S3 Ep3: Questioning Culture with Richie Reseda

Music, film, content producer, and founder of Question Culture, Richie Reseda, helps us explore the pyramid of patriarchy, how to respond to harm within our communities, and the impact of shame on our connections with each other.

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The Finding Our Way Team includes:
Prentis Hemphill - Host and Producer
Eddie Hemphill - Co-Producer + Editor
devon de Leña - Co-Producer + Visual Design

Transcript

0:14

Each of us. And I mean, you and me, is capable of harming someone. Not only that, each of us has, the aftermath of harm can too often become a scramble to be righted or absolved. In this episode, we talk about the intricate and very human responses we have to harm. We talk about shame as a rejection of connection and impact, and we talk about the lies of patriarchy and racism and how they lead us to believe in our own elevated importance and how they reinforce shame. Richie Reseda is a music, film, and content producer who was freed from prison in 2018. He co-created and co-hosts the Spotify original podcast, Abolition X. And while in prison, he started Question Culture, which is the independent media collective that houses his projects. He also co-founded Success Stories, which was chronicled in the CNN documentary, Feminist on Cell Block Y. I highly recommend it, and I hope that you enjoy this episode. All right. I am so excited Richie, that you are here with us today. Thank you for coming onto the podcast. Thank you for being in conversation with me. I'm really grateful that you're here. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Of course. I will say before I ask you the first question, I, you know, we've been in a, in the same friend group for a long time, but I haven't known you. I remember I saw you once at a fashion show. I think in somebody's backyard, you must have been, <laugh> a teenager. And I was like, who is that? Who is that? I wonder who that is. Um.<Laugh>. But that's what... I, I remember that shared. Yeah.<laugh> I remember that so, well, it was the studs fashion show. That's right. In Patrisse's backyard in 2006. I was 14 years old. I was trying to holler at all the studs. For those, for folks who are just hearing me and have never seen me, I'm very much like a tall lanky cis dude. They were not interested. They were like, boy <laugh> and they were all in their twenties, and I was 14, and it was just, it was a good time. Exactly. And you had a huge ponytail, I think at that time mm-hmm<affirmative> like a huge, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm <affirmative> yeah. So we are just really starting to be in each other's orbit more, but that is my first memory of you. So I just wanted to share that. I wanna start here. We ask everybody to situate us in this time and space. Where are we according to you? What is this time about? What are you paying attention to? Where are we according to Richie? I see us at really a tipping point and a precipice, historically, you know, with the pandemic and the climate crisis, there seems to be an awareness of how the colonial world that's existed for like the last 500 years, the capitalist world that's existed for like the last 200 years, is really destroying us. And, and every person might not have that language. I actually, I imagine most people don't have that language. I, I don't think anybody's in denial of that anymore. I think even the most capitalist of capitalists and conservative of conservatives understand that, um, we're at a tipping point, and those folks believe that private capital will save them, most likely at the rest of our expense. And then there's a group of us that feel like this is the moment to end this version of the world, which is really new in human history and extremely new in the history of the universe. And, and then, uh, most people are kind of in the middle listening to both sides and kind of picking which, which direction resonates with them based on the struggles and, and understandings that they have. But it is a moment. It is. I do believe we're all in agreement that we are at a tipping point when you can't go outside and breathe the air safely, or enjoy the weather without questioning why it is the way it is, just based on a few hundred years of extraction. We're, we're at a point where I think the general practices of the world are about to shift again. Mm mm-hmm <affirmative> I think when you offer that, it, it has me reflect on some of what I learned from you and watching, um, the film that you did with CNN, Feminist on Cell Block Y, which everyone should definitely see. And there's a good portion of the film where you're talking about objectification mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I think about objectification as a somatics practitioner. I think about the ways that we make our own bodies into objects, where we make trees into objects. And I, I guess I just wanna hear from you, your perspective on, you know, this moment of a pivot point, as you're saying, what's the state of our interpersonal relationships, how are we together in this time? Hmm. You know, I feel like capitalism has provided us with such limited lanes through which to relate to each other. And I think in some ways we're reaching, we're trying to reach past those. I just to give an example to what, to what I'm saying, I'm thinking about, you know, Valentine's day, and like capitalism has provided us an excuse to celebrate love, albeit in a way that centers, you know, making money for companies that sell things. And I just think about like, how would we relate to our loved ones to our lovers, to our romantic and sexual loves without, uh, holiday that tells us when to do it. Yeah. I just think about kind of the, the culture that we've built and, and the relationship escalator and talking, and then dating, and then moving in, and then marriage, and then children, all of this, obviously in a very limited, you know, like cis-het patriarchal kind of way of, of thinking. I wonder what, how we would relate to each other outside of these things. And I don't necessarily think all of these things are negative all the time. I'm, I'm not actually criticizing them right now as much as I'm just answering the question. I'm trying to answer the question neutrally and say to each other are the ways that we've been told to relate to each other, but I think we all have a sense that there's something greater than that. Mm-hmm.