Music: Here's an experiment, here's an experiment, here's an experiment to begin with...
Damon: Welcome to One Million Experiments,
Kiss: a podcast exploring how we define and create safety in a world without policing and prisons.
Damon: I'm Damon.
Kiss: I'm Kiss.
Damon: And we are back, season three, going deep into crisis and crisis response.
Sound Effect: Crisis edition.
Kiss: We get real first 48 and to do what we do. We can't do it alone. Anyone who listens knows that. We get to chop it up, invite into the lab with us, the one and only Eva Nagao from Interrupting Criminalization. Eva, so good to see you.
Eva Nagao: Hey, y'all good to be back in the studio.
Kiss: And so in this little abridged season of a few episodes that we're doing this year, we're focusing on this concept of crisis and crisis response. Eva, I'm wondering if you can speak a little bit to why this is the focus we're zeroing in on in this time.
Eva: We're leaning into crisis, y'all. I mean, this is the year to do it right. Interrupting Criminalization, this year, is bringing together a group of crisis responders — people who have been doing this for the past five years, people who have been doing it for longer, and the people who are starting groups now. You know, once again, we're seeing — in a time of acute crisis across the country — that we are what we need, and we want to share those skills, impart the lessons that we've learned over the last five plus years, in the same way that we do it on this podcast and the same way we do it on the One Million Experiments the website. We want to share the blueprints, we want to share the successes, we want to share the failures. We're inviting people into the lab, right? They've been out there doing this work, and we want to come back for a second, come to the lab, tap the beakers, measure the I don't know, science.
Kiss: No, you're good, the metaphor is considered complete.
Eva: Absolutely. But, yeah, no, we want to hear from our partners. We want to share successes, share failures.
Kiss: To really address this crisis moment we're in right now, right? Is that part of it?
Eva: That is part of it. I mean, I think that we are always doing this work, but now more than ever, we really need to share in real time what is effective right now.
Damon: It's so important. And Daniel, you actually always say this, that in the time of looming crisis or impending crisis, who we need to turn to is those who've already been showing up and doing the work and facing this crisis beforehand. And so this season, I think, is a great opportunity for folks who are just joining us — or for those of you who have been learning with us through the years — to go a little bit deeper, to see the formalities of these containers that have done more than emerge, but actually have been in practice, have actually had pilots, are engaging community in a forward-facing way, and they have some real lessons to share with us.
Kiss: And those lessons would be helpful whether you're trying to figure out how to respond to the crisis on your block or the crisis in our larger political sphere, I think. All right, who are we talking to today, Eva?
Eva: So today we have Jason Sole and Rox Anderson from Relationships Evolving Possibilities. You might remember REP because they were featured on season one of One Million Experiments. So this is a real full circle moment. You know, we wanted to come back to Minneapolis because it was, in many respects, the start of One Million Experiments. The clamoring for examples came from organizers in Minneapolis in 2020.
So we're coming back to REP, which is a Minnesota-based abolitionist network that supports others in moments of crisis or urgency with care and respect for the full dignity and autonomy of the people in crisis. The organization boasts two arms of work, Radical Ecosystem Pods that serve as community-based networks of care and an Emergency Response Hotline, or warm line, as Jason calls it, that is known as Revolutionary Emergency Partners. REP's larger goal is to help community members transform the ways they relate to one another by diverting nonviolent situations away from the police while working toward a world without police. REP aims to create a society that doesn't rely on policing while ensuring they don't become a substitute for law enforcement.
Kiss: Yeah, in addition to having Signe from REP on in the first season of the podcast, we also got to know Jason and Rox when we screened the One Million Experiments film and shot an episode of One Million Experiments “In the Field,” our new travel show, in Minneapolis in 2024. And then we went back this year and actually sat down with them in person in Minneapolis to record this conversation and revisit our learnings. So we're really excited to share with you both here on this podcast and in a new form, if you're one of those, like, video podcast people, we got that for you, too. Head on over to Respair Production Media on YouTube, where you can see our interview with Jason and Rox.
Damon: Do the things like subscribe, rate and review. It may feel like it’s nothing, but it actually does help us. And stay plugged in with all the work of Interrupting Criminalization and Respair wherever we at.
Kiss: You can also find all the work of REP at repformn.org. And now, I think it's that time.
Damon: Are we hopping back in the lab?
Kiss: Let's hop back in the lab...
Eva: Let's go.
Kiss: ...with Rox and Jason.
Damon: Yeah.
Kiss: One more time.
Damon: Yeah.
Kiss: I just wanted to make you do it.
Damon: We are here. We are back. We are honored to be on location here in Fresh Air Studios in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with the team from REP. We are so excited to have the homies, Rox and Jason in the building with us. All right.
Kiss: Human excitement, animal excitement, we got the whole...
Damon: It's pure and it's sincere.
Kiss: If plants could give you hype up music, they would have done it too.
Damon: Yeah, we are so happy to be with y'all. We were in y'all part of the world around this time last year. So it means a lot to reconnect, and we're gonna kick into this thing how we always do. And it's with a two-part question, alright? And this question is centered around time. So in this time — define that however you will this: day, this hour, this season, this lifetime — how is the world treating you, and how are you treating the world, Rox and Jason?
Rox: Well, I feel like, you know, it feels pretty even in this moment. You know, I think there's some ups and downs and peaks and valleys as life be life-ing, but right now, in this moment, it feels pretty level in my world. And I think I'm giving, you know, levelness back.
Jason: Same. I can only echo that answer. I feel balanced right now. I feel poised. I feel ready for whatever we stepping into for the next five, ten, years. And I'm just giving good energy to the world, man. I know life is short, so I'm just trying to give as much good light as I can. You know, hopefully I can rest well at the end of it.
Kiss: I love hearing that we're poised for it. I want to get to that future imagining and preparation. But there's a question that we ask in every 1ME interview. And you know, we've had Signe from REP on in the first season, learned from her, but I'm excited to hear from y'alls perspectives in our clunky scientific method analogy. It starts with a hypothesis. For y'all, what was the hypothesis at the beginning of your work with REP?
Music: I tell you my hypothesis.
Jason: Just providing something the community can lean on in times of crisis. So a hypothesis was, if we could, you know, be a community vessel when in crisis — and not be able to, you know, we can't take on violence, we can’t take on serious crimes — but knowing you got somebody you could talk to to figure out your next steps. That's what the hypothesis was, just be a community resource where you safe. You don't got to worry about us using your information wrong. You don't got to worry about any of that. And you can tell us if you want us to, you know, take your name out our system.
So our hypothesis was that we serve that community need, that there will be more people, you know, dialed in, having pods, being able to be at the event we were at, being able to be in community like we envisioned it. So our hypothesis was just really serving the community and building something different than what was already there.
Rox: Yeah, and I would say that that hypothesis is steeped in ancestral knowledge that we take care of us. Yeah.
Damon: And so just kind of continuing, it's almost a cousin to the question of the initial hypothesis. Jason you referenced, like being able to respond to crisis. And in this season of One Million Experiments, we're really trying to go deeper, not just in crisis response, but —you know, as we like to do — unpack and unravel just the idea of crisis, putting it back together, and, like, building ourselves up to face it. And so for y'all — and these could be different entry points — for y'all, or for the work of REP as a whole, what did you see as the actual initial crises that were being responded to, whether it was on the personal side or more structural?
