# data[].attributes.headline
We Have Already Stopped Calling The Cops

# data[].attributes.subject
We Have Already Stopped Calling The Cops

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
We Have Already Stopped Calling The Cops

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‎Why Is This Happening? with Chris Hayes: REVISITED: Abolishing Prisons with Mariame Kaba on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
‎If you want to understand the conversation around abolishing the police, you should start here. We can't think of a better time for an encore presentation of this 2019 episode with Mariame Kaba on how to radically rethink our approach to public safety and what it would look like if we got rid of the...

# data[].attributes.headline
To Stop Police Violence We Need Better questions and Bigger Demands

# data[].attributes.subject
To Stop Police Violence We Need Better questions and Bigger Demands

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
To Stop Police Violence, We Need Better Questions and Bigger Demands

# data[].attributes.headline
It's Not Civil Disobedience If You Ask for Permission

# data[].attributes.subject
It's Not Civil Disobedience If You Ask for Permission

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
It_s Not Civil Disobedience If You Ask For Permission

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Counting Crime: A Lecture on the Politics of Crime Data and Its Uses

# data[].attributes.headline
What Does Justice Look Like For Survivors?

# data[].attributes.subject
What Does Justice Look Like For Survivors?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
What Does Justice Look Like for Survivors?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Organizing 101 - Activism vs. Organizing

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Announcer: Hey, just a warning before we get started: this episode of Resistance has some strong language in it.

Saidu Tejan Thomas Jr.: When people all around the world started going outside and protesting, I'm kind of ashamed to say that I was on my couch playing video games. I was tossing touchdowns in one game, then shooting people's heads off in another, and the most I raised my voice for anything was to talk trash to my friends over a headset.

Saidu: But it was during one of these games that my boy asked me "Yo, did you hear about what happened to George Floyd?'' I hadn't yet. But these days, your homies don't ask if you've heard what happened to a Black man you've never heard of unless that man is already dead. And I really wasn't trying to hear that.

Saidu: And I know that it's important and necessary to talk about these things when they happen, but I just didn't want to have to think about that all the time. I just didn't have the capacity for it. So I just shook my head and told him, "Damn, dawg. That's crazy." And I went back to trash talking.

Saidu: A couple days later though as the protests got more intense, I kept thinking about this. And I convinced myself that the reason I wasn't out there protesting was because I didn't want to catch coronavirus. Or maybe it was self-care or some shit like that. And I think those are valid points. But in all honesty, I know that I stayed on my couch because for me, I didn't think there was much use in fighting any more.

Saidu: When I was in college, I went to some of the first Black Lives Matter protests in my city. I remember shouting the names of Trayvon and Tamir and Sandra and Akai and countless others, until I lost my voice to tears. I remember crying on my friend's shoulders, spitting in the direction of cops. I waved signs, led chants, stopped traffic, wrote poems. It felt like I did everything, but it didn't stop this shit from continuing. So when this new movement met me on my couch, it low-key met in a kind of surrender.

Saidu: As the weeks went by though, I couldn't help but read some articles about what happened to George Floyd, and the many ways people were standing up against it. And I kept seeing in story after story, a common theme taking over the headlines. Like, "Teen Girls Organized Nashville's Largest Protest." Or "The Black Youth Leading the George Floyd Protests."

Saidu: It wasn't all that surprising that young people were at the vanguard of this new movement. Aren't we always? Like, I think of Marcus Garvey, Bayard Rustin, Assata Shakur, Angela Davis, and a whole lot of other people. By the time they were in their early- to mid-20s, they were already getting busy and shaking things up.

Saidu: But I was surprised at myself. Because when I looked at those headlines about this new generation of activists and organizers, my first question wasn't, "Wow, how are they gonna shake things up?" My first question was, "Wow, how are they gonna keep this up?" How are they not gonna end up like me, 27, on the couch, tired of yelling, and trying to drown out their anger and frustration in a video game?

Saidu: So that's what this show is about. A thing I keep hearing over and over again is: This time is different. But like, how? Other than the fact that a bunch of white people are protesting for the first time, how is this time different for young Black and brown people who are once again offering themselves up to fight? Because as the streets clear and folks return to work, and there isn't a pandemic forcing people to pay attention anymore, what will have really changed for us?

Saidu: In this first episode, we're gonna to hear the story of a 22 year old who thinks a lot can change from this moment. And in fact, this summer has already put him on a completely different life path, different from the one he imagined for himself just a few months ago. His name is Chi. Chi Osse.