<Affirmative> Absolutely. It feels like, um, oh, what we miss out on is choosing those things, create something altogether different. Yeah. It, it, and, and I think that's something interesting about our generation. I think we've deconstructed a lot of those assumed relationships. You know, my parents are Gen X, and I had a friend over the other night, who's also Gen X. Um, she's a little younger than my parents, but she was born in like the early seventies, I think. You know, she came up in a time where getting married and having children with a man was just so expected of her that if she didn't do it, it would feel like a personal failure or a failure to her family. I feel like my parents came up in that time too. I feel like millennials were not completely out of the woods with that. I know a lot of millennials, especially dependent on their immigration status and you know, where, where their parents are from and who are still held to that. But I think we've deconstructed a lot of that. We've moved past a lot of those assumed ways of being, and have moved into a lot more chosen ways of being, and I'm really excited about what the next generation, gen Z, is gonna do with that, because I feel like they, as a generation have completely completely thrown all those assumed relationships and ways of being away. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I think so, I get excited. Yeah. I seen this MTV study shortly before I got out of prison. Cause I was doing market research for my production company. But it was basically saying that the majority of gen Z, the majority of youth, identified as queer in some way, I just found that so encouraging, you know, like global consciousness is being lifted and, and they said that trend is just as true in Kansas, as it is in San Francisco. It's not like just on the coast. And that was really encouraging. Like I think something about the way that the internet has connected young people to like, see like, oh, I could be a goth black girl. Oh, I could be, oh, I could use those pronouns. Like there's an awakening happening. That's right. Back in the day I was, I went to a queer youth group and it was called 10% Youth, cuz that was the estimate at that time that 10% of youth in the US are queer. <laugh> Yo. And so when I, I read that article too, and now I'm like, oh, okay, times are changing. <laugh>. Yo, I remember that stat. I remembered using that stat in like every debate in high school, like one outta 10 people in this classroom were queer, so what now? <Laugh>. Absolutely, what now?<Laugh> Um, so I wanna, I feel like we're kind of touching on it, but I really wanna hear from you about patriarchy. I wanted you to talk to us about patriarchy. I feel like it's, um, its just not talked about as thoroughly as I think it could be considering how much it permeates all of our lives and relationships. So I just wanna, you know, it's something that I've heard you talk about so honestly, and also eloquently, and what it takes from us, how we all collude in it, I just wanna hear from you about kind of what, what do you think patriarchy has done to our relationships and then what's possible? You know, I feel, I feel a little nervous talking about patriarchy because recently a close friend of mine had like pointed out ways that she experienced me as patriarchal that I had never thought about before, and a really deep like fear and insecurity of mine is being one of these men who are always in the media talking about patriarchy, but behind closed doors, there are like hundreds of, of their close collaborators, women and non-binary people, who are like, man, this Negro, or <laugh>, you know, is, is, is not what y'all think. You know? So it's, it's funny like when, when I'm asked questions about patriarchy, I often question myself like, am I even in a position to answer this question or to be seen as some kind of authoritative voice in this regard? And I think what helps me in those moments is to, to tell myself, no, I am not an authoritative voice. Um, all I can do is process my own patriarchy in real time, with the understanding that I'm learning and growing and that, you know, sometimes I'm gonna do things that are helpful and sometimes I'm gonna do things that are not. So I still will answer the question though, but I, I wanna answer it within that framework. Patriarchy has put us into such a pyramid of human beings. Mm-hmm <affirmative> That, I think it really it's in our bodies in the ways that we even receive people and respond to people and think about people and talk to people. And it really limits our ability to connect with other human spirits because patriarchy so informs the way that we experience people based on where they fall into the patriarchal pyramid of human beings. So to give an example, there's this couple that lives across the street from me. I live in south central, and they're forever fighting and being very loud, running in, out the house, babies in the street, just like high drama. You know, a couple days ago they was outside fighting, chasing each other up and down the street. I wanted to holler at them before, you know, somebody called the police, and I went up to them and I just said,"What's up neighbors? Can I help with anything?" And it's a, a black man and a black woman as, as far as I can see, probably around my age, like 30. I say all that because I'm trying to give the audience, even their understanding of the identities as framed by patriarchy of these people. You know, because it has everything to do with how they're about to respond to me. The woman who's crying, and angry, turns to me and says,"I'm just trying to get to work. He won't gimme my keys to get to work." He has his whole body scrunched up in a way that, if you from LA, you know this particular like gangsta posture of just like the walk and like the scrunched up arms, like held close to the chest and like the whole swag, like, and, and he's just like, "It's my keys too. It's my keys too." And he goes upstairs and he goes in the house. Um, so now I'm talking to the, to, to the woman, I said,"Do you want me to get you an Uber?" And he comes back outside, and he says,"You better quit talking to this <expletive> or you Talking to her about me. So there's a lot of patriarchal signaling happening now. Like he's really talking to me, but he's addressing me through her because I am even speaking to her, because patriarchy so dictates our relationships to say, you don't speak to "my woman," quote unquote, my woman. Right. But I also think he saw me as somebody to threaten because I look like him, because patriarchy paints black men to each other, as people who are a threat. I have a neighbor who's kind of like the matriarch of the neighborhood, older black woman. She's heavily involved in a local church. Everybody knows her by name. She knows everybody. I wonder if she went up to them and said, "Hey, neighbors, is everything alright, what can I do to help?" I sincerely doubt he would've said,"You better quit talking to her, you gonna get her punched on." And that's not to say that she would've been safer in that situation than I was. I'm just saying that to point out the ways that patriarchy gives us these kind of like set relationships, these