Rox: There were two, like, initial crises, right? Pandemic, and, you know, the lecherous and untimely murder of George Floyd. And so I think those were the two sparks of that crisis. And I think the crisis itself was distraction and a disconnect from one another. We had been disconnected for a minute because of Covid, yeah.
Jason: And I would say, you know, on top of that was like holding people accountable online. That was just insane. That's a crisis in and of itself 'cause it's like we're responding to mainly, it was mainly, caring calls. People feel like something is suspicious. Somebody ain't looking right. They look like...it was a lot of those calls coming to us, and we had to check them out, you know. I remember the first call, you know. We went over there, and it was because some people have been evicted in North Minneapolis. They got evicted, and it was boarded up, and they weren't supposed to go back in there. But when they [neighbors] called us, it's like, “Yo, they got evicted that day.” I understand why you would want to go back in there and get your Playstation or whatever was the thing for you...
Damon: Her birth certificate, whatever.
Jason: Whatever it was. But they had boarded it up and stuff. So the people were like, they not supposed to be in there. They got kicked out because they was using blah, blah, blah. So it was mainly a call of, they just not supposed to be doing that, and I need to make sure they stop doing that. So we were getting a lot of those calls. You know, they walking back and forth down my block because you got to think we had what, 75,000 National Guards during George Floyd, it was. So the time, you know, at that moment, it was so many crises happening. We were responding to calls like people needed their medication prescription filled because the Target was flooded and burned down. So it was like, you really didn't have one set call, but over time, you know, five years later, I guess we will say mainly it will stay the same. But it's become a warm line, and we figuring it out now. So we thinking about whether we'll handle calls during the week and all of that stuff now. So it's…we still building on what it originally was.
Damon: I like that language, warm line...
Kiss: Can we define it?
Damon: ...as opposed to, like, a hotline?
Jason: Yeah. Well, we just felt like we weren't getting any hot calls. So it's like it felt more so warm calls — like, like they know they talking to somebody who they really gonna rock with anyway. Our carers are pretty dope. Our responders are amazing. So a lot of the calls were more so, “Man, I don't want to go do this thing, man, can I talk to somebody?” So it became therapeutic for a while. So the hotline coordinators were saying to us, should we call it a hotline? Seems deceiving if we're not getting hot calls. So it was like that was something we had to wrestle with. So, you know, we enjoying the journey. But sometimes those things can be... Yeah, we want to be there and we want to answer the calls up to, you know, violence, and at the same time, we understand that the community is still trying. Some community members are still in shock at the new administration, all kind of things. So, yeah, we were playing around with that for a while. We not calling it that.
Kiss: That's so interesting to think about building infrastructure that's supposed to respond, or the goal is for it to respond at a certain heightened level of crisis, but then actually, what people, whether it's what they feel comfortable for or what they need more actively, day to day, is someone to talk to, someone to help them move through internal or communal feeling.
Rox: Yes.
Kiss: How do y'all make sense of that? Like, how is that different? What has that taught you about people's needs that was maybe different from what you expected of like, "Oh, we're gonna get a call because there's a an eviction, or, you know, domestic disturbance and we can figure out what to do,” versus like, “Oh, this person's trying to figure out how to, like, get up in the morning.”
Rox: Yeah. And I think that changes over time, right? Because I think, you know, like this mirage of steadiness, like it's pretty much status quo, things are, are pretty, you know, regulated in this moment, right? But underneath that is always the need, right? People always have a need for housing. They always have a need to connect with medicine. They always have a need to connect with one another, and we have barriers to that in all kinds of ways. And so I think those things in crisis are like blown up. They're, like, larger than life. But it doesn't erase those underlying things that we have as humans, be human-ing, you know.
Damon: Yeah, this. I'm gonna ring the bell of (we haven't gotten far to) my first Mariame Kaba reference, but one of the things that she said that, like, really shifted what the assignment was for those of us that are building up this new infrastructure is, oftentimes we take on, like, oh, we need to be the replacement to the police. And so our imagination starts with what they do, what they're called for, and let's be the one to one, or try to get up to being the, you know, the Pepsi to that Coke.
Rox: Oh, trust, you know, that's some of the ideas that we had in the very beginning.
Damon: Of course. And like, there's some reality of, like, those heightened responses that, you know, they kind of have a monopoly on, taking that, taking that capacity. But it was so profound, of like, let's actually erase them from our premise, and let's actually start with what people need because, you know, if we're being honest, like, most people on a day to day, are not even having to have the thought of like, “Oh, let me not call the cops.” Like it's not even something that's coming up, like, this is a thing that I need the cops for. Yeah, but on people's day to day, there are voids, there are gaps, there are even discomforts that may not even rise to the level of conflict or crisis, but need human support in some type of way. So just hearing that, that like, through the practice, that like people weren't calling for the you know, the hot, but the day to day gets so warm. It's deep for me.
Jason: For sure, for sure. Sometimes it's just about getting through. So for us, we lean back on our core principles. So when we making decisions — just to answer your question, too — when we making decisions, we always say, is this rooted in black love and liberation? Is it rooted in ancestral knowledge? And what's our other principle?
Damon: Um, those are pretty strong, for me.
Jason: Radical consent. So if we, if...
Damon: You said black love...
Jason: ...black love and liberation, um, ancestral knowledge, and radical consent. So when we making critical decisions, we got to go back to that, like, let's keep going back to that. So it's like once we came together trying to figure this out, having those principles to anchor us when we got tough decisions, say, “Man, is this honoring these three things?” And we also lean on the fact that [REP’s] Core, collectively, we got 100 years of organizing experience in our own capacities.
So it's like when we leaning on that, we looking at it, we're not thinking about what cops are doing because my pedagogy to protecting the community started with me protecting my sister from people in the neighborhood. So it was like that was that, my mom dealing with my dad. So it wasn't no phone call to make. So for me, you've been intervening for a while. Yes, and I never thought like, “Man, this one got caught.” No, never thought that. And like I said, as I got into my teens and then been to prison and stuff, I saw how we work things out differently.
So and when Rox goes to their community, and they work, and they DJing, then they stop and things, and then they run into Red Studio, that's a lot to manage in and of itself, a lot of all, like, a lot of things. So it goes back to being poised and saying, are we doing this right? Are we doing it the best we can? And sometimes we are, sometimes we getting it wrong. So we know, take the ego out of this stuff, man. We might fail. We might not do what we said at the beginning, but at the same time, we gonna make a hell of an effort.
Kiss: So with those three principles on the table, let's talk about some moments where you've had to lean on them. What have been some of the tougher momentary decisions? Or how do we handle this? Where you've been like, “Man, it's really good.” We have these three principles to fall back on.
Rox: I think that radical consent one came up right away on a very first call, right? Because the folks calling have a concern, but they're calling on people who didn't consent for us to intervene in their life. So from that very first call, we were asking that question, what happens? And I think that that takes kind of that heightened crisis response because when you riding in hot on something, you are not gaining the consent of everybody in your sphere, right? And so that radical consent one popped up right away on our very first call.
Kiss: How did y'all parse it, where did you land on and kind of reconciling the contradiction of it?
Jason: So in that moment, we had to just, you know, we yelled up to them say, “Oh, we got some stuff, you can call us if you need some further support,” and let them know, "Hey, so the people who called us, they had called the police before they called us." So we want to let them know, boys might be...so it was more so like, "Hey, we here. We REP. I know you might not know much about us, like..”.
Kiss: ...we're a hotline and a lookout.