Saidu: When I called him up, Chi was with his stylist Brandon. I'll explain later why he has a stylist, but for now Chi wants to know what we're gonna call this show.
Brandon Tan: He thinks the show should be called Resistance? Hmm.
Saidu: From Gimlet, I'm Saidu Tejan Thomas Jr., and this is Resistance. That's a good name, right?

Saidu: I've been following Chi for months now. And like a lot of people, Chi had never been to a protest before George Floyd was killed. He was a typical 22-year-old city kid. He was going to clubs, traveling, and he was really into fashion. But when the protests kicked off in New York City, Chi joined them almost right away.

Saidu: Chi had no idea what he was in for.
[[INSTAGRAM CLIP: Get away from us! Get away from us! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God!] INSTAGRAM CLIP: Sierra, be careful! Be careful, be careful!]
Saidu: In Chi's Instagram video from his very first day of protesting, you can hear him crying from behind the camera. You can tell that he really did not expect things to go as far as they did.

Saidu: Chi and the other protesters were chanting all kinds of things at the cops, "Hands up, don't shoot," "Fuck the police," and also ...

[ INSTAGRAM CLIP: NYPD, suck my dick! NYPD, suck my dick! NYPD, suck my dick! NYPD, suck my dick!]

Saidu: If you watch all of Chi's videos from those first days of protesting, it's really wild to see just how quickly he took to all of this. I mean, on day one he was crying in shorts, But on day two, the man looks like he's ready for battle.

Saidu: And by day three-day three, mind you-he looks like a seasoned revolutionary. He's in Times Square, he's on a stage in the middle of a sea of people, holding a microphone, chanting and getting the crowd hyped up. And the thing is, people are actually listening.

[ INSTAGRAM CLIP: Everybody! They are trying to strike fear in our hearts! If they don't kneel with us, they are fucking against us. Don't let them break you! Be peaceful, don't break. They want us to break. If we break, we give them what they fucking want. No justice! No peace! No justice! No peace! No justice! No peace!]

Saidu: For three weeks, Chi went out in his beret. He marched through Bed Stuy and downtown Brooklyn, through lower Manhattan to Midtown to Harlem. It was like protesting had become a way to channel his anger and frustration into something productive. Once he started, he couldn't stop.

Saidu: Chi began noticing some familiar faces who were showing up every day, too. It was about 12 of them, and most were around the same age as him-early- to mid-20s-and they were always at the front of the protests where he was. Chi tells me they're all the kind of people who are the loudest in their friend groups, just like him. So they exchanged numbers, started a Signal chat, and pretty quickly they formed a collective. They called it Warriors in the Garden.

Saidu: The Warriors started organizing their own protests, which got them a lot of media attention. And in the days and weeks that followed, Chi and his friends were in the New York Times, in Vogue, Buzzfeed, NBC, and a bunch of other publications too. 60 Minutes even asked to follow them around. Suddenly it kind of felt like you were seeing Chi and the Warriors in the Garden everywhere.

[ INSTAGRAM CLIP: This is Warriors In The Garden. And we've been out here. We've been out here. Nearly every goddamn day fighting for our fucking rights. Are we gonna slow down? I couldn't hear that. Are we gonna slow down? No!]

Saidu: In just a few weeks, Chi had become one of the faces of youth-led protests happening all across New York.

Saidu: One day, Chi got a text from his auntie, and they started talking about what he'd been up to. And she was like, protesting is good and all, but it's voting that counts. That's how you get things done. And she challenged him. She said, "Do you even know who your city council members are?"

Saidu: And as he researched, he learned who his city council member is, and he also learned that that guy wouldn't be running for re-election in 2021. There was gonna be an empty seat. And Chi wanted that seat to be filled by a political newcomer, a young blood if you will, a fresh face, someone who wouldn't take money from police unions and special interests, someone who knew how to galvanize young voters and do it with a lot of style too. Someone who's been out here in these streets. And Chi knew just the person for the job. He texted his auntie back.

Saidu: That happened on Monday. On Wednesday, I'm in his campaign office. He already has a campaign office.

Saidu: Here's the thing about trying to pull off something like this when you're 22: You and everyone else around you probably have the time, especially during a pandemic. So as soon as Chi decided he wanted to run for office, members of Warriors in the Garden and other folks he'd met while protesting started finding ways to help. One of them hit up a contact, and within 20 minutes they had an office. A few days later there we were, walking in for their first ever campaign meeting.