set ways of seeing and relating to each other, just based on her age, and her gender, and you know, the shapes of her body, how she would've been received versus my age, and my gender, and the shapes of my body, and how I was received. That's just one example of how I could have responded the same way with aggression. We could have been fighting in the middle of the street, but police actually did end up pulling up, and we both would be in jail right now. I got two strikes. I would be fighting a life sentence, as we speak. And all of that was based on this patriarchal understandings that we have of each other. I just use that example to paint, we're constantly doing that with every single person we walk by every moment of every day. We already have an idea of who they are and who they are to us. There's already a script or a map for our relationship. Right? Like what their existence means about us. That's right. That's right. That's right. That, that other people's existence can affirm something about us or deny something about us or it's always contingent who we are. I think that's why a lot of cis-dudes get so angry at the fact that gender queer people even exist. Because it's like within patriarchy, patriarchy tells us like it is my cis-maleness that gives me value. And it is my man over womanness that gives me value. And if man isn't quite what I think it is, and woman isn't quite what I think it is, and these categories don't really exist, and therefore these positionalities don't really exist, then I guess I don't have no value. So now I'm gonna enact violence on you to reassert what I believe to be true. And what I believe gives me value. The question I have is like, how do we make it so that our identities are, are less contingent on dominance or less contingent on getting constant reinforcement or affirmation from one another? Cuz I see white supremacy obviously working in similar ways. I think about that interview with Tony Morrison, where she's talking about white supremacy and she's talking about whiteness and she says, "You know, if you take away this myth of white supremacy from white people then they're faced with the question of, am I any good?" Like, what am I made of? And our fear of confronting that question-Who am I actually? What am I made of?-keeps these systems in place? It, it, it boggles my mind that the fear of that question is so intense that, you know, people will say, when we're talking about patriarchy, you're talking about toxic masculinity, you're anti-men or you don't want men to exist, instead of facing the question of, who am I? And how much have I outsourced or made my self-identity contingent on other people? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. You feel what I'm saying? Yes. Yes, absolutely. And, and I think that that's why at least in Success Stories, the program, feminist programs that we run in prisons, mostly for men, but no longer exclusively for men, we start by helping people get back to themselves, whether that be back to childhood or just back to their real desires and goals, so that they can see who they are outside of all these societal expectations and then start building a life that is in service of that person. That's beautiful. Thank you. Can I ask you a question, cuz I think oftentimes what these systems do is that they don't make it safe enough to reveal who we learn from, or our teachers, especially if our teachers are women or queer folks or disabled folks, we, we think that we do things on our own or arrive on our own. I think patriarchy teaches us that. So I I've heard you talk about some of your teachers that I'm just curious, like how did this analysis come to you? How has this become your work? Who taught you? I love that question. It's all people who, you know, well, my mentors were and are Patrisse Cullors, and Mark Anthony Johnson, and also Vitaly and, and Jason David. And, but you know what also Kanye West, Pharrell Williams, and Tony Morrison and Octavia Butler and bell hooks and bell hooks and bell hooks and bell hooks. And lastly, my best friend Hawan Asfa, my ex-wife Taina Vargas. These people who loved me and saw something in me at Much of my political training looked like very official, we are sitting down for political education sessions, but a lot of it looked like watching Patrisse exist in the world as a Black queer woman who demanded to be treated with love and the same love and respect that she gave everybody else. And that was just such a radical vision for me. You know, I was not raised around Black women. My father is Black. My mother is white. All the men I know in my family are with white women, but being around Patrisse, I remember, I think it was the second time Patrisse and Mark Anthony came to my high school class. I met them in my high school, ninth grade science class. I was in the science class for all the kids who were failing. And the kid, the, the class was almost completely Black. Even though we were 6% of the school. They were talking, they were actually talking about mass incarceration. And this kid named Devin raised his hand, said, I have a question. Patrise said, "What?" He said,"What's your phone number? And Patrisse is 21 at this time, which to me seemed grown as hell. I was 14, but I look back and understand that's not the case. And everybody laughed when devin asked that. He raised his hand, said,"I got a question. What's your number?" Everyone laughed. She didn't laugh. She didn't shift in her, her body language. She didn't move. She didn't stop looking at Devin in his eyes. And she said,"I'm going to come back when you all can respect me." And she just walked out. Mark Anthony was stuck there looking like Michael Myers when Kanye said that George Bush don't care about Black people. <laugh> and <laugh>. And I just remember seeing that, and I was very deeply affected by that. You know, I think who I am politically is just somebody who tries to move with a politic that is empathetic to human beings when they're in those moments. That's such a powerful story. And I think that last piece around having empathy in those hard moments, it, it has me thinking about a lot of the things I've heard you talk about or share around transformative justice and accountability. And I, I guess first, I just wanna hear from you kind of what those mean to you, why those are important to you as concepts or practices really in particular. But, um, yeah. I'd just like you to talk some about transformative justice in particular. This question actually leads me to kind of go back to what, what we were just talking about in terms of like my political teaching. I feel like my political teachers taught me how to think; they didn't necessarily teach me what to think. Nobody ever sat me down and said the words "transformative justice" to me. To keep it 100, I don't know if anybody sat