonna lose. So I tried not to mention it, and um, and I definitely tried not to say I'm not Christian, yeah, but they forced it out of me, they want to know if you're Christian, and um, it came out, and I immediately is like, if you're not Christian, you're not gonna be able to teach me. So, in my mind, after doing it for like days and thinking about how I can break this change. So, like, what I thought about was I am going to have to manipulate this relationship across the board. So, and people don't like the word manipulating relationship, but when I was a kid, um well, not even as a kid, as an adult. Um one of my weaknesses is women. I love women. And um, truth be told, if if women didn't appreciate an apartment, I would probably live in a cardboard box. It really doesn't matter to me. But um I want to manipulate, and um, and the reason why I I dress the way I dress is because um I'm a victim of my own um oppression. Plus, um, I want that being said, I want you to think that I have more things than I have.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and I think that black men suffer from that um oppression all over the place. Um, but that came with this ability to manipulate relationships. Um I knew that unless Jesus was at the center of what we were trying to do, we wasn't going to make any advancements. So we could change the name. It doesn't matter to me. I just want to win. Um, so everything started working when I opened up my um trainings with with prayer. Now, thing is, I know how to do it. I I I went to church when I was a kid, so I know all the church words. Yeah, so like, and and that's the manipulation piece. Like, in fact, the whole time I was doing it, I had my eyes open and I'm watching the people's reaction. And as they say yes, Lord, around the circle, I'm thinking, yeah, I got you. I got you, I got you, I got you. And um, and then after that, I was able to do the thing that I wanted to do, and I could interrupt them by using church lingo by saying, Um, right now, Jesus might want you to get out of the way so he can do his thing. And right now you're in his way. And that that is part of like the manipulation process with building all relationships across the board. Um, that is the exact reason how I got the principal on board.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Using church, and um there's a fight happening, and I said, Um, do you want to go in your office and pray about it? And when I said that, our relationship started to form Christian to Christian. And um, I mentioned um how much I love women. I don't like church at all. But if I wanted to meet a woman bad enough, I would go to church with her once.
SPEAKER_04:Well, only once, huh? Once. No, man. I you know, I really I really appreciate your honesty around all of that because you know, as someone who was raised Christian who doesn't really identify as a Christian, I like I know all the words, I know all the prayers, I know all that stuff, and I've had really deep conversations with um you know people who are Christian, like deeply Christian, and the fact that I know the lingo, it almost allows me to have a deeper connection with those people. And and you know, you calling it manipulate relationships, which is a very accurate term. Um, but I always looked at it as you know, like small talk, right? You know, like the whole point of small talk, right? People have small talk, it's always uh it's like a bridge to a deeper connection between people, right? You start out talking about the weather in very creative ways, but that leads into talking about maybe their personal relationships or connections or you know, whatever. And uh I really that's really inspiring that you kind of use that strategy. And so I guess the whole the view is that it sounds like most of this work you do it's it's almost about finding the most efficient way and of making real change. It sounds very strategic, it sounds very you know what what what I really appreciate as doing you know the whole King in nonviolence thing and you know doing organizing work is that what you're talking about is really just creative ways of being more efficient as a human, being a more efficient human in our society and teaching these kids and adults how to do that, and and then in the process of doing that, you are being efficient by doing that. And so I'm curious, where did this ideology come from for you? Of it, like where did you learn how to do this? Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah. I'm full of shit, and um, and and and you are too, and um, and everybody else is. I found a way to convey it, yeah, without making myself look like an asshole. Um, I can do a lot of things. I mean, we could do a lot of things with the talent of being full of shit. Yeah, um, in fact, look, look how Donald Trump chose it. Like, Donald Trump is the best full of shit artist I've ever seen in my life. Like, yeah, he found his audience and he spoke to his audience. I don't even think he's a racist, I don't think he cares enough to even be a racist. Yeah um, but he's full of shit. And I think that finding the fullest shit in you and figuring out how to convey that to get the things that you want. In fact, um, I think restorative justice is full of shit. Um, and it's one of the things that I believe in more than I believe in anything else. And it's full of shit because it it calls itself restorative justice. And it's like as soon as you hear it, as somebody's seeking justice, you start to tingle without even thinking about what they're talking about. It's like we're going to restore justice. The restoration of justice happens here. That sounds good until you start thinking about what those words actually mean. Now, here's the thing: the word restorative justice is hoping that you say, Fuck the words. Okay, we're restoring justice. But if you think about those words, it makes no sense together. The restoration of justice, we're bringing back to his original form, but a little better, justice, making things right, um, having equity. Um, all like, all right, so like when has that ever happened? When is when has we when have we ever equally well equally when have we ever had equity? Never. And even if we were talking about, even if I was talking to a white person, or white people, even if there's white people listening, yeah, I'm foolish enough to know that if I haven't had justice, you haven't had justice either. Now, here's the thing about justice. Now, I remember being on the roof of Hurricane Katrina, and having with my whole family and thinking, shit, it has stopped raining, but the um the water is still rising. And um, I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I know that's not how shit works. And I was like, oh my god, the um levees have broken, which means if the levees broke, we are about to become a part of the Mississippi River, which also means we're gonna die on this roof. Um, and um I couldn't tell my mother that I couldn't tell the rest of my sisters that we're probably gonna die on this roof. I had to try to figure out a way to keep us alive. Um now for me, injustice was where were you doing that when Hurricane Katrina was happening? Where was you?