Saidu: It's Chi's first time seeing the space, and the first thing we both notice immediately is the bright colors painted everywhere. On the walls and all over the floor, red, yellow, purple, blue. It low-key looked like one of those McDonald's playpens with the colorful balls, you know the ones you'd jump into as a kid? Like that. But someone tells us it's actually an art space. We get settled in.

Saidu: There's about eight of us in the room, and everyone grabs something to sit on: a wooden crate, an office chair that leans way too far back, whatever's available, really. And folks form a circle and start introducing themselves.

Saidu: There's Cindy, the campaign adviser and speechwriter, Paul the campaign manager, Joseph the legislative researcher, Treat the web designer, Nick the graphic designer and Brandon the stylist. Chi would later tell me that his staff is still in flux, he's still figuring out the team. But that day, his staff had a lot to get through.

Saidu: One of the members of Chi's staff points out that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is in the DSA-The Democratic Socialists of America. And that settles it. They'll be DSA too. From the first moment I talked to Chi, he told me he wanted to build a grassroots movement, something that says stylish and young but also hella serious about change. And in this moment I can see why. That's part of how AOC won her election. She built a grassroots movement, and she did it without sacrificing her cool, don't-take-no-shit-from-nobody Bronx attitude. She's literally interrogating Republicans in Congress one day, and putting on Timbs to go grab bodega sandwiches with Desus and Mero the next. And she's bad. But it's not just AOC, right? Chi knows that right now being young and Black or brown and progressive and in power all at the same damn time is more possible than ever. Right now, you can be from a neighborhood just like Chi's and look just like him and win.

Saidu: He has that going for him. But if he is gonna win, he still has a lot to figure out. So for the next two hours, his staff goes over what they need to be considering for their run. Like, what should their domain name be?

Saidu: Should they pay for professional email addresses?

Saidu: What color scheme should they use on their fliers?

Saidu: How will they receive donations?

Saidu: Is the team diverse enough?

Saidu: Oh and yeah, what about the beret?

Saidu: There's also the matter of social media. His campaign adviser, Cindy, suggests that they go through all his accounts for anything that will make him look bad.

Saidu: Like a lot of people his age, Chi grew up online. And if he ever said anything offensive or stupid when he was a kid, he probably said it on the internet. But kid or not, he really wants to make sure he doesn't get in his own way once he starts running. And it's not just his behavior online that his team wants to talk about, it's also his behavior in real life.

Saidu: Remember this?

[ INSTAGRAM CLIP: NYPD, suck my dick! NYPD, suck my dick! NYPD, suck my dick!]

Saidu: So Chi and his team have to figure out what to do about that, if they even should do anything about that, if they even think it's a problem. Chi starts taking suggestions from his staff.

Saidu: He's not even an official politician yet, and Chi's already having to think about the ways he might need to compromise. Earlier, on our way to the office, he told me he didn't know how long he'd be in politics, but he knew one thing: the second he felt like he had to compromise, he'd be done. So I grabbed him for a second and asked him how he felt about this moment.

Saidu: After the meeting, Chi looks drained. It's been a long couple hours, it's been a long couple of weeks, but there's a lot longer to go. The election isn't until 2021. And at this point, there's some stuff he's figured out. He knows he wants to fight police brutality by defunding the police. He knows he wants to end qualified immunity for police officers-a legal doctrine that makes it nearly impossible to sue cops. And he knows he wants to fight gentrification in the neighborhood where he grew up, in Crown Heights and Bed Stuy. But the fact is, he's still learning the basics.

Saidu: A couple days later, it's Juneteenth. The big day. The day Chi plans to announce his candidacy. His speechwriter, Cindy, has prepared a speech for him, and he's rehearsing it in the campaign office.

Saidu: When we come back, Chi the political candidate steps into the light.

Saidu: What's good y'all? Welcome back. At this point in the story, it's been three weeks and four days since police killed George Floyd. In some places there are still protests raging on, but in others they've definitely started to die down. And a big question for people who care about seeing change is: What's the next move? For Chi, the answer is local politics. Just three weeks after protesting for the first time ever in his life, he decided to run for city council.

Saidu: It's Juneteenth, and we're back at his campaign office. Chi's gonna kick off his run by taking part in a Zoom forum on police brutality, with a lot of big names in New York politics in attendance. This is the first time he's had a seat at the table, and he wants to prove that he's not just about pointing out what's wrong with the system, he also has ideas about how to make it better.