me down and said the word "abolition" to me. By the time I was engaging in those schools of thought, but my political teachers taught me how to think: how to think systemically; how to think about how conditions affect people's mental health and then therefore people make choices based on their mental health; how to think economically. So, I robbed three stores when I was 19 years old; they tried to give me 150 years to life. I ended up getting 10 years and two strikes after fighting the case for a year with the private attorney that Patrisse and my whole community, that I just named, helped raise money for me to get. And I'm in the county jail. The spot where I did most of my time in the county jail was East Max, which may be closed now, but it was where they sent everybody who was in their twenties and fighting life. And there was 150 of us in a dorm, probably the size of a small apartment, 50 triple layer bunks. And it was madness. It was absolute, chaotic madness. I was sent to the hospital. I have stitches. I have multiples of scars all over my face and body from, from living in that environment. And when I would get on the phone, I would talk to people who, who would say things like "end the school to prison pipeline;" "a thousand more buses, a thousand less police;" and"close prisons and jails," You know, at this very time, DPN (Dignity and Power Now) was fighting to close parts of the LA county jail. So, I was trying to make it make sense in my own head, as an incarcerated person in a community that had abolitionist sentiments. I don't know if we're using that language quite as, as much as we do now. I was like, yo, I did rob these stores. And most of these people in here did do whatever these things were. Like, obviously the conditions aren't right. And it's not right, that it's damn near all Black in here when LA is not black like that, but I couldn't quite grasp what was wrong with the idea of prison yet. It was through thinking about it and experiencing the pain and experiencing the treatment that I eventually realized that what was at the heart of it, emotionally person to person, was the idea of revenge. And that revenge is actually not a healthy, helpful or sustainable shape to put our bodies and hearts in. That is what led me to abolitionist thought and transformative justice thought when I was in prison, before I ever, you know, read anything about what those things were, that's kind of where I started. I started realizing that it's unsustainable. You Well, now you're hurt again, so you're gonna hurt me, and I'm hurt again, so I'mma hurt you. That's not actually the best way for humans to move, so what do we do when we feel harmed? What is it that we actually need? And as somebody who is living, you know, in an extremely harmful place and being harmed every day by mere existing in prison, I just became acutely aware of what I needed and then empathizing with the people who I harmed and realizing that they needed that too. And that's what led me to thinking a lot about accountability. Okay. Okay. So I wanna just slow down because I feel like you shared something that is just so critical for us to grapple with. We had Mariame Kaba on the podcast last season, and she talked about, I mean, amazing. And she talked about how partly we have to acknowledge that we have these impulses or desires or feelings, if you will that aren't necessarily what we call good. That sometimes we have the impulse to hurt each other. That is a thing that happens. And if we can't be honest about that, then we can't actually build transformative processes or accountability processes that take that into account. So when you talk about revenge as being a motivator, I just feel like that's a really powerful thing to say. And a powerful thing to say, we experience this. We want revenge. That is a thing that happens inside of us. And, um, I guess I, I, I would like you to just share about what do you think revenge is? You kind of touched on it, but I just really wanna like give it space. What is revenge to you? What is revenge? Revenge is the desire to hurt those who we feel harmed by. And I agree. I think it's important that we acknowledge that that's a natural desire. There's actually a phrase. Dang it. I can't remember the word. It's like a German word. That names an, the emotion that is the pleasure of seeing those who we dislike, be harmed. And there's a documentary out right now that Monica Lewinsky produced about shame, where they go into this. That's where I learned it from. You know, there's all these studies that show that like with soccer fans, they got more joy out of seeing their rival team, miss a goal than they got out of seeing their team make a goal, even when their rival team was playing a different team. And that is something important to acknowledge. That's a chemical thing in us. We can't get rid of something if we don't acknowledge it. And I appreciate everything I've heard Mariame say. Um, and, and this is included in that. And I wanna say too, when I am my healthiest self, when I am well fed, when I am well rested, when I feel comfortable with being honest with myself and others, I feel that feeling less. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, mm-hmm <affirmative>. And I feel more invested in people's transformation than their pain, even when they are hurting me. So, to give examples, when that dude, my neighbor, told his girl, you gonna get this <expletive> punched on, I was out there, knowing why I was out there, deeply tapped in with who he was, seeing him really as me, and I did not take it personally like that. It didn't super bother me in the moment. Now that was a couple days ago. That memory has been pretty heavy on my heart since then. And you know what, in the moments when I'm hungry and dehydrated and to go take care of myself, I feel more angry about that moment and more desire to hurt that man. And in moments where I feel good, where I just came fresh off of, you know, playing the piano or, or, or fresh off going on a cute date, man, I, I want to go knock on that dude's door and give him a hug. Literally that's right. The story hasn't changed, but my feelings have changed based on how I'm doing. Mm. That's powerful. I just think what you're saying about having the resources, being resourced, having the resources to be like, I'm gonna be okay, it makes all of this or the harm that we experience between each other. It's not just something that happens between you and I. It's also a systemic thing. Do I have, am I resourced enough? Do I have people around me? Do I have love around me so that the hard things in life can't take me down a revenge road or whatever kind of destructive road it might be in the same way. Mm-hmm <affirmative> Are we resourcing each other? Do we have enough resources collectively that we can adjust, pivot, have empathy, transform