SPEAKER_04:Where when Hurricane Katrina, I was at school, I think. I'm you know, I don't remember exactly what part of the world, uh California.
SPEAKER_02:California, all right. When I think back about what folks at school in California had to witness and couldn't do nothing about it, if you could, you would have done some of the silliest shit of all times to try to make things better, a little bit better. Probably like, I'm gonna try to drive. I heard people say, I'm gonna drive all the way to the point to where there is no water, right? It's like, and you can't do shit, and taking away your ability to do something is the most injustice, do something right, is the most it is where injustice um sleeps, yeah, in that place. Um I forgot what the question was. I'm sorry.
SPEAKER_04:No, but I think the question was like, how did you get to this point of doing of doing this work, right?
SPEAKER_02:And you were yeah, yeah. Um, yeah, I think that I recognized um early that um what restorative justice was actually saying is to me, it was saying toy with these words and um and find out what these words are trying to say to you. So restorative justice. Um, and then and and I and I've had this conversation with many people like was it what is it to restore something? And everybody can agree on the um definition of restoration. It's in the um is in the dictionary. If you look up the word justice in the dictionary, I don't I know I know we have, but it's like uh um everybody else's definition sounds better. Now, here's a here's the one thing that's that's that's that's crazy about it. Like get 10 people together and say, what is justice? Everybody's gonna have a different idea of what justice is, and we're all gonna agree with what that idea is. How do we know that? How do we instinctively know that for this white woman, justice is equity, and feel like, yeah, it's equity when she has experienced equity and we haven't, and she knows we haven't, so she has it either. Yeah, so like so so justice is all those things that we think justice is without it being practiced, um, because justice is inside of us, right? That idea of equity is inside of you, that idea of um of empathy that's inside of us. Um, so like the justice that we are restoring is a justice of our imagination, and um, and that's easy. When you put it like that, like that using lame terms, like we're we're imagining a justice, and then we create that justice, right? That's easy. The hard part is injustice wants to be injustice more than we want to be justice because injustice has made rules and laws around us not being just. Um, yeah, there's so many um examples of how injustice says, hell no, you can't do that, yeah. And and you can go to jail for doing that. Um we live in a society, and this is what Fanya Davis loves to say we live in a society that if I kill somebody, the law is kill me so we can prove to everybody else that killing people ain't a good idea, and that doesn't make any sense now. Because of that law, schools have uh adopted punishments like if you're true, we'll suspend you. If you don't come to school, guess what? We're not gonna let you come to school. That makes no sense, that's not justice. Justice is if he doesn't come to school, we should figure out why he doesn't come to school and then create uh um a justice where he could come to school. Um I was asked by the principal, would I be willing to pick a kid up from school for school every single day if that's all he needs? Hell yeah. Hell yeah. If that's all if that's all it takes for him to come to school, is for me to go pick him up and wake him up, and I've done that. I've gone to houses and wake a kid up, and the kid gets up and he sees me, and the look is not anger, the look on his face is the look that you would see somebody that just received justice. It's like, oh my god, somebody loves me enough, love is justice, and somebody loved me enough to show up to my house and come and pick me up. And I guarantee you gotta do it once, you'll never have to do it again. Um, for a kid to see you show up at their recital and never had anybody show up at their recital before, it makes them want to be good at that thing. Um, if you can imagine who your favorite teacher was, and it doesn't have to be a classroom teacher, it's somebody that taught you something. Yeah, that person isn't your favorite teacher because of the subject matter that they taught. They gave you something else, they gave you some justice, they gave you parts of their own values, they use their values to get something that they needed from you. Um, all my life, um, coaches have been my favorite teachers. And the reason why is because they're selfish, man. I play football and coach just want to win. And in order for him to win, he will get you a summer job so you won't have to be in the streets during the summertime. And so I inspire um, and especially people in school communities, if everybody was at least stumbling in the direction of being the school's favorite teacher, you would have a perfect school. You would have kids that are actually coming to school and trying, and not only kids, and folks think that we stop with resortive justice at schools, but right now we've been doing most of this work around race, yeah, and that's a hard nut to crack because there is no justice in racism, and of course, all of the evil forces of injustice do not want justice. That means something's gonna have to happen. If we're if we're suddenly in a um a non-racial society, things are gonna turn around. The talented people are gonna be the people that get the most attention from that, whatever that talent is. It's not gonna be because of who your dad is, and that's gonna turn everything upside down. That's evil, don't want that to happen. Yeah, that's why we gotta pull some rules. We gotta get kicked out of a couple restaurants.