Saidu: His campaign manager watches the video call on his laptop from the opposite side of the table, ready to communicate to Chi in whispers or hand gestures if needed. Chi looks focused, he stares at his own screen, he plays with his fingers a little while waiting for the meeting to start.

Saidu: There's a lot of seasoned people speaking on this panel: the leader of the New York County Democrats, a rep from New York's Civilian Complaint Review Board, a sitting city council member and a few other public servants who've been in the game for years. Members of the community are watching, typing questions into the chat box. When the moderator calls on Chi, he's ready.

Saidu: Chi goes on to talk about the ways he's using social media to capture the protests and document police brutality. And it seems like it's going pretty well. A few faces that appear on the display screen are nodding in agreement to the things he's saying. His campaign manager flashes him a thumbs up. After Chi finishes introducing himself, he starts talking in a way I haven't really heard him talk before.

Saidu: Like, I heard that and my first reaction was like, what? What is initiative 760-A, 202626-what is that? This is the moment where I was like, oh shit, this man's been doing his homework. This isn't just about berets and looking good for him, he's actually got receipts and he isn't afraid to show them. Like, seeing this level of dedication, I honestly felt bad about myself. While I'd been on my couch trying to unlock new weapons in a video game, here was Chi leveling up, and preparing to speak directly to the people who can make change, and telling them exactly how to do it.

Saidu: Chi wraps it up.

Saidu: His campaign manager does a little dance. Whispers, "You killed it!"

Saidu: Now it's time to go to the streets. To stop the code switching and leave the adults, to go be with his people. It's finally time for Chi to announce his candidacy to the thousands of young folks he's been protesting with for the past month. Juneteenth marches have already begun across the city and we have to catch up. So we grab our things and head from his office in Bed Stuy across the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan to join the rest of the Warriors in the Garden in Washington Square Park. And the closer we get, the more I can tell it's where Chi really wants to be.

Saidu: I spent all of Juneteenth with Chi. We walked from lower Manhattan to Washington Square Park, then marched with a crowd of about 4,000 people all the way up to the center of Central Park. If you're not familiar with New York, that's about 83 streets or four hours of walking. And goddamn, I was tired. For the first time in my life my hips hurt. I guess my video game playing hips hadn't quite made the switch back to protest hips just yet. And that shit was upsetting!

Saidu: And I kept looking at Chi and the other Warriors in the Garden members. And they looked like they were fine, like they were just beginning and they weren't tired at all. The only time I saw one of them take a break was to cry, and I saw Chi hold her until she got it all out. Then he said something I assume was comforting for her, and just like that they were back to chanting and marching and dancing again. I grabbed one of the Warriors in the Garden, a young guy in his early 20s named Joseph Martinez, and I asked him how long he'd been at this.

Saidu: Joseph is out here, along with a bunch of other early 20-somethings fighting for change. But I asked some of the other Warriors in the Garden what they would be doing if they weren't out protesting. Marvyn Williams said on a Friday evening like this, he'd probably be enjoying a drink and hanging with his dog, Brago. D-wreck Ingram told me he'd be doing push-ups on his roof, trying to stay in shape during quarantine. Kiara Williams said she'd be planning a sleepover with her friends. And Chi said he'd be home, binge-watching every season of Ozark on Netflix until he falls asleep. And I wanted to ask Joseph, do you wish you were just back getting girls and doing musicals? Do you wish you didn't have to be out here? But before I can ask, he gets a call on his walkie talkie. Another organizer needs his help. He darts into the crowd to answer the call.

Saidu: Finally, we make it to Central Park. And after a long day of chanting, marching and two false starts, Chi is about to give his speech. It's night time. There's a makeshift podium set up in the middle of the great lawn with a few portable flood lights shining towards it.

Saidu: I grab Chi for a second before he speaks. And he tells me he's calling an audible. That speech he was rehearsing earlier in the day? He's not gonna read it.

Saidu: His friend D-wreck gives him a pep talk. He tells Chi, "Wake these people up." The historian who's up there right now is just going on and on and on.

Saidu: Chi steps into the light, and the first thing he does is starts chanting.

