Mini-Episode: A Movement that Can Grow

In this week’s mini-episode, Prentis is talking about the kind of movement they want to b a part of. A movement rooted in empathy, filled with curiosity and where we take the risks to traverse the distance between each other. They are addressing one of the crises of our time – our inability to connect with each other and to meet people where they are at. They share their vision for exploring the doorways that help us connect across worldviews and what’s possible when we can meet in contradiction and build a reality together.

Shownotes:

• Being the ground in crisis response - Live Call - April 13th - Available in English & Spanish
• Listen to Prentis on the Movd Podcast with Mariah Rooney
• Support Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity

Transcript

Mini Episode - March 25th 2026
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Hello, everybody. Welcome back to Becoming the People. I'm Prentis Hemphill, and I feel really sweet about being with you all today. We are doing another mini episode this week, which is a space where I just get to rant and rave about things that are on my mind and things that I want to share with you all.

And this is a really interesting practice for me because I tend not to find it that easy to talk this much, and certainly not alone in this space. But I'm enjoying sharing with you all and being in conversation. And for folks that are over at the Patreon, I'm always appreciating your comments and stories. I mean, people are sharing such heartfelt, real stories over there on the Patreon, and I'm really touched.

I sit at night and I read your stories and I read your comments and they're just so meaningful to me. They're so special. So thank you for everybody over there who's engaging. And I want to give a couple updates before I kind of launch in, which is for those of you, you may have heard me say this, but April 13th, coming up, the organization that I am a co-director of, the Embodiment Institute, we are running a webinar that's going

to be for folks that are doing frontline response work to really all the crises of the day. We have people who've been on the ground, who've been building community infrastructure to be responsive to climate catastrophe, to a lot of the crazy deportation stuff that's been happening. We are gonna have folks sharing their tools, their insights, their best learnings, and I'm gonna be hosting that space. And it would be great if you all, if that's interesting to you, to what you're doing, if you want to be prepared in your community, figure out how to get on the front end of being responsive to what's happening.

It would be, I think, a great webinar to join April 13th. We'll put the info in the show notes here. I think they're in the show notes for the last episode, but it would be great to see you there. And we really want to spread this information as far and wide as we possibly can so that people can be prepared and coordinated and connected to each other.

The deadline has now passed for the Embodiment Institute's May training. We're doing an in-person training out here in North Carolina for transformational characters, and that's a term we use for folks that are really taking on addressing whatever they've come to embody that they don't want to move forward. The people that are taking on change in their lifetimes through inside of the systems that they're in. So Transformational Characters is an embodiment practice space for people like that.

And we're doing it in person again here, North Carolina. We were excited by all the applications we got in. We're looking forward to letting folks know. And just look out.

You can join our mailing list and there will be more information about future trainings there and just events. We're doing a lot of events here in North Carolina this year. If you're local to North Carolina, if you want to fly out, which has happened, we'd love to have you and love to practice together. Oh, there's another really exciting event coming up, which actually I'm going to wait till the next episode to tell you because we don't have the ticket details, but you want to stay tuned because I know this is the kind of event people are going to want to fly.

out for drive for whatever, however, whatever transportation you want to take to get here, you're going to want to get here, but stay tuned. I'm not going to tell you today, but you gotta, you gotta stay listening cause it's going to be very, very exciting. Um, and I'm excited to share with you all. I think those are all my, I think those are all my updates.

Um, I think if you want to hear me talk more, I've been on a couple podcasts lately. My friend Mariah Rooney, who's a psychologist and an organizer, has a podcast out. And I actually don't know how to pronounce it, but it's M-O-V-D. Moved, I think.

Moved. It's very, like, you know, spelled in a cool way. But there's an episode out where she and I are in conversation. If you, for some reason, want to keep hearing me talk, that's a good way to do that.

Um, yeah, I think those are my announcements for now. And yeah, I kind of want to get into it this week. And I have, I mean, I'm going to tell you the truth. I have recorded and re-recorded this episode twice.

Um, because there's just a lot here for me and I, I'm, I'm, I'm pacing myself. I'm like, okay, let's start with the first chunk and move to the second chunk. But there's so much here for me. in this content that I'm both afraid to say and excited to be in conversation with everybody about.