SPEAKER_04:No, man. I that's that's beautiful, man. And I love how you're bringing up this idea of justice. Justice has been uh a topic that I've been it's been super hard. Like where we met at the King and nonviolence thing, I think the last one they have these um principles, right? And I think the one principle was that the universe is always on the I forgot exactly word for word, but it's the universe is always on the side of justice kind of principle. It was like that was the last one, and I had the hardest time um digesting that, right? And and I and I like this idea because it really does really answer my question, because it for me it just comes down to faith, like you have to just trust that that that's gonna happen. But this idea that justice is something that is imaginary, but we are trying to fulfill almost. We're trying to fulfill this idea, this concept, this feeling that we have, and that justice is love, um makes a lot of sense to me. And I did think of my favorite teacher, and I was thinking like, yeah, it's not the subject matter, it never is, it's always the the love they put into their teaching, into their connection with you, like willingness to go out of their way for you to be. And you know, I heard this other quote that you know, love is time, right? It's like willing to put in the time for to people or to this situation or to this idea or to whatever. That's love, you know, in in my head. And you know, you see it in relationships like my wife, right? You know, putting in the time will do will do a lot there, you know. And so I don't know. What do you what do you think of that? That idea of love is time of justice, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and man, I'm gonna tell you, um, I'm glad you use um your wife as an example, because um it that that shows that it's so difficult. And um justice and love is time. Um, and I admire, I do I do not believe in traditional relationships, but I admire them because it takes an enormous amount of time and um preparation and um and your vows has to be reset over and over again because you changed so much. So once I change, I can't expect the person that um used to live with somebody else um that lived in a whole different city than I live in to understand when and where my time actually changed. I don't even know. Sometimes I don't know when I'm changing. Um I just realized that I can no longer stand up without going, uh things change. And if you've been and if you and if you've been with me since the time where I could just stand up, now you have to realize, like, baby, now you might have to help me up. And people that love for real take that time and say, you know what, my baby needs help up now. Now I've got to start helping my baby up every single day. God damn. Um, and um, and I think to achieve a love like that is is amazing for one, and it gives us a roadmap of how to love other people. Now, um when I'm doing seminars or whatever, um, I always use romantic love as an example for all love. Because the only thing you have to do is take out sex and text messages and that stuff, and it can become uh another type of love. But that love that says, um, no matter what you do, I'm gonna love you anyway. Um, I can say no matter what you do, I can forgive you, but I can't say I'm gonna love you. Yeah, I don't think I can say that about my kids. I I well I can't say that there may come a point I don't like, you know.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, it's like that's every parent's nightmare a little bit, right? Like you got a kid you don't like. I mean, but you know that just have three of them.
SPEAKER_02:If you have three of them, there's gonna be one you don't like, and and and I've done the research.
SPEAKER_04:Oh my man. Oh man. Yeah, I mean it's it's I love this idea of forgiveness, and you don't have to love someone to forgive them, right? And I you know, I've experienced that where I've I've definitely forgiven somebody, and it's it's it's purely selfish in my case. Like I can't hold on to that kind of pain for that long. Um and forgiveness for me, sometimes it feels you know, I'd love to hear your your view on this, but sometimes it feels it does feel a bit I'm trying to rephrase this, but weak, I guess is one of the reasons I felt, you know, when I've had to forgive somebody, I felt definitely like I don't I've had to like check my ego, you know what I mean? Like to do that, right? And and and I know you've experienced that, and so I'm curious of how do you move forward with that? You know, do you understand what I'm the feeling I'm trying to talk?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, smoke a lot of weed and um yeah. Um the um I think that the um I think for me, for me, and for most people that I talk to about this topic, um, both things like it it takes so like the um the the emotion and the thing that it takes for um forgiveness is laborless because it's for you, yeah. It's not about it's not about the other person, so it's laborless. Yeah, but for me to be so angry that I can't forgive takes a lot of labor. That's like because I have to replace that forgiveness with something, or I'm not gonna be able to sleep. Um and and like and like this is how I get um parallel to romantic love. If a girl breaks up with me for a reason that I don't know and she won't tell me, which this has happened many a times, I cannot sleep at night. Yeah, because I'm thinking about what is it in the middle. Now, if I let it go and I say, you know what, I'll forgive her for whatever, you know what I'm saying? Do what you're gonna do. But in the meantime, if I don't, I'm thinking about why is she doing this to me? Um, for um for this guy who murdered my sister, you know what's crazy is I watch too much TV. So for me personally, um, and almost every television show, program, movie, or whatever has a victim, a villain, the superhero.