a situation that it's, it's less individual to me what you're sharing? Yeah. Well, we've built a system completely based in Men's insecurities largely, but white men's insecurities the most. So we have systemized white male thinking at its worst, especially in the criminal justice system. When dudes are in our super like fragile ego, my manhood, and therefore my value, is on the line. When we're in that body, we are our most violent, and we have created an entire global system of military and war and you know, the carceral system, it all comes from that body. It all comes from that way of being. That's why to heal people, It don't make no damn sense, but when we're our most unhealed, we can't envision anything else. Let's talk about that insecurity. And let's talk about shame, cuz I've heard you talk, you know, about shame in, in ways that are just so powerful to me. And I, it makes you think of James Baldwin when he talks about innocence. And this is something that I think about and write about some, our preoccupation with being innocent and innocent being a justification for violence. And if we always have to be innocent or right, if we always have to protect our self image, then it'll lead us to doing some of the most violent things. And I hear that in what you're saying, like the insecurity that's kind of embedded in our system or the insecurity in individual people that subscribe to patriarchy, it sets us up for violence. And I wonder how, like we think of shame as just almost kind of benign or, oh, I wish I didn't feel shame for her. I wish, you know, shame is kind of a, a thing we wish we didn't feel, but shame has some real repercussions, I think. Shame does a lot of things in our movements, but in So I would just like to hear you talk about how you see shame operating and how it prevents accountability or relates to accountability, how it relates to intimacy or relationship. What is shame out here doing according to you? Yo shame is a toxin. I believe shame is literally a neurotoxin. I don't know the scientific words for what, you know, chemicals it puts in our body, but it is literally like a drug that disables us from being our most creative, our most accountable, our most honest, our most loving, our most accepting. At some level, we know that. And I think that's why we cast it on each other. It's so powerful. It's like a gun. You know, like if there's an argument, somebody pulls out a gun. The argument has now changed everything about the dynamic in the room has now changed. And that's the same thing that happens with shame. I know for myself, I can be having a conversation, as soon as shame is introduced, either by the other person or by myself to myself, it changes the whole nature of the conversation. Like, I've been moving through conflict with a very close friend of mine for pretty much the entire year so far. Something that I notice for myself is that when I feel shame, I go straight into my fight, flight, or freeze mode and, and my, my personal one is to freeze. That's where I often go. And that I can have the same conversation and take the shame out, and then I get to lean into curiosity. Oh, that hurt you, what I did. Wow. This person was hurt by me. Let me give that it's full moment and just reflect on the fact that this person felt hurt. Then, I can say, let me be curious. What exactly about that hurts you? What exactly, how do you, how do you remember it? What are you trying to say right now? What are you trying to get from your brain through your mouth, through the airwaves, into my ear, into my head, into my heart? How do I give that its full respect because you're experiencing it and spirit put us together in relationship. But when the shame, when I feel shame, it's none of that. It's how do I make sure that I debunk everything you're saying, so I can continue seeing myself a version of myself that doesn't make people feel that way. Mm. Come on Richie.<Laugh> That's the opposite of accountability. Now I'm trying to debate you on your own experience, or maybe even debate you on my intentions that led to your experience so that I can separate your experience from any reflection of who I actually am. And we're not getting anywhere. That's not accountable, if accountable is to acknowledge the harm that I've caused to you, if accountable is to acknowledge the choices I made, that led to harm and to, deeper than that, commit to never doing it again, deeper than that, commit to building a world where that never happens at all. When there's shame, and now I'm just trying to protect my view of myself, we're not getting to none of that. Hmm. That, that part about protecting the image of ourselves, I, I don't think we talk about that enough, that. You know, we think about fight, flight, freeze. We talk about those. Those are protective moves. They're protective moves, and makes sense. We feel like a part of ourselves, our self-image, our self-concept is under some kind of attack. And in a way it could be, but also, in a way we're being potentially invited into a transformation, a change. And if we think it's possible for ourselves to change, then accountability, isn't... it's still hard. I mean, I don't know anybody that's like, oh, I love when people are like, yo, you gotta be accountable for this thing. It's hard because we have to move through these hard feelings. And yet it's, if we are more comfortable with transformation and change, it's, we know that there's something in it for us, or we know that there's a gift in it. We know there's a gift in our relationship. There's Yes. Yeah. More comfortable with transformation and change. But I, you know, Prentis, I, I feel like the frontier that we're on right now is as abolitionists and transformative justice practitioners is to even convince society that transforming, that transformation and change is a worthwhile goal. Exactly, exactly, exactly. Right. Because we're not even oriented towards that right now. I'm thinking about Whoopi Goldberg saying this antisemitic <expletive> on the view like that, the Holocaust wasn't about race, and ABC's response to that was to kick her off the show for two weeks. Like, what is that? What? Like we're suspending people now? Like what they're really doing is signaling to the audience, we understand this was wrong, now we're properly shaming this person, so you don't shame us. It's like, everybody's just trying to play hot potato with the ball of shame when it's actually like, "yo, that don't do nothing for Jewish people." As, as a Jewish person, you know, as, as a person who has at least one family member that I know of who died in the Holocaust, that doesn't do nothing for my grandmother who's 92 years old right now, who knew of that cousin who died like that, that doesn't do anything for her, Whoopi Goldberg kicked off the show for two weeks. Who cares? Like, when actually