And I think this is a bigger exploration for me. I think this is a place where I'm going to be hanging out for the next couple of years, I think. Which is really, part of it is around our ability to connect with each other and to meet people where they're at. I think when I look around, both in real life, but especially on social media, I see that we are having a real challenge with connecting with each other.

And really having a big challenge, in my opinion, in meeting people where they're at, and having genuine encounters with people we don't know yet, or people we haven't fully vetted yet. I don't think this is just something that we lost that's actually inconsequential. I think it is a crisis, really, of the moment, that we struggle to connect with each other and that we struggle to meet people. It is, to me, the crisis of our time that makes a lot of other things possible that we see around us right now.

And this is something that's been, you know, inside of me that I've been working through because, you know, growing up, I was the kind of kid that if I was in the mall, I would talk to a stranger, I'd be like, Hi, what's your name? I was I was that kind of kid. And Sometime around my early adulthood, I went through a lot of stuff. I had a lot of kind of personal pains that happened, losses, people I loved that passed away.

And I felt myself go so much more internal. And at the same time, this coincided with, you know, the rise of the internet more in the way that we use it now. And I sort of lost a little bit of that courage to just talk to somebody, just to meet somebody new. It was something that was so innate to me, and I lost the kind of tolerance for the risk of meeting somebody, of just going up to somebody and speaking.

But I don't think it's just me. You know, I look around, I don't think it's just me. I think a lot of us have either lost that or didn't develop it or are being discouraged away from it. But I don't think it's just me.

And I think about, you know, I have a friend, Denise, who people have heard me talk about, who probably, I don't know, she's probably shy about me talking about her this much. But my friend, Denise, is a longtime organizer, started doing labor organizing, has been involved in community organizing, and is, I think, probably by the time this airs, she will be the outgoing a director of an organization called Black Organizing for Leadership and Dignity, which you should know about if you don't know about, somewhere that I've taught, somewhere there where Sendolo Diaminah, who's on this podcast, Alta Starr, who I teach with, adrienne mares brown, Adaka Utah, Arkansi Johnson, all these people that I've talked about in certain spaces or you probably know about because they're geniuses. And so many other, Mary Hooks, I mean, there's so many brilliant organizers, I'm sorry I'm not naming everybody, that have taught here or do teach here.

And Denise has been running that organization for over a decade, I think. She's a good friend of mine. She's who I have family dinner with every Sunday evening. We eat together, we discuss the week.

But Denise is one of these people that no matter where you put her in the world, I've been a few places with her, no matter where you put her in the world, she is going to meet somebody. I remember when I lived in Hawaii and she came to visit us and she went for a walk and came back with just all this information about this uncle she met down at the water, how long his family had been living in that spot, what he liked to catch, and all these things. She really is interested in other people.

She really, really gets curious about other people. And I see her do this all the time. I walk down the street with her and she'll just spark up a conversation with somebody and make a friend. Nine times out of ten, we'll make a friend.

And I've been really, really inspired by her and how she does that. And I've talked to her about it. And to her, It is a way of being in the world. It's a way of living your life, of being willing to understand people, a genuine curiosity in understanding people.

And it's also the foundation of organizing, which is what she's been committed to, which is what she does. It's the foundation of organizing is having that kind of base level curiosity in other human beings. believing that there's something in common with other human beings and you just have to find it or believing there's something you can learn from other human beings. And I think that we have largely missed this or don't value it in the same way that we used to.

But I see, I really see her live it and it's inspired me in the past decade or so to bring back that part of myself that was really outgoing, that really wanted to talk to people. Now, I'm still an introvert. I'm still very much an introvert. But I wanted to bring back that part of me.

And in my inspiration, being inspired by her, I have taken those risks. I have My partner says that, you know, if there's a coffee shop somewhere, I'm gonna sit there and make a friend. And that is so true. If we go on trips or anywhere that we lived, I find a spot that I like to frequent.

I'm a creature of habit. I like to do the same things over and over again. I like to eat the same meals. I like to go to bed at the same time.

I love a routine. I don't really know why, but I love a routine. So if I find a spot wherever I am, I go there. And eventually I'll make friends with the people who work there.