SPEAKER_05:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Um, and I want to be the superhero. So every every day I would just think about what ways can I get revenge. Even in that short period of time where I was thinking about getting revenge from my sister, which was like a couple days, and I found out that he was in prison immediately. I actually contemplated, but check this out for some movie shit. Going to prison, exacting revenge, and that's where the thought stopped. So, like, all right, so like, so how am I going to ensure that I'm at the same prison that he's at? Never crossed my mind. So, I guess I'll get to that thought after I commit the crime that gets me put in jail that's not in the same jail that he's in. So now I have to think of another way. And it never the labor is way too much because there's something else there. For me, it was revenge. For somebody else, it might be like, man, I don't know. Like, like it could be the absence of um of love. I've seen people um be mean because they don't want to be around people. Um I can't see, I can't see people that look like him as humans. So like I erase the humanity of a whole group of people, and that makes me distrust him. That makes me have to create new assumptions that I didn't have before. So now I'm already operating on the assumptions that I've always had since I was a kid. Now I have to have these new assumptions for six foot three black guys who hang out on the street that murders my little sister. That's how crazy those thoughts get if you couldn't simply replace them with something that you all that I already have, that we already have inside of us. The thing that it takes for it to happen is usually a relationship. And his mom, in that moment, when she gets on her knees and asks my mom to forgive her, she's also extending herself, she's extending her humanity so we could um be in a relationship. So the relationship makes it easy to forgive, even if if it's even if it's his mama. So, like for the sake of your mama, if I need that, for the sake of your mama, I forgive you. Me forgiving him is not me giving him a gift, yeah. It's me giving myself a gift. Um, the powerful thing is I'm giving myself a gift that keeps on giving. So if he receives it, he'll get that gift too. Now, if he receives it with his whole heart, he'll teach about that experience and stop somebody else from doing the same thing that he did. And it's not over for him. Now he said that nasty thing to me in court, and right after that, man, I had a um I had some shrimp, egg touffe, and um some crawfish pies, and I was in heaven. This dude had to go and eat that hard ass cornbread right after he um, and even even that's kind of mean for me to say, but he's gonna have to do that over and over and over again. I'm at a point to where I earn enough money where I can truly say that I can eat whatever I want every single day, and that's all right with me. That's justice, baby.
SPEAKER_04:Hey, Eric, man, that's amazing. Thank you so much for that. I resonate with that a lot. And um, so we're gonna have to take a quick break to hear from our sponsors, um, but then we'll be right back.
SPEAKER_00:This episode is brought to you by Everyone's Music School. Everyone's Music School's mission is to create positive and lasting change in people's lives with music education. They are located in Pleasure Point, California, and in Santa Cruz at the Tannery Arts Center. They also do online and outdoor music lessons. They teach instruments such as piano, guitar, singing, saxophone, clarinet, ukulele, and more. With compassionate and creative teachers, everyone's music school will help bring music into your life. Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:All right, all right, let's get back to it. Here's just we're gonna ask a few more questions and then we're done. All right, let's here's the first question. Do you have any quotes that you live by or think of often?
SPEAKER_02:Um find something truly worth dying for and live for it.
SPEAKER_04:That's great. What is something you believe that other people think is crazy?
SPEAKER_02:Oh shit, that's a good one. Um I believe that um monogamous relationships are unnatural.
SPEAKER_04:My man.
SPEAKER_02:Selfishly.
SPEAKER_04:Oh man. What new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your life?
SPEAKER_02:Monogamous relationships are unnatural.
SPEAKER_04:Oh my god, I dig this. Um what was your best investment under a hundred dollars?
SPEAKER_01:Um best investment under a hundred dollars. Oh no, that was a little bit more than a hundred dollars.