there is an opportunity for transformation and change and like, yo, Whoopi said this thing, we believe it to be harmful, we're gonna actually reengage this conversation and educate her and all the people in the audience who felt the same way she did so that you have an opportunity to change. And then when they change, us being able to celebrate that, and be like growth was made here for this person, and for all of us. That is a goal that a lot of people can't even foresee or even see the value in because our bodies are so hyped off the drugs of shame or trying to flee from shame. That's right. Mm mm. Mm. You know, I wanna shift to asking you about culture because I feel like what you do, you really skillfully and beautifully break the rules. You like break the rules of culture in such a compelling way. <laugh> That, you know, you're like, why not? There is something on the other side of this, and I see that in your work. And I see that in Question Culture. It's like, well, why can't we do something different? So, I want you to talk to me about cultural work, the, the role of it, what you see, and what you're trying to do around culture-building and culture-shifting. Yo, thank you so, so much for that. I, I have a, a clarifying question. When you say like, why not? Or what rules are you talking about breaking? Um, mm-hmm <affirmative> and when you say there, there is something on the other side of this, what is on the other side of what? In the conversation on patriarchy, you're breaking the rules, you're kind of sharing what are the limitations of patriarchy and not in a way that's trying to hang onto. I think oftentimes when we get close to a conversation around power and manhood, there's a way that it still is trying to reinforce itself. And I think that you are<laugh>. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, I think so. The way that you are engaging with questions of patriarchy from this place of curiosity, what can I learn from the people around me? What can I learn from bell hooks? What can I learn from my teachers? It is really looking to the beyond. It's not trying to reinforce or reassert, um, really a patriarchal understanding. You're saying, I think there could be more for my life. I think there could be more for our lives. So I, I think that's what I'm referring to is that I think that you go to the edge and, and, and say that there's, there's something more here that we haven't yet embodied.<laugh> There's something that we haven't yet done. And yeah. I don't know if that clarifies the question, but? Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I'm, I'm honored by that. I feel like so much of what happens on the left, and maybe this comes from academia, is like people being like, I read this book and therefore I am a good leftist. And like the goal is to just have the right beliefs and like say the properly woke thing. That's why I actually really don't <expletive> with at all. Cuz it's so it is patriarchal. It's still about creating a hierarchy. And you know what? When the right criticizes us for that, they're right. I just wanna say that. When conservative people are like, you're just a social justice warrior, that's obsessed with being woke, nine times outta 10, the people they're talking to, they're correct.<laugh> And we need to acknowledge that. We can't gaslight people and be like,"no, you're just racist." Yes, they are racist. But also, they understand what the left is doing in terms of wielding shame and calling it activism and organizing. That's not activism. That's not organizing. Canceling people on the internet isn't activism and organizing. Like, you know, I hate it when people use the term problematic. Problematic has grown to be just a term that means not properly woke. When it's like, you're not actually centering the way that people can grow and transform. And you're just saying like,"oh, that movie is problematic. It's just not properly woke." And it's like, "sure, I'm sure it's not. And let's instead be like, 'yo, what can we learn about the depiction of this character that helps us treat folks who share this identity better in real life?'" That's more interesting to me than saying "the way they depicted X, Y, Z character is problematic. I am a, a good leftist and, and I approve this message" <laugh> So, yeah. Anyway, I, I think, I just, I feel like things like that are, are important to say, because I don't know. I, I just, I, I can't, I can't not see people. I've, I've spent too much time being considered the worst of the worst. You know, I was kicked outta the fourth grade when I was eight years old. Like I've been locked up. I've been kicked out classes. I've been, they tried to gimme 150 years to life. You know, some of my best friends have committed brutal murders and rapes, and they're people and they're trying to be better. And I felt like there was more value in seeing how I can contribute to them being better, and see how they can contribute to me being better, than saying they're not properly woke enough for me. That, that, that way of being wouldn't have worked for me in prison. I wouldn't have no friends. And if the people who we mentioned earlier, the Patrisses and Mark Anthonys and Hawans, if wokeness was their standard, then I wouldn't have been allowed to be their friend either. Cuz I was out here gang-banging and being patriarchal as hell. So I just feel like that's important. That's the deeper questioning of culture. Like, you know, when I do the Question Culture videos, I, I don't wanna just get on there and, and name all the music that came out this week and be like, this is, this is problematic cuz of this and this is anti-feminist cuz this and da, da, da, I'd rather be like, yo, what can we learn from this in terms of how we wanna show up in life and how we can make the world a better place? Let's push the culture forward, you know, not talk about it for likes on the gram. Whew. That's good. That's good. It's controversial. People are gonna have some feelings about it and I love it.<Laugh> Yeah. I mean, you know, I had to really learn that the opinion of the internet is not liberation.