Eventually I'll find the other regulars and we'll make friends. I have friendships that have lasted years and years and years from people that I met sitting in a coffee shop somewhere. And just recently, another person who might be shy about me talking about them. I made a really good friend because I was sitting in a coffee shop, I overheard his conversation, a book that he was talking about reading, and I was like, I just read that book.

I turned around, had a conversation, and he's also my friend Patricio. He's such an open-hearted person, and we just hit it off, had a conversation, and I think it's been like a couple years now that we've been in deep friendship with each other. We spend time with each other, and we're so different on paper. You'd think that we were so different, but the values, the way that we treat people, I think our worldviews, in large part, really, really align.

But also, Patricio is from Argentina. And because of my relationship with him, I've tried to understand more about the context of Argentina, which I think there's so much richness for this moment, so much for us to understand. But that relationship has compelled me to know more. And with Patricio, because he met me, he's also a painter.

He's like, that's his hobby, is painting. I went over to his house and because he's engaged with my work and because he's engaged with me, his office is now like a, it's like black feminist thinkers all around his desk area because he's just been inspired to read more and more and more and more. That's what's possible with the encounter when you really let yourself meet someone and you really get interested in who they are. The exchange, the knowledge that's possible is, in my opinion, really infinite.

You know, if we hadn't met, he has a brilliant partner as well who has been influencing his politics and he influences her politics, but the roads that we've been led down, the roads that have suddenly become clearer to us and more compelling because of our relationship, are just different than what would have happened had we not met each other. And I think that that is not just a nice story, just a nice anecdote. To me, it's foundational to organizing, yes.

It's foundational to democracy for us to allow those encounters to happen and to allow ourselves to be changed and to change others. And I think this is an art, perhaps, that we are losing a grasp on. I think it's a skill that we are becoming atrophied in. the ability to have that kind of encounter with each other.

And I think part of it is, for a lot of reasons, we've lost our generosity with each other, the generosity of spirit that makes us afraid or makes us think, oh, this person, I've sized them up and this person doesn't have anything of value to offer me, or how could they have anything of value to offer me? There's not that generosity that I think comes with knowing that the world is full of people and information that you don't yet know. It's full of nuance that you don't yet have a grasp on that is only going to come through the kind of generosity or humility of really meeting another and asking, what can I know that you know?

What's the piece that you know? Because no one, me, you, no one else, is standing from a place of complete knowing. No one is standing from a place of complete skillfulness, of just clear direction. I don't care what your politics are, how studied you are, no one is standing from that position of authority.

And if we are meeting each other, presuming that we have that kind of absolute authority, absolute clarity that can't be influenced or contoured by relationship with each other, I think we're really confused. I think we're really confused and we miss out on what's possible. I really live by that generosity and I think, yes, it sometimes gets me into situations that I'd rather not be in. I remember I was in a lift in Florida, and this man was driving, and he really wanted to talk to somebody.

I could tell that he really wanted to talk. And I felt generous that night, and I started having a conversation with him about his life and a little bit about my life. And he really got on the flat earther thing, and I was like, oh, crap. Here I am.

This is where my generosity has gotten me. I'm in this conversation with this man who's talking about Flat Earth, which is not something that I subscribe to, but it's also not something I care about. Even before that, I just don't care. But he's talking about it, and As he's talking, I was like, okay, how do I, I've extended this generosity, we have this connection, and now I'm in this situation that I actually don't want to be in.

And he asked me how I felt about, which I thought was also a generosity. He asked me, how do you feel about all this information he just shared with me about Flat Earth? And I remember saying, well, you know, it's, I hear you, and I guess there are things that to me feel a bit more urgent for us to talk about." And he was like, yeah, you're probably right. It was just a tangent he would go off on, but he didn't feel, at least in that moment, super invested in it.

And we were able to return to a different conversation. You know, there are moments like that, where it's like, okay, maybe this isn't the place that we're gonna meet, but maybe there's another place where we can meet. And my generosity allows me to figure out, okay, there is a place where we can make some kind of connection. And I will say, for me, nine times out of 10, talking to people around me, talking to community, talking even to strangers, produces positive outcomes more often than negative outcomes.

me reaching out and connecting with somebody, when I feel compelled, not just all the time or randomly, but you know, sometimes you catch somebody's eye or sometimes they're reading something that you're interested in, or maybe you're at an event that is, you know, you're at a game, you're like, okay, well, at least the people here are interested in this game, or you're at a bookstore, wherever it might be. Nine times out of ten, when I'm in those situations, if I extend generosity, I'm often pleasantly surprised by what I find in the encounter with somebody else. Nine times out of ten.