Saidu: If you didn't catch that at the very end, Chi says he's going to win. Now I can't tell you how viable his campaign is, or how many of the people around him will still be supporting him this time next year when the election rolls around. I can't even tell you if he'll even make it to the election, or if he'll burn out the way I did. But watching Chi speak so confidently about the future, and hearing the crowd of applause that's backing him? Shit, I believed him. After all, he did get me off my couch.
-30-
Saidu: Thanks for listening to this first episode of Resistance. Resistance is produced by Bethel Habte, Wallace Mack, Aaron Randle and Kimmie Regler. Our production assistant is Sandra Riano. Our supervising producer is Sarah McVeigh. We're edited by Lynn Levy, Lydia Polgreen and Brendan Klinkenberg. Mixing, scoring and theme by Bobby Lord. Fact checking is by Michelle Harris. Our show art is by Darien Birks of The Stuyvesants. Good looks, homie.

Credits music is Lockdown by Anderson Paak.

Saidu: And special thanks to Liz Fulton, Jessie Harte, Jen Hahn, Clara Sankey, Sarah Abando, Dan Behar, Rosa Oh, Kimu Elolia, Jonathan Goldstein, Emmanuel Dzotsi, Meg Driscoll, Dr. Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Alex Blumberg, Chenjerai Kumanyika, PJ Voigt, Matthew Nelson, Chuma Osse, Gabby Bulgarelli, Emanuele Berry, Brittany Luse, Eric Eddings, Sheri Rickson and Yarminiah Rosa.

Saidu: Oh, and one last thing: Did you know you can vote before Nov 3rd in most states? To find out how, go to playyourpart.ballotready.org. Please, please do that. Resistance is a Spotify original podcast and Gimlet production. See y'all next week.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Announcer: Hey, just a warning before we get started: this episode of Resistance has some strong language in it. Saidu Tejan Thomas Jr.: When people all around the world started going outside and protesting, I'm kind of ashamed to say that I was on my couch playing video games.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In this episode, Prentis sits down with podcast host, doula, pleasure-activist, and writer, Adrienne Maree Brown, to discuss the moment in which we find ourselves, the futures that we can make possible, and the gift of satisfaction. Take a listen as these two friends look both inward and outward at the potential for a more just reality.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
ep 2: visioning with adrienne maree brown

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‎Finding Our Way: Ep 2: Visioning with adrienne maree brown on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
‎In this episode, Prentis sits down with podcast host, doula, pleasure-activist, and writer, Adrienne Maree Brown, to discuss the moment in which we find ourselves, the futures that we can make possible, and the gift of satisfaction. Take a listen as these two friends look both inward and outward at...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
For The Wild presents as an offering of curated episodes from the archives intended to share perspective and guidance in the midst of a time of tremendous uncertainty and possibility.

We invite you to join us on Fridays to hear seeds of wisdom from the weavers of transformation and mobilizers of personal and cultural shift featured in Homebound. We hope that this may serve as a North Star as we all traverse through our grief and fear that accompany this perplexing time fraught with shattering of systemic injustices alongside opportunities to co-create the world anew.

This week we are delighted to re-share our first episode with brontë velez on Embodying the Revolution, originally aired in 2018. brontë, a dear friend of For The Wild, poetically guides us through an expansive exploration of critical ecology, radical imagination, and decomposition as rebellion. brontë encourages us to examine our relationship to place and space, the unmaking of literacy, the decomposition of violence and the prioritization of Black wellness.

Many of us are feeling pulled in this time, towards grief, towards urgency...towards feelings of helplessness. This week we invite you to shatter these repetitions and take a moment of intentional slowness to ask:

How can I decompose violence in this life?

Are urgency and intentionality compatible?

What are the vessels that will carry us through these troubled times?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Homebound: Embodying the Revolution with brontë velez - FOR THE WILD

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
brontë, a dear friend of For The Wild, poetically guides us through an expansive exploration of critical ecology, radical imagination, and decomposition as rebellion. brontë encourages us to examine our relationship to place and space, the unmaking of literacy, the decomposition of violence and the

# data[].attributes.headline
Community Organizing as a Spiritual Practice

# data[].attributes.subject
Community Organizing as a Spiritual Practice

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Krista Tippett, host: I hear the word "love" rising in our time - a question of what love can mean as a practical public good and the only thing big enough to meet the "hate" we've come to treat so seriously in our midst. Love is the most reliable muscle of human transformation. And Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson are young, visionary models and teachers of this. They're picking up the call to love that drove the civil rights generation of their parents, and showing how it would pragmatically transmute justice, power, nonviolence, and community organizing now.