<Laugh>. It's not the same. What<expletive> on Twitter think. And when I say <expletive>, I mean all y'all. And what is actually an equitable, healthy, safe, sustainable way for human beings to live are not necessarily the same thing. That's right. I was set free by that. That's. Right. That's right. You know, when, when we started doing Success Stories, people would always be like, you can't turn hood <expletive> into feminists. When I've hollered at some of my homies about hollering at their homies, who I don't know, they'd be like, bro, this <expletive> is not gonna understand that blah, blah, blah. Like I understand where you're coming from, bro. Don't get me wrong, but da, da, da, da. And I just genuinely, I just know that's not true. My life has shown me that that is not true. Every single one of my close male friends is a hood <expletive> that became a feminist. So I just believe in us in a different way that I think could very well be based on my own privilege, you know? Like I can have these conversations with dudes in a way where I feel relatively safe. And even with homeboy the other day, if he really did try me and try to hit me, like I knew I would be okay. So I feel like that's worth acknowledging, but even that's a very like lefty internet thing to do. I acknowledge my privilege before I say any points, but <laugh> <laugh> It's annoying. It's important sometimes, but sometimes it's, it's literally just culture. Like I had to learn while I was in prison what the difference was between like what's getting us towards liberation and what is just leftist culture. Right, right, right. Richie, I wanna ask you a question. I know it kind of takes us down another road. I feel so aligned with like, we have to have a culture that people can change inside of. Because if we have a culture that people can't actually transform, then we're not going anywhere. We're not building anything. And at the same time, I do feel that there's a difference in that scenario where you're talking with your neighbors. There's a, there's a difference. Now I would probably, I have intervened on situations like that. And I think that I, I could be delusional in a way, but sometimes I think I can handle every situation. It's not true, but I, I would probably have intervened, but I know that there are other people that would feel like that would be a dangerous intervention for me. I know that I would be dismissed or maybe my body might be, you know, I might be harmed if I got hit, et cetera, et cetera. How do we, and I know it's not, I know that it's not a one, it's not one answer, but there is that dynamic tension between what can you withstand in the body that you are? And then what, how do we also build a culture where we're not constantly preoccupied with a kind of false safety that won't ever let us come into contact with one another? Do you know what I'm saying? Mm-hmm <affirmative>. Mm-hmm <affirmative> I, I hear you to be saying like the way that things currently exist, you know, our identities and sizes do protect us in some ways, but also how do we not allow that to limit us? Our sizes? But also when we, we were talking at the top of the podcast about these scripts, these ways that we look at someone and say, this is what you can and can't do. This is who you are to me. So this is the range of ways that I will treat you. I know that there are scripts. I know when people look at me, I can kind of guess what those scripts are, but that has people engage with us in particular ways. That has people treat us in particular ways. That has people try some of us and not try others, or try us in these scenarios and not try us in these scenarios. So how do we hold the real world experiences? Like <expletive> does happen. And at the same time we have to be willing to, this is maybe a controversial thing I'm gonna say, but I have to almost be willing to be a little bit hurt<laugh> in order to get close, in order to have closeness, in order to, um, really build and connect with each other. I know that you're not gonna treat me in the most perfect way. I know that I'm not gonna treat you in the most perfect way. I know that I will miss you. I know that I will hurt you. But I, if I know that we are both committed to transformation and change, it's kind of like that resourcing thing. I, I have a little bit more resource to work through those hard moments, but I think as it stands now, we've been hurt, we don't wanna be hurt again. And then we end up not actually building relationships, the relationships that we need actually for this moment. Yeah. I think something that would be helpful is for us to move much more slowly and deliberately with how we build relationships and that comes with having relationships and surrender to that. And, and we don't have to do that with everybody. I don't think it's sustainable to do that with everybody. So to, to just give examples to what I'm saying. Yes, one thing that may have protected me and allowed me to move with safety in that intervention with the domestic dispute that was happening with my neighbors was my, like cis-maleness, probably my tattoos, probably my height, you know, I'm six, four. I also believe if that man's grandmother walked out in the middle of the street and said, "What's going on'," I think he would've, he would've responded a lot better than he even did to me. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Because they have that relationship. They already have it. The, the biggest uphill battle for me, wasn't the sizes of the humans. It was these people don't know me. Part of why he probably said,"You gonna get this <expletive> punched on" is because the only way that we're used to even seeing men intervene is usually in corny ways.<laugh> In ways that are like, now I'm trying to get at your girl or ways that now I'm gonna rely on the state. I'm gonna call the police. You know, I'm hella light skinned. They dark skinned. He looking at me like this uppity light skinned <expletive> about to come over here, probably call the police on me. You know? Like he doesn't know that I'm coming here with all this abolitionist, transformative shit we talking about on this podcast. But his grandmother there there's a rapport there. There's a love there. There's a vulnerability there that she could have moved in that space very differently. And I, that's why I love the, the pod-mapping type of, of transformative justice community-building that Because in those moments, you don't need to call the police. You could have called, called this dude's grandma. But we don't know his grandma. We're not connected to his grandma. We don't have infrastructure to call his grandma. The infrastructure we have is to call people who are gonna show up with guns. That's. Right. And that's what I mean when I, I say, I feel like we need to just be more deliberate with We could systemize these things. We systemized slavery. We systemized McDonald's ability to put out a billion burgers a year. Like we could systemize anything as human beings. We could, we could, there's a universe in which I have an app on my phone where I could take a picture of you and know who your grandma is for the sake of calling her when we need her. Yes. You know? Yes. That's a potential reality. Like it's just about moving with that level of deliberation and understanding like human beings are finite. But it's okay that we're finite when we all have all of us as a resource. Like, like that day, I intervened in that conflict a few hours later, my neighbor's behind my building, I ain't trying to re-trigger you. I know you grew up