Jason: We ain't trying to be here when they [the cops] come either, cuz that's why we doing this. So it was more about just saying, “Hey fam, we know y'all up there, they called, we could leave y'all information on the steps y'all want to.” We waited, we listened. It was me [unintelligible]. Was it Will?
Rox: Maybe Will.
Jason: Yeah. So we stayed, we stayed in the backyard for a little bit, just, and then we went back over to them [the callers] and said, "Hey, we came." And they were just so shocked that we showed up. They were just so shocked that we arrived. Like, dang, you know, like we expect y'all to show up. So in that one it was more so, like we're not getting these folks in no trouble. We're not gonna be here as no witnesses. We don't talk to cops. We can cop watch if we need to, but we were playing it out in real time. That's never stopped. Because this is a new model. We don't have any other thing to lean back on other than should we slow this down before we make this decision? That's really like our chance to really look at it and say, this ain't got to be rushed. Let's just take a pause. So really, people call us because they know we gonna slow things down enough for them.
Damon: Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. So it's about, it's about moving through time. It's obviously about presence, right? Just building the mechanism to show up and more. Is that a truth... I mean, in my political principles, more people bring more options. But also what you're saying that is, like, more people without consent can can escalate or bring more conflict. And so what I'm hearing in that, like, just I can see you looking up the window, "Hey fam we're here." Like, you're not coming with, you're coming with a commitment of understanding there won't be always a solution.
Jason: Yeah, and we wanted the callers to know that we did intervene. We here. We stayed over there. We want to fly. We got these little lights in our back. They ain't strong flashlights. So we just beamed it up there a little bit. They probably didn't see it or nothing, but it was just like letting them know, "Hey, do what you got to do, but you got to go, fam." We not supporting you, etc., but you got a limited amount of time. We can understand what eviction feels like, so we not but hey, limited.
We went back over to them [the callers], and it was just more so letting them know what had transpired. And they felt good in that they called again later, like they became a part of like, I think they came to an info session. They became like the ones telling people that we credible and will show up. So it did blossom from there. But can't tell you where, where that's at now, but that first call five years ago, we were just really happy to have our bags together, have like, granola bars and cigarettes, etc., because our model, our main motto, is we just want to love you to your next step. So if we stay thinking like that, it ain't about a quick move. It's like, even when people off board and leave REP and it's not working out, we still thinking, dang, how can we love them to they next step?
Rox: 100%
Jason: Because we all gonna keep taking a lot of stuff, even when we committed to doing this for ten years, really volunteering, it was like, dang, I’mma graduate two babies in that time. I had to really think, you know what I mean? So we realized a lot of times it's more getting people to, like, come up with a decision for themselves. We not the heroes. We not the saviors. Let's try to slow this down to where you could think through a solution that you're comfortable with.
Rox: Exactly.
Kiss: So where did that language of loving them to the next step come from? How did that develop?
Rox: I would say, Signe or Raffo, one of those two brilliant minds. But I think it comes from that investment in community and relationships, right? You know, we all have people in our sphere that they need a little extra love, that need somebody to listen to. We all need that. And so I think that that default of loving folks to their next step, that could be their next literal breath, it could be moving from inside to outside, you know, like whatever it is that an individual might need in that next moment, we want to help them get to that. And I think we all need someone to love us to the next step
Jason: For sure, yeah. And when we first started putting the go bags together, real quick, you know, somebody made the suggestion that we should put cigarettes in them.
Damon: Yeah, I was interested by that.
Jason: And I'm like...
Rox: That was me. I think.
Jason: I'm like, yo, we really want to do that? But it made sense over time. Because I'm like, man, we're gonna put cigarettes in there. And somebody said, some people need a smoke just to...And I was like, dang, you know.
Kiss: It's like, a thing people lean on for regulation, like to actually bring their, like, blood pressure down.
Jason: I learned a new — I learned. I'm seeing that as a tool, right? Something's happening, you know, I'm just hypothetical. Something's going up, folks get into it, and you ten,15, feet away, like, "Hey, I gotta you know," that could bring somebody away from conflict. That could create, like, physical distance in real time.
Kiss: It's also like a moment where people are used to having, like, a pause and a type of conversation that they don't like. It's kind of an odd thing. But like a lot of community, like we're sharing a smoke, is like a space where people, in my understanding, get a little more, like, open to talking a level deeper than if you're just like, "Hey, can I talk to you?"
Rox: Yeah, it's, it's definitely a street outreacher's tool.
Kiss: And it's also kind of to your point of ancestral knowledge. I mean, that is not in cigarette form, but, yeah, like, we're passing something back and forth smoking, the aroma of it, the like ritual of it, definitely falls in that bag.
Damon: Wow. So, PSA, kids don't start, if you don't already, but for those who may already live that lifestyle and there's something that's happening, maybe a cigarette could be a useful tool. That's a little ding ding ding.
Jason: There you go.
Kiss: I do think it's a good example of what I'm hearing from y'all approach of like, let me not judge what someone will need in order to get to that next.
Jason: Absolutely, right?
Rox: It's also the same reason we have water, granola bar because not everybody does smoke, but most people can use a moment to slow down. Water also does that. We're also, you know, chronically under hydrated as human beings. And so that, you know, literally gives folk's cells a moment to, like, blow up in their system, and it gives them a moment to slow down. If you can drink water, you have to have your breath under control. And that's, that's kind of like our default number two, breath. Breath.
Kiss: Yeah, it's like a somatic understanding of what happens to people's bodies in crisis also.
Rox: Exactly.
Damon: So I want to go back and like, I'm all, you know, I'm seeing images of these examples, and I want to lay out the flow chart a little bit because I hear the language of Core, and there was a naming of a ten year commitment. I'm hearing we, and then there's callers. I'm hearing that there's some sort of pipeline that even whether through community work or through utilizing the warm line folks then come into orientations or trainings and onboard, off boarding happening. And, so, you've referenced decision-making, all of that. We don't gotta, like, you know, break down every nook and cranny, but I'm curious, what's the relationship between the folks that came together and, like, initially took on this responsibility, folks that have joined in the space, for folks that are answering the phone, folks that are showing up? How does that bounce off each other?
Kiss: How are people communicating? How's it organized, type of thing?
Rox: I think it's a little bit like an ocean, right? There's like constant movement, but there's a steadiness, and I think that steadiness comes through Core. You know, we're the constant. We're not going anywhere. We have made this commitment for ten years, right? We're gonna...
Jason: Formally.
Rox: ...formally, we're going to be in it in whatever form it looks like for ten years, right? And so that creates that kind of constant flow that the ocean has, and the turnover is the individuals, right? The little rocks and the sand and all the things that turn up when the ocean turns over, and that's community, and it's ever changing, and it's always evolving. And the back and forth looks like weekly meetings. We meet every week for several hours as a unit.
Damon: Is the Core fixed or closed?
Rox: The Core is fixed and closed.
Damon: Okay. So folks who enter the space can enter in other capacities, but that's not like, okay, all right.
Jason: Yeah, we got project managers. We have a studio coordinator. Yordi is what, Yordi is, like a Core member. Yordi been there from the beginning. We have hotline coordinator, and everything is up for change if it's not working. So we, you know, make that clear, like, even if Core is not useful or we become stale, which we never hope, right? Even if that happens, we've had those discussions like, is a Core needed at this moment? So we're all knowing this might change, depending on if the community need changes. So we not locked into, okay this because at a point we were like, okay, is Core being useful because the hotline folks who are responding are closest to the issue? So should they be making it, you know, calls on the decisions?