SPEAKER_02:All right, um, I bought a um I usually smoke in papers, and and I'm from the south where um where weed, well, I started smoking weed when I was like 25.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And in the south, so it was like it was like trash. So when I first moved here, I experienced weed without seeds and stems. And um, that was amazing. And um now that I've been living here for so long, there's these there's these um all these creative ways of smoking weed, and I'm old, so like I don't necessarily do the young shit too much. Like I don't listen to the young music, and um, but like I've tried like dabbing, and that has been like um a great investment because I don't have to buy as much weed.
SPEAKER_04:That makes sense. Sufficient. Um when you feel overwhelmed or unfocused, what do you do?
SPEAKER_02:Cry.
SPEAKER_04:Who do you think of when you hear the word successful?
SPEAKER_02:Who do I think of? Um, one person definitely is um is Stevie Wonder. And um, and I don't mean it in what I also mean it like in like a like financial success, um, too, but um Stevie Wonder is an example of using the things that you have to um to make the things that you don't have seem like it doesn't matter. So like where where Stevie where Stevie lacks insight, he makes up humendously in insight.
SPEAKER_04:That's an excellent answer. Oh man. Um what advice would you give yourself 10 years ago?
SPEAKER_02:Keep yourself in shape.
SPEAKER_04:Good advice.
SPEAKER_02:Um ten years ago? Stop smoking cigarettes.
SPEAKER_04:If you had to gift one book to somebody, what would it be?
SPEAKER_02:The autobiography of Malcolm X.
SPEAKER_04:Yes. And then the last question is what is something that people often get wrong about you?
SPEAKER_02:Um Just a couple of things. One of the things is that um I'm arrogant. And I don't know if they're completely wrong about that. Well, I think that I am a little arrogant, but I'm not an asshole. Like so yeah, arrogant and um and um like like I have this tough exterior, I'm really quite um sensitive.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, that makes sense. Um, and then the last two questions is the first one is what is your astrology sign and do you resonate with it?
SPEAKER_02:You know what? The sh the things that people say about my my I'm a Leo, and the things that people say about my sign on Facebook are completely wrong. But um what they say, they say they say um a lot what I get from the sign Leo a lot is like Leos are liars, and um and that's that's not the truth about me, and they're um they're kind of controlling.
SPEAKER_04:I I've never heard any of those about Leo.
SPEAKER_02:I think they like to shine, yeah. They like to shine. Okay, all right. So I don't know if it's a like more than it's a like that's the way things are supposed to be.
SPEAKER_04:Ideal, I uh I dig that. Um, and then the last one is if you had a power animal, so some some some kind of animal that you can get power from by just observing it, what would it be?
SPEAKER_01:Oh that's a good one.
SPEAKER_02:Oh man, all right, all right, so a lion and a male lion, um, and uh and I think the power of a male lion is without showing you any action, you know that this dude's the leader. And I'm not talking about for us, I'm talking about like for the rest of the lions, yeah. So like watching like shows about lions, um he doesn't have to do much for everybody to um to follow him. And after he um, after he does whatever he does, he he he takes a nap. He doesn't do shit to help.
SPEAKER_04:Oh my god, I love it.
SPEAKER_02:I would love to have that power. Like everybody go and do restorative justice, I'm gonna take a nap.
SPEAKER_04:Yeah, and it's uh it and you said you're a Leo, so I'm just saying you may want to think about this. All right, and so here's the last part. This is just your last words. You can tell everyone where to find you, anything you're um any programs you have going on, anything you want to market or kind of share with the community about what you're doing. So give me a thumbs up when you're done.
SPEAKER_02:Well, the thing is, um, I have a whole team of folks that um that does that, and I have one of them here now. And if you if she could do it, that would be way better. Is it all right?
SPEAKER_04:Sounds good.
SPEAKER_02:All right. Here's um Neely Ubamaca, my program director.
SPEAKER_03:Hi, Neely Upamaka. Um, so you can follow us um at www.talking-piece.org um to find out more information about what services we offer. Um, you can also follow us on Instagram and Facebook at We Are Talking Peace. Um and um Eric is featured in a documentary called Circles. Um and you can find out more information about that on www.circlesmovie.com. Um and it's on Amazon, I think it's on iTunes, um, Apple TV, and on um on demand in most places. Um, but all the events that we have, all the circles that we're hosting, you can find that on our website or on Instagram and Facebook.
SPEAKER_04:Perfect. Thank you.
SPEAKER_03:Thank you.
SPEAKER_04:All right, Eric. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Speak for Change, man. Yeah, it it was an honor, man. It was really an honor, and I'm so excited to get this uh put out there for our folks. Um, this has been Speak for Change Podcast. I'm your host, Thomas H. Petterson. Thank you so much for listening.