out here, so that's why you got the hell outta here. But my neighbors behind my building are fighting and I know them, you know, I know my neighbors, and that's what I mean when I say the deliberateness. So when I showed up to my neighbors behind my building, one of 'em was locked up with my best friends. The other one, I know his mama and all that. So when I showed up, I was able to help stop that fight. One of their wives pulled up and was really able to, by the time she pulled up, it was over. It was over already. You know, that that's because of the relationships that we built because of the deliberateness that we built. I'm not afraid to say hi to my neighbors. I'm gonna come. I'm gonna holler at you. I'm gonna say, how's your day going? I'm gonna pet your dog, you know? Yes. And to the point of finiteness yesterday, I seen this dude, who was not Black, I was in Hollywood on my way to do a work thing. Dude, who's not Black, um, looks like a drug dealer, I grew up selling drugs, I know what drug dealers look like, beating a dude who was also not Black, who looked like a drug addict, I was a drug addict, I know what drug addicts looked like, beating him with his belt as if he was his father. Prentis. The way I did not get out the car <laugh> And that's not. And I considered it. I thought through it. And that's not to say I wouldn't help nobody if they like, if they weren't Black. I'm just saying that in that moment, Blackness is just one of the things that I think connects me to people and makes me feel like your fight is my fight. Um, your piece is my piece, I think is actually a better way to put it. That's not the only one, you know, being in my immediate neighborhood is one. Being my family member is one. There's some people who I feel like it's just automatic. If you're a child, if you're an elder, you know. But like two grown, probably high men fighting in a gas station in Hollywood, I'm gonna save my energy because you know what, my neighbor's gonna be fighting again tomorrow. <laugh> And that's who needs me. Or my boy's about to call me from jail because some cop just treated him like shit and that's who needs me. And I need to understand that every fight is not my fight, but in a world where we have deliberate relationship infrastructure, I'd be able to connect those people with someone else. Exactly. I love that. I love that so much. Cause I feel like that speaks to that tension. Not everything is for each one of us individually to intervene on. But when we are embedded in a network and we are part of a community, then it's not up to me to intervene in every single thing. It's not up to, I can call Richie and say, "Hey, Richie, I need you here." Or I can call, you know, Richie's grandma and say, "Richie's grandma, we need you." You can call mine. So yeah, I feel like that's that web that you're showing us, that web, that of connection and relationship, a thoughtful, intentional choiceful relationship. Yo. Exactly. Honestly, instead of 911 we should have like 711, and it just calls yo grandma.<laugh> Just an automatic link to everybody's grandmother really underestimate the power of grandmothers. I don't know if there's more powerful group, that's real, of people in our community. That's real. That's real. Yeah. There was a, there wasn't there, um, a project, I think somewhere on the continent where grandmothers were doing counseling, there was like a bench where grandmothers were sitting. Hmm. And when you needed somebody to talk to, there was a grandmother sitting there waiting for you. And I'm like, that. Yo. How do we do more of that? That part? Look, I was robbing those stores and the last and the last robbery, it was three robberies. And the last robbery LAPD came. They hit me with the barrel of the shotgun, pressed it to my head. I should kill your Black ass. Beat me into the point where I was throwing up, concussion. All that. The whole point of that, in theory, if you're to ask LAPD was to get me to stop committing robberies. Mm mm. On the flip side, had I been in that store, and my grandmother walked in and her a at that time, I think she was 84, you know, this 84 year old Jewish woman walked in and said, "Richard, what are you doing?" Guess what? Robbery's over.<Laugh> <laugh> Yeah. Yeah. I mean, absolutely. When I would think about explaining transformative justice to my family, I remember I wanted to talk to my mom about it and you know, I'm thinking like, what language do I use? And then I thought, this is what we do. Mm-hmm.<Affirmative> This is what we already do.<Laugh> This is what we, this is what she would do for me or part of what she would do for me. It's what I've seen family members do for other family members. It's what we already do. But it's, it's, it's legitimizing it. It's systematizing it. It's spreading it. Literally, when people ask me like what, what does transformative justice look like? I tell them what you already do in your family. When your family member hurts you and you want them to stop, but you love them anyway. Yep. That's it. That's it. That's it. Richie, thank you so much for talking with us today. I feel like I could honestly talk to you for another hour and still have questions, but, um, same. Yeah. I'm just so grateful for you. I'm so grateful for the questions that you've taken up, your practice. I'm grateful for your vulnerability and your honesty and just being real about being in the middle of your own transformation. So just so grateful that you spoke with us today. Thank. You, yo. Thank you so, so much for having me. Thank you for who you're choosing to be in the world. You two are such a teacher of mine. If I may shamelessly plug because we not, we not getting high off shame. Um, do it. I now have a podcast called Abolition X on Spotify, where we talk about how abolition intersects with every aspect of society, whether it be music to mental health. I don't know. I, I feel like for folks who are listening today, if you found this helpful, there's more, there's more there that you might wanna check out. That's super exciting. I can't wait to hear that. Thank you, Richie. Thank you. We, we gonna have you on, on Abolition X too. So I'll be talking to you publicly again very soon.<Laugh> Sounds good. Let's do it. Let's make it happen. All right, family. right. Finding Our Way is produced and edited by Eddie Hemphill, co-production and visual design by devon de Leña, and assistant editing by Miranda Luiz. Please make sure to rate, subscribe, and review wherever it is that you listen to this podcast. You can also find us on Instagram@findingourwaypodcast or email us with questions, suggestions, or feedback at findingourwaypod@gmail.com. You can also help sustain this podcast by becoming one of our Patreon subscribers. You can find us on Patreon at Finding Our Way Podcast. Thank you so much for listening to Finding Our Way.