Damon: Just the traditional leadership participant divide?
Jason: Yeah, for sure. So that's always going to be a debate, a conversation, but every Monday, we get a chance to anchor ourselves. You know, it don't matter where we are. Rox will be at a conference in Texas. I could be in Chicago. We could be all over but we try to make that time, and if not, we looking to beehive, what is it called? Hive notes or, yeah.
Kiss: But it's this balance of commitment and flexibility.
Jason: Absolutely.
Damon: I'm committed to both constant and variety, yes, which is so grounded, because in some of my organizing experiences, there is this, like, forever tension, especially for those who the responsibility falls on, of like, oh, this is all volunteer. And people kind of can sometimes almost leverage, like, I could leave at any moment.
Jason: For sure.
Damon: And so there's this, like, there could be this eggshell or manicuring, or even, like, ass kissing that you sometimes are, like, prone to do because you want to keep people in, because you need your folks, right?
Jason: None of us gonna do that.
Damon: But that longer commitment that, like we've saw, even I can imagine at the point of friction, right? Like, if it's almost closer to them — we use “family,” sometimes a little too loose — but that is closer to, like, a real family. We are not going, family.
Kiss: We are not going anywhere.
Damon: Regardless of what happens. We gonna have to figure this out, even if we not talking, but we staying in the house most definitely is a really powerful. Like, y'all were folks with experience, with connection, with relationship already, but then this larger, formal commitment. How did that commitment even, like, come about? Did it come about? Is it like in writing? Is it, like, was there like, a ritual? Like, if it's private, you [don’t] have to say, how does that…how did y'all come to that idea of, like, we need to put ten years into this?
Rox: I think, just that wisdom, that knowledge that we have amongst ourselves, knowing that, you know, well, it takes a year to shut something down, and it takes a year to really start something. So we know those two years down right there, and we know as organizers and activists that it takes a couple years to really kind of flush out an idea and see who's going to be there and who's going to be in the struggle with you. It's like that wisdom, that ancestral knowledge. I don't know who, who put the number of ten. I think it was you [Jason], but I think that when, when that number came up, we were like, yes, that that's a good commitment window to see if this dream, if this experiment, if this idea can manifest into something.
Kiss: So how many years into it are we now?
Rox: Five. Halfway.
Kiss: So that's an interesting point at which to be reflecting. And it's been, you know, that's a five years that also lines up with...
Damon: It's been five years, y'all!
Kiss: That's really, it's been a wild ass five years, in many ways, with an anticipation of things continuing to be in upheaval and be in in whirlwind and in crisis in different ways. And so I want to go back to that poise that Jason, you talked about a little bit, in thinking about the role that y'all try to serve for your people. How are you understanding the crisis of this moment as similar or different from the crisis that this work started in?
Rox: I mean, I think it still is really similar, you know. You know, we just, we just had a big incident here yesterday. You know, it's already on every national news channel across the country, and part of that is the response that people have learned over the last five years of how to interact. And I think, you know, the other part of that is now checking on our people. We know folks who were there. We know folks who witnessed the brutality — the just the presence, the armed presence. And so, you know, today I will spend time checking on folks that I have relationship, that I know were there in that moment at Bloomington and Lake.
Damon: And so for folks who will be listening to this in a not so distant future, right, just to, like, give the nuts and bolts of what occurred yesterday. I'll let y'all share, like, kind of what happened yesterday, because it's, I think, a good example of that.
Kiss: In as much as much as is...
Rox: Yeah, well, I mean, we still really don't know.
Damon: It just happened.
Rox: You know, we know there was an unarmed militia looking with weapons and armored vehicles to serve a warrant in a predominantly Latino neighborhood at a Latino-run restaurant, and so community responded to that by first asking questions: “What are you doing here? Why are you here? Why do you have so much force if you are just serving a warrant?” You know, as we look at the footage, we can see, you know, lots of three letter agencies were on the scene, including ICE, and so then that makes community wonder, what are you really actually doing? But just seeing folks in military gear does something to your system. And so that's the check back with those individuals: “How are you doing today? What are you feeling? That must have been super scary.”
Damon: And I'm hearing, obviously, right, like the inevitable trauma of facing militarization in all of its forms, but also, as you know, I didn't know that this happened. I wasn't checking my phone in the morning, and so I just heard this from y'all. And part of the story I'm hearing is there was also a — maybe proportion is not the appropriate word — but a robust community response as well. And so one just, like, observing that, I guess, how does it feel, or land or resonate? But in my outside observer opinion, it feels like there's overlap between the capacity and the ethics that y'all have been a part of building and the fact that there was this organic response, or is that...
Kiss: People were ready to show up.
Rox: Yeah, yeah.
Damon: Does that feel right?
Rox: Yeah. And I think some of that is from our work, for sure. And I think, you know, we've also seen examples already across the country. We just saw this in San Diego the week before, right? So we saw neighbors responding to places that they go on a daily basis. I literally just ate at that restaurant two weeks ago, you know. And so, and it's a place where we often take our friends who come in from out of town because they got the best birria in the area, right? And so, so just, there's not really a return to normalcy after you see that, but just the checking and checking in. “How's your system? How's your soul? Did you drink some water today?” You know.
Damon: Again, again. I'm just there may not be a fix…
Rox: There may not be a fix.
Damon: But this presence gets us to a next step.
Jason: For sure, for sure. And the main thing is we can respond quickly here. We've had so many reasons to respond quickly here, unfortunately, but it's always that, okay, what are you gonna do when you're in crisis? Now, like, we always respond to other people, but it's just like, "What do I need if I'm really in a crisis? What do Rox need?
And it's like, we know if something kicks off right now and it's a tornado outside or whatever, we're a pod now. We're gonna all figure out how to get out this building, downstairs. We're gonna make sure you get out the lot. We gonna figure out how to pod up real quick. We need people, when they go to stuff like that, to still figure out how to be in pods. That's why Paige is so important to our work, because we say Paige'll show you how to build a pod. How do you maintain that pod? Who your peeps when it really go down? Because it's, like, responding is great. For sure, we doing that. We answering calls. But then it's like, how do you get knowledgeable enough and equipped enough to where you don't even need a call, right?
Damon: How do we build this capacity in the community? Replicate and being an external, external, right?
Jason: Yeah. How you build it internally? Build it in the crib. Let that community. Because when y'all came in, we were talking about, man, we really got to train up 1,000 people. Yeah, yeah.
Damon: Talk about that.
Jason: If we can train 1,000 — we got 100 and something trained — now, I don't know how many of them actively respond, but we've trained people to understand how Rox does an amazing job at mental health, you know, first aid. Then it's like we talk about our tech. We go through de-escalation, cop watch. Our seven day training allows you to be more skillful.
Damon: Okay.
Jason: You might have heard Rox bring up Harry. Harry is one of our actors who — it's hard to de-escalate Harry, because Harry, Harry got props — he'll throw a bag of papers outside [in the street]. Like, how they gonna de-escalate that? But we put you through it so you more equipped where it ain't just theory. Now you, like, you right in front of Harry — and Harry walking down the street wreaking havoc — to know Harry was down there. I don't know, Rox gotta check on them, etc. It's like you gotta be able to stay and flow in community in a way that they could see.