Now, one time out of ten, I'm disappointed or frustrated or whatever it might be, but nine times out of ten, which I feel like is significant, I feel surprised by who I meet. I feel surprised in a generative way by who I encounter. But I think for a lot of us, it feels so risky because we might meet somebody that doesn't align with what feel like some really fundamental beliefs that we have, that we hold. We are afraid of each other.

We're afraid of what someone's going to say or do. we're afraid. And I think, you know, I've been saying lately that it feels like that distance between two people is maybe one of the most significant distances we can traverse. We can be sitting right next to somebody and it feels like there's no, there's no space between us.

But that space of actually being yourself and risking being with another person, I think it's, it's some of the like, trickiest, riskiest space. And especially now, I think it's becoming riskier because of the way that we, it's not because of what we believe necessarily now. I think it is for some people, but I think it's the way that we even hold our beliefs is also making it actually riskier to do, to actually encounter. There's a, Everything is inflamed.

Everything feels inflamed. Everything we believe, everything we say, it feels sort of inflamed. And so it feels riskier. The kind of sensations that come with What's this person going to say?

How's this person going to receive me? Can they actually see me? Are they going to say something that is painful to me or intends to hurt me or intends to disappear me? And the feeling of that, even the anticipation of that, is so overwhelming to us.

That fear that we have is so overwhelming that we end up not risking the encounter. We end up not getting to know each other. And there's so many disappointments possible, so many letdowns, and we let that stand in the way of actually having human interaction. We're not sure that it's worth it, actually, to feel all that for what's on the other side of the human interaction.

And, you know, I see this a lot on social media, where we do have, somewhat, we have encounters, but the distance, the anonymity, The stunted way that we engage in discourse, I think, makes this even harder for a lot of us to practice. That's where a lot of us have human engagement is via social media. And that is so curated. It's so controlled.

And the mood that you bring to it, the way that you have to do it, the succinct way that we communicate shapes the intensity of the interaction. It shapes how we do the interaction. And I think over time it makes us less tolerant of each other, less curious about each other. It's like this one line that you wrote means everything.

I can extrapolate everything about who you are from this one line. I'm going to engage as though I can extrapolate everything about you through this one line. And that's tricky. And now we have AI, which is, you know, promising a perfect attunement with you.

Promising in a way that it's always going to encourage you and be there and understand you. It's decreasing our tolerance for the confusing way that humans can be, the way that we can present a belief, but it not be fully worked out. the way that we can spout something that we heard, but actually what we feel and what we know and what we believe is kind of an undifferentiated, kind of confusing mess for us internally. And social media kind of has us betray that.

We are speaking in certainties when a lot of us are uncertain, and that uncertainty is actually really important. That unclarity is actually really important, because to me, we make meaning of the world through being in relationship with each other. We understand what's happening through somebody who's in a similar situation standing near you saying, well, this is what I see. And you say, well, this is what I see.

And together, you form reality. Together, you make sense and make meaning of what's happening. But we're not doing that very often. We're doing that less and less.

Less and less are we standing next to our neighbors or next to people in our geographic community or cultural community or in our families, standing next to them and going, this is what I see, what do you see? And discerning reality from that place. Not expecting or enforcing a kind of sameness and then projecting out what it is that we see. but actually being in the kind of struggle with each other to map it, to clarify, to say, oh, but if you looked at that this way, do you think it would?

it might actually show this, and someone's saying, oh yeah, I kind of see that, but I also see this. That's the working through of reality that I think humans are intended to do together. When we talk about being a social species, it's not just, oh, I like to get hugs sometimes, or I like to hang out with people. It's also that we create reality through this kind of sharing, through perspective sharing.

We create and understand what reality is through that. And it's really, really important. And when people don't have spaces to do that, when they don't have spaces to work out what it is that they see and the meaning of that, someone will, and usually someone that's intending to exploit, will give you a reality, will give you a meaning of what you see.