[ music: "Seven League Boots" by Zoë Keating]

Rami Nashashibi: I've developed a course about community organizing as a spiritual practice, because I think there was a lot in this idea of beginning with the notion that we all have a stake in this, and the returning citizens, the brothers on the corners, the young, we - I think, from the justice standpoint, one of the things that we think about a lot in the context of language is this idea of calling out and calling up. For us, doing that at granular spaces like the corner store make it real.

Lucas Johnson: I think that there's this place where we have a responsibility to hold to the power of love that we know to be true and to not allow the world around us to deaden that in ourselves.

I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being.

This conversation unfolded at the 2018 On Being Gathering at the 1440 Multiversity, among the redwoods of Scotts Valley, California. Since this conversation, Lucas Johnson has joined On Being as executive director of our Civil Conversations Project.

Ms. Tippett: We have an hour now with Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson. Rami is the founder and leader of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, known as IMAN. It's the Southwest side of Chicago, to be precise.

Mr. Nashashibi: South Side.

Ms. Tippett: So it is, I would say, a holistic approach to presence and healing in the inner city, through the lens, through the approach of working with - initially, when you started at a very young age - Muslim young people and families in crisis or who were vulnerable in the inner city. And yes, for the Muslim community, but the broader Muslim community and all of the communities they interact with every day. And Lucas - oh, I also want to say about Rami - I need to mention that he just got a MacArthur genius award. But I'm not - yeah.

But I am not a whit more impressed with him than I was before, because I always knew.

And Lucas is the international coordinator of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation, which is a century-old reconciliation and peace-building organization, which was created in response to the horrors of war in the early 20th century, founded in 1914. And it is still in 48 countries. And that is actually how I met Lucas in the first place - through Vincent Harding, one of our great elders, who I was so fortunate to interview before he died. And he said to me, "Lucas embodies this for this coming generation." And I don't know if this is the right place to start, but here we are, thinking about elders and teachers and the lineage. For both of you - Lucas, you as a Christian, and Rami, you as a Muslim - both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X are really important teachers. You both look to both of them a lot.

I see that happening - I see both of their voices rising up - and yet, I think, in their lifetimes they were seen as - I don't know if they were contrasting figures, but they were separate paths. And I feel like, for the two of you, this is also part of this wholeness that your generation is claiming. They were also both assassinated. And I feel like King gets quoted at me every ten minutes right now, and that is so fascinating. We forget that in his lifetime - and Rami, you talk a lot about when he came to Chicago, he was not everybody's hero. So there's something beautiful about this - and interesting about how their voices, their lives, their teachings transcend the way they died, even the way they were held in this culture in their lifetimes. I just wonder if you would talk a little bit about that - what the two of them mean to you, and the two of them, together.

Mr. Nashashibi: Lucas? The Baptist preacher should start.

I would feel wrong starting that, giving that response.

Rev. Johnson: [ laughs] Really? Really Rami?

Where do I begin? One of the benefits of learning from Vincent Harding and the other elders of the movement that he introduced and brought into my life was that I got a chance to understand the complexity of brothers Martin and Malcolm from people who knew them. And I got a chance to appreciate the extent to which they wrestled. And I think that we tend to look at those two in these kind of stagnant ways, in these un-nuanced ways that don't do their lives, and their struggles and wrestling, justice.

And this is the 50th year of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, the anniversary, and I think about the fact that in '67, he had famously come out in opposition to the Vietnam War. I think about the fact that he delivered that speech on April 4. It was a year to the day that he was killed. He was moving in this direction where he was trying to deal with these structural issues of violence in our country, the "edifice which produces beggars," he said, both in his speech "Beyond Vietnam" and also, in his speech -

Ms. Tippett: Yeah, that you need to be a Good Samaritan, but you also need to ask ...

Rev. Johnson: Transform the Jericho Road so that men and women aren't constantly beaten and robbed as they make their way along life's journey. To change the edifice that produces beggars is what he called us to. It's interesting, because I think that Brother Malcolm, in some ways, was very much, also, engaged in that edifice-changing work. He was traveling to the United Nations, trying to get other states to hold the United States accountable to its treatment of its black citizens. And he understood that there was a structural thing that needed to be dealt with.

And so both were committed to this work of personal transformation, but they also knew that there was this structural change at work that was necessary. They've both been profoundly important to my life.