Yeah, seven day training helped me. I know how to watch the cops. I know where I gotta stand. I know how to de-escalate somebody. Now I can feel it in my body, etc. Then it's like the translation got to be, can I continue to share that with other people? So that when we are somewhere, Rox might be the one de-escalating, or it's me, or it's you, or...that's what we trying to build out. So if we could train 1,000 people in that model of checking they body, and actively de-escalating somebody, and trying stuff, and messing up when it really goes down, we hope that you can lean back on this training that we developed.
Damon: And this is like a seven day intensive that's like happening back to back, or these seven days spread out?
Rox: We've tried it in a variety of different ways.
Jason: Yeah, one day we'll do a Saturday, and then the next week we'll do a Sunday, and we swap between Saturdays and Sundays 'til we finish.
Damon: So it's like through a season, yeah, which then is given, like, now you're also in the rhythm of people's lives, okay? So obviously, one, you know, not trying to steal your sauce, but we are trying to share some.
Kiss: Would you mind passing the sauce?
Damon: You know, we all got seven days right here. You know, we got the minutes that we got. But I'm curious if there's a nugget or a quick little like, you know, cpr-ification, of like, one lesson, people often come out with a trainer like, "Oh, I'm so glad. That was so easy that I didn't realize I could have been standing at this distance, or I could have, you know, use this tone of voice." Are there, are there little skills that we can share with folks, that folks have, like, developed through these trainings that have turned out to be useful?
Rox: Well, I think one of them that we've talked about a couple times is breath, right? One of the first things that we really try to, you know, make clear to folks and let them feel in their body is that if you cannot control your breath, you are not in control of your body, and so therefore you need to take a beat before you're responding to anything outside of your body. And so we really want to kind of implore that in their system, like, if you're not controlling your breathing, you don't need to be controlling this scene.
Jason: And Rox does an amazing job. They hold the entire Mental Health First Aid Day, and they'll show if a power line falls, who's all impacted? Where should people be standing? And I didn't know a lot of those things, you know? I'm thinking about people and stuff, you know? So it's like when Rox actually gets you to understand other crises. People always lead a trainer saying, yeah, I never thought about that power line fail, or I never thought about what's another example you use when you're doing that.
It's another picture we look at, and it's like chaos in the picture. It's like, it's like a lot of things happening. And Rox can say, okay, what else do you notice? What else? And we have to all like, see the different ways to show up in those moments. So people lean on that.
Also, when I do my portion of de-escalation, I go to some intense situations, you know. I talk about a shooting at a party where, if I didn't de-escalate, you know, somebody would have got killed that night. And it was like I had to put my hands physically, put my hands in front of the gun, and don't, don't kill this dude, you know. Like, it's a hard one, you know. And people out here still know that story, people still impacted by that story from 97. Nineteen hundred ninety seven.
Kiss: I like the full honorific of 1900 from back in the previous century.
Damon: And again to that example of this knowledge — although it, like, maybe has this, like, ultimate use in what we call quote, unquote organizing spaces — a lot of this is learned through community experiences that are built through the generations.
Jason: Also what we do in de-escalation that's different — we not only talk about the ways we've de-escalated — we always give examples of when people de-escalated us. So that's something we pump people to think about, like, how do you want to be de-escalated? How you like to be de-escalated?
Kiss: That's a great question that I feel like a lot of people wouldn't have an answer for, for themselves.
Jason: But we need you to come up with that answer because I don't wanna be trying something.
Kiss: Otherwise you're guessing, and you don't know if that actually might up the ante.
Damon: Even if you're guessing and your guess turns out to not be, like, the perfect answer somewhere in there, you realize, well, I've already consented to this mode, so even if I'm not feeling it, I did name that this is, so now I reassess. But if it's just coming in, like, you know, it was not prepared for that, can then be another point of contention. Wow, yeah, that's very important. It's like, you know, this self assessment that is needed, right?
So I want to go back to mental health response, okay? Because I feel like there is just more focus, more energy, more desire for mental health response. So I'm curious for you, for well intended folks, are there things that people either don't get, or misconceive —or generalize about what we put all into that language of mental health response — that you work through in these trainings?
Rox: I mean, I think the thing about mental health response is really about compassion and empathy for us as people responding to that to slow down, to take a beat, to try to put ourselves in the other person's shoe. It's scary when you're not in control of what's happening to you. And so, you know, that's not a thing that we often think about. You know, people need their space. So, you know, we're often taught to, like, run in and give somebody a hug and just put their hand, put your hands on them, to, like, calm them down. And you know, if people are escalated, that's often the last thing they want, right? So it's really just about giving folks a moment to think, to give space to ask those questions. It's why we carry some of those tools in our bag. Because if you're asking someone, "Hey, you need a cigarette, you need water, you need a granola bar?" Hopefully it's not too stale. You know.
Kiss: I was about to say, if you're gonna have the granola bars, you better have the water with it.
Rox: Yes, right? Because that gives folks a moment to think about something other than what is immediately causing them to escalate, right?
Kiss: So you talk about having this set of tools, and a lot of this is like through training, but it's also through your personal experience, and just in some ways how wonderful y'all are. Like this is, this is, skills that are built, but also now in the life of people spending time with you again, there's just a certain amount of like groundedness that being next to y'all brings.
I'm wondering about moments where none of the tools in your toolbox worked, and what did you do?
Jason: Well, we had a moment like...
Rox: Not a REP moment like that, right?
Jason: Yeah, probably in our individual lives, where we felt exhausted that something wasn't working well, or, you know, something with some of these badass kids, but I can't think, not as a REP as a whole. Um, I mean, we had, we had a moment where we were questioning everything about REP. We probably were in year three and a half, and we were just questioning everything.
Kiss: What prompted that?
Jason: Some, some folks, felt like we weren't honoring a mask policy. You know, it really wasn't that. It was like it was holidays. People were away. It was just a bad time for incident to happen within REP, and it was just like, again, I mentioned when we first got on here, handling accountability online, it's just sitting on a screen, and people can unmute whenever they want, and all of that. It's not good grounds for getting through some of the most intense things.
So I say, if I had to lean on any moment, I will say that moment, because we the kind of people, we like you just being straight up and say, "Hey, that was messed up." But when you on Zoom, you gotta wait for seven other people to go and stuff, man, it's like, man, this ain't accountability. And I have to keep saying that. Like, if we can't get in a room, and now we keep saying it like, yo, we got to sit down with each other for some of these decisions, because it was normal to organize meeting people online during Covid, and I never had that where it's like when we did start meeting people in person, people was like, man, you tall. I mean, I don't know what I was portraying on the little screen, but it was a lot of we had to reintroduce ourselves to each other.
Damon: Your literal four dimensions.
Kiss: Do you feel like it got easier once you could be in a room with people? You know, we're talking about these five years, that's about half the time, maybe three and a half years in. Yeah. Did it get easier to build those relationships?
Jason: Yeah, but it feel like people feel like it's an inconvenience now we've made so much things virtual that people be like, dang, you ain't thinking about us and with our disability justice work we do have to think about that too. You know what I mean. So it makes us say, dang, are we acting from ableism? Because it feel like able-bodied people, and it was the thing with the mask where we was like, dang, is this ableism where we feel like so we're not too far into this where we can't be checked and start all the way over?