Now you may have all kinds of contradictory experiences inside of you, but if someone offers you certainty and says, oh yeah, I see that, and here's something, here's a way of understanding that, here's a phrase, here's a politic, here's a theory, here's an idea of who you are, and you can just go ahead and take that and run with it. And if we accept that, if we do that, and we don't actually engage with the real feelings that people have, the real confusions, the real contradictions, and meet them there, and make out and work through reality together, we'll leave people to be co-opted into these movements that actually don't serve them, just want them to become foot soldiers or whatever it is, minions of whatever agenda somebody else has.

So we need these kinds of encounters with each other. We work through what is, and we need to be open to those kinds of encounters. I was talking to a group of organizers recently, a question like this came up and I'm saying I'm really interested, not just like who's on my side, but what's the process? What are the doorways?

What are the openings? What are the parties? What's the artwork? What's the flavor?

What's the conversations that encourage people to make sense of their world? I'm interested in that. I'm not interested in leaving people to be coerced into a certain view of reality. I'm interested in disturbing their certainty.

And I'm interested also in honestly having mine disturbed too. When I was talking to those organizers, part of what came out of me was that I am, in a way, done with any iteration of movement that doesn't require me to listen deeply. I'm done with any iteration of so-called movement that doesn't require me to live with the kind of curiosity that my friend Denise lives with. that doesn't encourage me to speak to the people around me, my neighbors or whoever, my family, whoever it might be, that doesn't encourage me to empathize and to keep developing my skill around empathy, which requires me to feel what I feel.

But I'm done with anything where that is not encouraged, that is not welcome, that is not required. I'm completely done with that. I'm also, I think this is important to say, but I'm done with holding my own politics with such a rigidity that I can't encounter difference, that all difference will uncenter me. Now, I'm not talking about putting yourself into situations that are actively harmful to you.

I'm absolutely not talking about that. But I'm saying, I'm done with anything where I am gonna feel safe all the time. or I'm going to know what the outcome is. There's a nuance there.

I'm interested in a movement that can grow. I'm interested in a movement that can include people, that can include my family, that can include my cousins, that can include the people that live around me. I'm interested in that kind of movement. And I'm interested in us building the kinds of doorways that allow that kind of movement to flourish.

So whatever that is, that's where you'll see me. I want to be with people. I want to be with people. I want to get to know people.

I want to build with people. And I always say with this work around transformational characters that I was talking about, in a way, the bar is really low for me in that work, that a transformational character is somebody who's becoming more aware. that's trying to become more aware and trying to become more free. And whoever that is, those are my people.

That's who I want to hang out with. That's who I want to get to know. So yeah, that's me right now. That's what I'm thinking about.

I'm so curious how that lands with you all. And I got to tell you, I've been so nervous to talk about this, to talk about where I'm at and to, try to locate it in words, but that's where I'm at, and that's where I want to be. That's the kind of movement I want to build. I want to build the kind of movement where I can really, really talk to people, I can really, really meet people, and that that is bringing me back into some deep humanity, bringing me back into who I really am and to who we really are and into the

collective. That is the practice to me of the collective. Thank y'all for listening again this week. I hope this message meets you where you are.

I would love to hear anything from you. And if you want to be in conversation, if you want to witness conversation, if there's anything you want to share, you can join us over on the Patreon, Becoming the People. And we're there. And we're going to be doing a live event.

I'm going to be sharing the details soon. We've got to schedule that. But we're going to be doing a live event where we just kick it, where we just hang out and talk and get to know each other. So please look out for that.

We'll be announcing it over on the Patreon. So come hang out. And I think that's it for now. I think that's it.

Yeah. Yes, I uh wishing you all a great week and we'll be back next week with a guest episode and we'll see you then. Thanks y'all. Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña with special production support this season by Jasmine Stein.

It's sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine. Our theme song was created by Mayyadda. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is you listen. And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon, Prentis and Pill. We are having a great time over there building community, learning together.

Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming a People. 

[MUSIC PLAYING] We're becoming the people. The people, the people, the people, the people.

We're becoming the people. We're becoming the people. The people, the people, the people, the people. We're becoming the people.

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