Mr. Nashashibi: We were talking earlier, when we ran into each other, about some of the stuff that I've been thinking about recently. The legacy of both continue to really animate so much of who I am and what I'm grateful for and the edifice upon which we do all our work and has been a nonstop engagement. The legacy of the Nation of Islam, the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm, Imam Jamil Al-Amin, SNCC, and all of that woke me up as a kid. It's what thrust me into an awareness of who I was as a child of Palestinian refugees, connected my struggle to black struggle, connected my struggle to brown struggle - particularly in those younger years, fueled by the fire and couldn't get enough of it and looked for it - and I think, at that point, quite frankly, Martin Luther King wasn't relevant to me. I didn't have a way to connect to that legacy as much. As a Muslim, I saw the transcendent global connectivity that was just awe-inspiring for me that came out of the movement that helped to incubate Malcolm.

Ms. Tippett: And which he was so motivated, animated by, at the end of his life - that global...

Mr. Nashashibi: Absolutely, the global piece, the ability to see struggles in others. The ways in which, I think, that still, till today, are really underappreciated about the larger Muslim tradition in the United States. Malcolm and that legacy was a portal through which - in many ways, it began to symbolize the utter defiance of "No, we are human beings. And we are full human beings. We are spiritually connected to a global history." And that was powerful.

But I think as I evolved in the work, both the legacy of King and, then, another kind of dimension of Malcolm, for me, began to intersect in a very powerful way. A part of Malcolm that, till today, I think, people, again, don't really appreciate - the person who was constantly struggling, constantly evolving, the very human Malcolm. We are close to his daughters, and - Ilyasah is one of them. And when Ilyasah comes to our event and smiles, you see the smile of Malcolm. Malcolm is often made out to be this mad militant. And this was a person who had an extraordinary humor, had an extraordinary humanity, and was, again, constantly evolving, taking extraordinary risks in his own spiritual exploration.

And that is part of the King legacy that I find the most fascinating, that, again, I think, we don't hear about. I just finished Where Do We Go from Here, which is that last book he wrote. And again, like "Beyond Vietnam," it is filled with a King who is wrestling with his own legacy and how it was being captured, even in 1967. King was problematizing "I Have a Dream" before he died. And he was saying, "Listen, what we're asking for now, it's a harder sacrifice, and we don't hear as many people coming out in the streets. We're asking for equity."

He was talking about, basically, a living wage. He was talking about a fundamental, radical restructuring of the economic system in the United States about basic equity. One of the moments in that book that I found fascinating was a chapter called "Black Power." It's King saying, "I don't subscribe completely to the totality of what Black Power is expressing," but in this entire chapter, he spends a lot of time trying to explain the urgency of Black Power to the liberal white reader. And again, I found it a moment that both - for me, it's King wrestling: "I acknowledge all of the claims of Black Power. I feel it; I see it; I've experienced it. But I'm still calling us to something greater as a nation, as a people and a world." And that resonates really profoundly with me.

[ music: "First Encounters" by Victor Bermon]

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, with Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson.

Ms. Tippett: I want to talk to the two of you about language that we need and, I think, people in this room by and large love but which also has become problematic and simplified - words like "peace" and "justice." Again, I feel like Rami, what you're doing with IMAN, you're so careful to use different language and to look at things as a whole, not to be doing justice separate from corner stores and where there are people hearing great music. You talk about corner stores as places of hope and possibility. And the work you have with the formerly incarcerated - you call them "returning citizens." And it's not just language you use. It's a different way to treat the project of healing the inner city. It's not problem-focused; it's wellness-focused. It's wholeness-focused. I feel like, so much, when we talk about justice, even the greatest justice efforts can actually not touch that, sometimes.

Mr. Nashashibi: I think community organizing language has really informed a lot of the way I think about my own spiritual tradition and the work. I've developed a course about community organizing as a spiritual practice because I think there was a lot in this idea of beginning with the notion that we all have a stake in this. The returning citizens, the brothers on the corners, the young - we have to see ourselves as collectively invested in issues that we're dealing with. If you don't begin to understand the connectivity between the migrant, the immigrant, refugee who's coming to the inner city and opening up a corner store and then contributing to a lot of the dynamics in the inner-city neighborhood, with the challenges that made that neighborhood what it was, then you're just not looking at the whole picture. And I think, from the justice standpoint, one of the things that we think about a lot in the context of language is this idea of calling out and calling up. For us, doing that at granular spaces like the corner store make it real; make it, I think, a little more relevant than, maybe - and we all need that. We all need, I think, to be in these spaces -

Ms. Tippett: And you live in the neighborhood too.

Mr. Nashashibi: We've been there for many years.