Because it's like, at the end of ten years, if we say, man, we answered 500 [calls] because we've answered over 200 calls now. So it's like if we say we've answered 500 calls, and they looked like 90% of the people stayed within REP kept coming back, info sessions, podding up, etc., we'll feel good about it. But even if it show we didn't do much at all and didn't have much of an impact. You know, we're not gonna be mad at that either. It's not gonna be that. But at the same time, this ain't no win lose thing for us. We hope we can hand something over to other people and they can just keep creating they own REP, whatever variation or whatever style that looks like because it's like that with de-escalation, your style might be totally different from mine. Yours might be, too. I'll walk up and say, "Is there anything I could help with here?" I'm coming in...
Damon: Starting totally inquiry and question.
Jason: Yeah, is there any? That's how...So we want you to find your own de-escalation, your own tool. So in that, as you get older, your de-escalation style changes. When I'm 70, I don't think I'm gonna be de-escalating. The same, I might be at a further distance. I ain't trying to take no, you know what I mean. So I just think...
Kiss: Like, can you come over here so I can de-escalate. I'm not walking all the way over there.
Damon: But then you got sir status, right? People slow down around the sirs. The sirs and the maams. Y'all gotta slow down because I'm moving slow.
I want to, you know, we're talking about this five year span, and you know, we kick off the conversation of there was a real on the ground, traumatic crisis of the militarized response to uprising coming after the brutal death of George Floyd. And like, I feel like that's informed our conversation a little bit, and I'm curious more on the, like, political side, because at the same time, 75,000 you know, armed people here.
There was also this, like, little flicker of a moment the city council wanted to vote to disband the police department. There were these signals that, like, for a moment message. There was this large national canvassing campaign that happened here, you know, following that moment, and now we're five years later. We are in a, you know, a Trumpian reality. We are in, you know, again, Mariame says the “front lash,” but people understand it as a “backlash.” And so, that is, we are in political crisis. I'm sure there's been cooperation, there's been co-optation, there's been attack of the political thrust that this is an expression of.
Jason: Right.
Damon: And so how is that playing into the work? How is that playing into people's well being? How you know the relationship to the state, even though this is work happening outside of the state, how is that shifting or informing in this season with some of that distance of five years?
Jason: Man, politics ain't gonna look, I mean.
Damon: We keep it funky.
Jason: Yeah. I mean, politicians, they gonna change. And, you know, work. That's just an element that, um, we try to, like, block out as much as we can. Because they gotta make promises. They gotta play however they got to play in that space. And we just don't want it to impact our work. You know what I mean? So it's like an individual, we support different candidates, we support different people and stuff like that. But at the end of the day, we want people to understand what we trying to do you could do without legislation at all. You know what I mean? What we doing is mainly, do you understand your rights, fam? Do you know what you can do? Do you know Good Samaritan Laws?
So we try to account for what we can do, because emotionally, man, I'll be mad as hell. You know what I mean? Because it was like, dang, we were going to, like, shrink the police and have something different with social workers and public health people all in there, and then, um, you know? And that's how the stuff goes politically, you know what I mean? Because it's like five years ago, yeah, it was a strong call for abolition everywhere. But then it's like five years later, you know, the people in there now can pretty much quell a lot of that with crazy pardons and all this other wild stuff. So it's like, if we get lost in what politicians, you know, do or don't do we'll be totally out of our element because we would, like, we wouldn't be as poised handling this work, because it'd be, we'd be mad as hell.
Kiss: Yeah, it's destabilizing.
Damon: It's maddening.
Jason: Yeah.
Rox: I mean, I think, you know, politicians are people, and people will be people-ing and and at the end of the day, everybody's just really trying to survive, right? And so I'm gonna be at City Hall tomorrow. Tomorrow, the city's doing a proclamation about, you know, Pride Month, and that's the community that I work a lot in. So I have to show up there. I have to shake hands. I have to, you know, eat breakfast with these folks. You know. Um, and then you know, right? And then you know.
And like Jason said, what we really trying to do is make a people connection, and we're not fooled by the like, not knowing that the personal is political, like we all know that. And in our personal situation, we are always going to be advocating for our communities, our neighbors, our family members, and that's, I think, what keeps us able to come to tables of policy.
It's also what allows us to come back into the neighborhood, because our neighbors and our friends know that just because we showing up at City Hall doesn't mean that we're going to be showing up as somebody different than who we are in the neighborhood. [Mayor] Frey knows I'm going to be me if I'm at home or if I'm sitting in his office, right?
Kiss: And, so as we move towards wrapping, you know, we've been pulling apart the different types of responses to different types of crisis. You mentioned breath, you mentioned the, like, clear consent of this is how I know I want to be de-escalated. I'm wondering what else has proven helpful for y'all as practitioners and participants in staying centered, staying clear-eyed, staying focused, and being more able to continue to be present through crisis. That, maybe, is something that is also useful for other people as they're trying to figure out how to respond in this moment.
Rox: I say, you know, one of the things that we do is we stay in deep communication with one another as Core. And that is that every day. We are sending, sometimes hundreds of messages to each other on a Signal thread. So we're in this constant flow of communication. And then, as as we're able, coming together physically, I think, you mentioned just being in the room creates a certain thing. And I think when you get all five of us in the room, that's three times more energy than what Jason and I are producing. And I think that helps keep what we're trying to do working in this kind of pattern of knowledge building.
It's like quilting, right? We're building upon the knowledge of one another and supporting one another in our endeavors, like this shirt that I have on today. You know, I told my homie, like, I want a shirt that I can wear reflective of trans community, that signals to trans folks that their lives are valuable, too. And this is what he made me, right? And so we're constantly showing up for one another. One of our colleagues just had a book release, and I think four out of five of us — three out of five of us — were there, right? You know, Signe's gonna jump in the pool and swim with the Sirens, right, and do their synchronized swimming thing. And we're gonna show up.
Jason: She got a silver medal.
Rox: Oh, I mean, yeah, a gold medal too, right?
Damon: Oh, like, oh, that shit was...
Kiss: It was synchronized.
Rox: Right? You know, I'm frequently reading from Jason's book or Raffo's book or Mariame's book on my radio show, right? So we're constantly trying to put that knowledge and information out into community and resource ourselves. You know, keep filling up with knowledge about abolition and about how to be in community in connection with one another.
Kiss: I have one last question. So we're saying, we're talking, this ten-year commitment. We're halfway. Looking at these next five years. What skills do y'all hope...what skills, what roles, what abilities do y'all hope you as individuals, but as a collective, have to respond to crisis that you don't yet feel like you have now? Like, what's the skilling up still to happen for you?
Jason: You know, the dream is to be able to deal with active violence. You know, if we can be a group that can actually solve for violence-wise happening, where it's like shootings and stuff like that, that would be, you know, amazing, but we don't know. We don't know if we'll get to that.
So we've been saying, can we train another 900 people? Community is safer as a result. Even with the whole conversation on cigarettes and stuff, people talking through that, it just gives them more ideas and more things to work with. That's what it feels like our job is to do. Yeah, you can call us at certain times, but you can also text us now. So that was a part that built on to the hotline. Who be like, damn, y'all want to make it where we textable, too.
So we've had different iterations, but by the time we get to the finish line, we looking at the volume of calls, we looking at the number of people trained, and we looking at, um, you know, what has happened as a result, but we don't really have a destination. We just showing you can get a group of people together and you can figure it out and co-struggle over a long period of time. I mean, hopefully another group will say, we commit to 20 years, and we'll do it this way, and we'd like to see what happens there, and hopefully we could probably be around in some advisory roles. But this ten year, the next five, because we've been through a lot. I mean, five years, we've been through a lot, you know.
Damon: You're at that point where turning back is just as far as going ahead.
Jason: Absolutely.
Kiss: Shit, might as fix the hype.
Rox: Exactly, exactly. And because of the way that we've been in community, we really know that, that last year is about, like, sunsetting what is right now, right? So we know we got files and pictures, and, you know, we got the remnants of our experiment that need to get boxed up, that need to be archived, that need to be protected, right? So we know, really, we got four years of getting that training out into community. We have four years of responding back in a way when community calls us. We have four years to gather the stories of the impact that REP has made, and then we have a year to wrap that all in a nice little bow so that it's available for folks in the future if they want to use that knowledge and resource that information.
Damon: And we're hoping, you know, that this piece is a part of that archive and help. I do want to from that, that great question Daniel asked, and we'll wrap, i,...
Kiss: This is our third last question, for the record.
Jason: It's all good.
Damon: So, the premise I'm coming from is that you learn so much more about what is needed, about what you don't know, about where you're short from doing, right? So five years ago, there was this idea that many people have all over the world, all over the country, of, yes, we want to be in better community, yes, we want to respond to the warm, but many people want to get to being able to respond to the hot. And so y'all have been building for five years with the recognition of not yet having that capacity. Is it clearer now, what some of the obstacles, what some of the gaps, what that jump looks like, then you would have been able to say, five years ago? Like, oh, I now know to get there, we need to build up these things that we don't yet have.
Jason: And I think mainly is, it's like a legal piece in that, you know, somebody bloodied and it already, yeah, you know, man, so I think…
Damon: Certain liabilities.
Jason: Yeah, yeah. And, you know, of course, we working, like, not on a shoestring budget, but you know what I mean, like, probably a couple shoe strings. But we, we know that we gonna try and get to that point where people just know if you in a critical incident, like, like, we can't stress enough that being able to calm yourself down is like a critical. If you at ten and you hyped up over an incident, you gotta find a way to still be okay and move through it.
If we get people to that place, then we can start talking about, okay, now it's because I could see Harry doing an active shooter scenario, and we really working through that and figuring that out. I can see that. But when it's time to actually do it, when that phone really rings and it's like, they say, six people been shot somewhere, and we gotta try and get there to stop it, I just think, man, that's probably gonna just be philosophical rather than actual, taking the steps to do it. But we hope our work leaves room for people to say, man, we thank them for this ten years because now we gonna be able to do it way better in this way. So we might not be able to be the group that solves for active violence, but we hoping our work inspires the next group to be able to take it there.
Rox: I mean, I think, you know, the other part of that is the other side. Can we get folks the resources that they need so violence isn't the result, right? We're talking about responding to violence. But can we create systems to reduce the level of spikes in violence in individuals and communities?
Kiss: How can folks find y'all and your work in the ways you want to be found?
Rox: You know, we have an online presence. We're on the ‘gram, the “Instas.” You know, we have Facebook. We now have yard signs and QR codes, and so if you just, you know, put Relationships Evolving Possibilities in your search bar, you'll find us.
Kiss: As we close out. Just want to share our appreciation one more time for the — we've talked a lot about what it means to have presence and in the moments that we've gotten to spend with the two of y'all and with the work of REP overall over these last four years of doing this project — this has been a through line that we've learned so much from your experience, your presence, and the ways that you show up for each other. And so thank you for the openness, thank you for the consistency, thank you for the commitment. Thank you for being down to share with us.
Rox: Thank you.
Damon: All right, y'all it's time. This is what you've been waiting for.
Kiss: Forget that interview.
Damon: Yeah, we're hopping into the peer review.
Music: Hoping I don't offend on my peers.
Damon: And coming back into the lab, we have our partner in decriminalization, as always, Eva Nagao is with us. with us. Hey, Eva.
Eva: Hey y'all.
Kiss: And we're doing something a little bit different this season.
Damon: You know another peer.
Kiss: As much as we love — we have made one new friend in the last two years. We're so excited to be joined for the peer review all season by Deana Lewis. Deana is the host of the Stories for Power Podcast and daylights as a “logistizer.”
Damon: Also a guest on season two.
Kiss: Absolutely. Go back and listen. And we're excited to hear your thoughts coming out of each of the interviews this season. But I do have to ask, what the hell is a “logistisizer?”
Deana Lewis: A “logistisizer” is me.
Damon: Okay.
Deana: It's a person who is on top of logistics and does them really well.
Damon: Okay.
Deana: I mean, that's what I do.
Damon: Oh, you're like an X-man. You're like a...
Deana: Yes. That's my power.
Kiss: Relation to legit. Oh, you must be a mutant.
Deana: You have multiple calendars? What? [Playful]
Kiss: So let's go ahead and hop into it. What's jumping out to you, Deana, from this conversation with the folks at REP?
Deana: I wanted to start with talking about an example that one of the folks mentioned about protecting his sister from the folks in the neighborhood. It just shows how people have been practicing abolition for years and years and years, and it's just not named abolition. It's just named “every day, I'm doing this to protect my sister, I'm doing this to protect my community, my family.” I'm not calling the cops on those people. I am checking them to make sure that they're not bothering my sister anymore or that behavior is changed. That's a part of abolition. What we really want to focus on is the world that we want to build and to address harm when it happens.
Eva: I think we've talked so much in this podcast about what abolition is in real time. That is why we stepped into the studio to show these snapshots of community-based projects that, you know, we take as part of the abolitionist project, but are really just people being people as they have always been. And so I think that in a world where people are coming to abolition from a theoretical standpoint, or as like a buzzy word that they hear, as something that like attracted people in the era of defund police, it's really helpful to think of abolition as a culmination of practices and ways of being — that these are the things that we're seeing in community that we want to uplift, to replace the carceral system, but this is not in reaction to the carceral system. These are, these are things that people have been doing, you know, for our entire lives and many lifetimes before us.
Damon: And hearing you say that is like we need new organizational structures. But it's not that we need new tools, right? We may need to scale up in the tools that we've had and obviously…
Kiss: And define the tool.
Damon: And there are new things. I'm not trying to push against the new but, like, that we have so much of what we're saying we want to be instituted into day to day life, like, what does it mean to walk your siblings home like that is a memory culturally, through multiple communities that like that makes sense of, how do we then extrapolate from that practice?
Kiss: Right. And I think, for so often, the pushback there is, like, well, what happens when that isn't enough, right? Like, what happens when something still happens? When you're walking? And that is a good question…
Damon: Yeah.
Kiss: But it doesn't de-legitimize the fact that you're walking your siblings home and that's helping keep them safe.
Damon: Yeah. And how do we — not to be too hokey — but like, treat the world more like our siblings?
Kiss: You know? How do we walk everyone home?
Damon: Yeah.
Deana: Yeah. And also, we also have to ask why we have to walk our siblings home. Like, why can't they walk on their own? Maybe they're too young. There's that, but also what's happening in our communities that we need to actually step up and address so that everyone can walk safely through whatever streets when they want to?
Kiss: Yeah, it reminds me of the story that Jason told about them, like, pulling up at that apartment complex to try to intervene and trying to basically convince people they weren't there to punish them, but also trying to, like, suss out what is the right move here — those types of, like, self-reflective questionings in the midst of crisis, is not a muscle that we often feel comfortable because the stakes are and feel so high. And, so, I think for me, hearing that example from them, of like, yeah, we fumbled through —we tried to figure it out, we tried to make clear what our values were and our commitment to walking someone home each day in whatever that looks like that —that's what we have to offer.
We might not have the perfect way to do it, the best plan, but what we have is the commitment, and that was so clear. I mean, this idea of this ten year commitment that they made together. I've never heard someone describe it that way. You know, you might work a job for ten years. You might end up doing something for ten years, but to sit down at jump and say, we don't know what this will look like, but we are in it for, like, a substantial portion of time, through the ups and downs, as a crew. I feel like that's made so much possible for them, and it's a good lesson of, like, sometimes even if you don't have all the answers, you got to commit.
Damon: That, by far, was the biggest takeaway, this notion of formal commitment. And I think having that long time frame, which means we don't have to have it all figured out right now, but also this is not our initial starting point, right? Like we all have —I'm saying we pretending to be part of REP, embodying them, their voice — we all have five to seven years of not just experience. Our experience is longer than that, experience with each other. We've seen a lot of people who want to get started in movement space and like, want to be the ultimate thing already at their starting point. And like, what this lesson offers is, like, you need some experience to come into such a responsibility, but then it can't be happenstance. It can't be just dipping your toe in the water, like you have to actually jump in, and hearing what they are able to build from saying, “We know we're doing a decade, and we know that we're gonna sunset,” it just was, like the most moving lesson that I think I want people to take from it.
Kiss: Yeah, it felt new to me. Have you ever heard someone describe that kind of commitment like that?
Deana: I haven't, you know. From the outset, that really stuck out to me, too. In my day job, we brought Bettina Love... She talked about how conservative funders fund organizations for ten, 20, years, and how that can make a massive difference in an organization. Because if you have that funding, you can do so many different things. You can succeed, you can fail. You can iterate on that. You can take something old, put a new twist on it, and you have that comfort of knowing that you can make those mistakes, and that's like on the right.
Whereas for folks on the left, we're going after funding for nine months, a year, sometimes we can get funding for three to five years, which is amazing, and I'm not hating on any leftist, progressive or liberal funders, but it's harder to do that type of iteration. It's harder to make mistakes and be okay with making mistakes if we know we only have a year of funding. And so when REP was saying we're in this for ten years, I was so excited, because they can make mistakes, they can fail, they can get up, dust themselves off, and do something different. I hope that when REP gets to ten years and they look back, that they recognize that little ripples in the community with the people that they've talked to, that they've supported, that they've worked with, has made huge changes in those people's lives.
Kiss: Yeah, I think it's a great lesson for navigating the day to day crisis that we're all confronting, which is, you know, the theme of the season. These fights are generational. They're multi-generational. The crises are urgent and day to day. And so our challenge — should we choose to accept it — is to hold like both of those at the same time of, like, we need to make sure that as few people get pulled away off the streets as possible, and we need to understand that this is bigger than a year, an election cycle. We're working on larger trajectories, so trying to hold both of those at the same time because that's really what they've learned how to do, right, is say we have these ten years, we're not going anywhere, and what are we doing this week to try to protect each other?
Eva: A guiding ethos that REP follows is this phrase that they use. It's, "love you to your next step." And they're talking about, you know, standing beside people in their moments of crisis and their moments of doing harm, of experiencing harm. But I really, I think of REP as a whole, and this ten-year trajectory, this ten year finite period, as a period where they are loving this community to the next step. It's going to be a torch that they hand off. And so I really love thinking of the organization as loving the community to the next step.
And there are people out there who are going to be doing this no matter what. You know, Jason had such a passionate rant when we were talking and he was like, “Eva, you know, like, we're so lucky to have what we do. The funding that we've gotten has enabled us to, like, really make this an actual experiment. And if all of that, if the bottom dropped out today, I've got hoodies in the back of my car, and I'm selling them to make sure that we have the, like, street supply kits that I'm going to be bringing to the homies, you know, this weekend.” And so it is just this, this unrelenting commitment. And I think that it's a disservice to lift up like these examples without saying the toll that that unrelenting commitment takes, like, what it looks like is having a trunk full of hoodies that you're ready to commit your time to selling if, like things don't go right with the funders today.
Kiss: I love that: community safety out the trunk…
Eva: This is where we drop our merch.
Damon: So, really love that idea of next step because, one, it showed how they, like, maneuvered through different approaches of, like, are we moving through system navigation, or is it a hotline versus a warm line? And in some ways, this acceptance of, like, we are not here to figure out all problems, or we are not promising to, like, be an eraser that can rectify every struggle to completion, but what we are doing literally is like that next step is literally your next breath. And the emphasis they had on somatic work, I think, was really important because as somebody who values the somatic practice and like, understand why it's needed, sometimes I minimize it's like, oh, we need to, as practitioners, ground up somatically, so that we can do these other things. And actually it's like what the presence is is to help people breathe through conflict, because the stresses, the traumas, the fissures that we're experiencing, affect our bodies in a way where we can't be physiologically, like our full self. And so just to show up and, like, here's water, here's a piece of breath that we're gonna share together is such a powerful step.
You know what that next step really is? And you know the timing of when we had this conversation, I think was really important. You know, we think of these practices often as, like, moving where we don't want the state to be, or where the state is not. But at the time, the week that we were coming, ICE had a major raid in their community, and folks showed up to this restaurant en masse to support, and what they named was, like, this was not a REP action. There are so many people that we trained to respond to community crisis that then were prepared for this contestation with the state, right.
And so in this time where fascism on the rise, they're building literal concentration camps, the practices that we are needing to build up, to skill up to take care of our people, are actually going to equip us to defend our people because it's not just about who we can't call. It's also people are getting called on our folks, and we need to be prepared to show up in new ways that weren't the norm a few years ago.
Kiss: Yeah, and who do we know we can call? Yeah, that was the question then, and it's the question now. Beautiful. All right, let's get on out of here. We're so excited to continue to chat through this whole season. But Deana, if — in between now and next episode — people want to hear more of your wonderful musings and wonderful voice, where can they find your podcast?
Deana: Why thank you for gassing me up like that.
Sound Effect: Car starting.
Deana: So our podcast Stories for Power can be found wherever you get your podcasts. We take a journey across local communities as we explore the last 25 years or so of building community, accountability, transformative justice and abolitionist practice.
Kiss: Oh, our listeners aren't going to be interested in that at all.
Deana: Gross.
Kiss: Beautiful. So that's available wherever they get their pods.
Deana: Yep.
Kiss: Make sure that while you're wherever you get your pods, you subscribe, review all the good things for One Million Experiments. Catch One Million Experiments the film available now on Apple TV, Google Play, YouTube movies.
Damon: And here's the thing: we toured the film last year, and there's a lot of One Million Experiments podcast fans who didn't know we do another podcast. So also go check out Airgo — A, I, R, G, O — wherever you get your podcast. Me and Daniel continue a lot of these movement-based conversations with some incredible folks.
Kiss: And we did not commit upfront to ten years, but we have been doing that for ten years this summer. So if you're in the ten-year commitment celebration, we're right there with you. Eva, where can folks find all the good work of Interrupting Criminalization?
Eva: You can find IC at interruptingcriminalization.org, and interruptcrim on socials. You can also find REP at repformn.org, or on the socials at repformn.
Kiss: What a great way to kick off this season three, crisis edition, and we're excited to hop back into the lab with y'all soon.
Damon: Much love to the people.
Kiss: Peace.