Ms. Tippett: It's not a place that you visit - you're part of the community. It's your corner store.

Lucas, one of your mentors across time and space is A. J. Muste, who founded IFOR. And he talked about a "revolutionary pacifism," and I think those words just don't land now. But what that meant was not about neutrality while surrounded by injustice but about finding the courage to respond in love. But sometimes you will refer to "what we call the civil rights movement." I even think you want us to refresh our imagination about that language.

Rev. Johnson: That comes from Vincent Harding. He would always take issue with people referring to the "civil rights movement" as such, and find that that was a rather lazy description for what he and many of his peers risked their lives for. He would prefer to either use the expression of "the black-led freedom struggle" or, sometimes, "the Southern freedom struggle" or the "Southern freedom movement." He would want us to reframe that.

I find that there's a lot of our language - the language of nonviolence becomes, I think, very problematic today in communities that are - I think, these days, a lot of people relate to the language of nonviolence as another way of telling them how they need to respond to their oppression and to the difficulty in their midst. And I think that that does revolutionary pacifism a disservice because it was far more than just telling oppressed people that they need to temper their tone or address the way that they're speaking or calling out the injustices that they're surrounded by.

Ms. Tippett: I think this question of - we live in this moment where fear is rampant and anger is rampant on many sides. And a lot of it is justified. You can't argue with - obviously, we could all argue with some of it and not argue with others. How do the two of you think about this tension, which I think you take on as a creative tension, of nonviolence and the righteousness of anger and grief? How would this tradition, in its depths that you know, how does it meet this human quandary, this complexity?

Rev. Johnson: I think about the moment when Mike Brown's stepfather, when the verdict came of the acquittal of the officer that killed his son. I think that, if I remember this correctly, he screamed, "Burn it down." I think about the criticism that he received. I think about the fact that, to me, if it were my son, the destruction of property seems to me like a far more human response than to sit on the sidelines and tell people to be peaceful and use nonviolence. What I'm speaking to is not that I think that that's a good thing, but I'm trying to speak to this fact that I don't feel like we wrestle enough with the real grief and anger that is natural to feel in the face of such injustice.

Now, I think, on the other side, the tension, for me, is accepting this fact that, frankly, when I think about the generations of dehumanization and suffering that my people have endured - how can there be justice for what's happened, in the sense that we tend to look for it? And so that's where my spiritual practice comes in, where I have to find another way of accepting and dealing with that grief.

One of the biggest, I think, challenges with King's notion of nonviolence is this idea that unmerited suffering can be redemptive. And I think that's a very, very difficult thing.

Ms. Tippett: I think you've said that in your work with International Fellowship of Reconciliation, that's something that people struggle with.

Rev. Johnson: Absolutely, and I think that our spiritual traditions give us resources for dealing with that, but it's a hard thing to wrestle with. It's a hard thing to accept and to believe. And I feel like that is a part of the tension of the spiritual discipline of nonviolence. But I feel like it's far too often neglected, and people don't really live with that tension, which means that they're not really confronting the anger, which means that they're not really taking themselves to that empathic experience of other people's pain.

Mr. Nashashibi: I also think about that kind of spiritual tension between justice - and in our tradition, it's justice and mercy...

Ms. Tippett: Right, which is such a good word. We need to use that word more.

Mr. Nashashibi: We're taught that you never pray for justice - never pray for justice, because, as much as you want justice, you pray for mercy. In other words, you never pray for God to be just with you because you recognize that we all got issues.

All of our communities have issues, and, when you start disentangling the layers of oppression, that we begin to find that we are oppressors of one another. We are oppressors of ourselves. In fact, there are many verses in the Qur'anic text that say: 'I did not oppress them; in fact, they oppressed their own selves. They oppressed their own souls.'

And I think about that spiritual notion up against those moments, though - what you were saying about living those moments. We were talking about I just came from Jerusalem. And I'm coming out of Aqsa. Right outside of the compound, the sacred compound, there's a historic African-Palestinian community, and some of them know me. They said, "Rami, you got to come to dinner with us tonight." Probably 30 minutes into their dinner, the Israeli soldiers raid the compound, and their son is grabbed, along with five other kids. The youngest is ten years old.

And now I'm following a father who gets up and runs. And of course, I'm running with him. I was there. And it's in those moments where conversations about justice and mercy - it's a rubber-meet-the-road kind of moment. It's, how do you still look at the soldier?

And there was one moment, I looked at the soldier. I looked at one of them. And I knew it was fear in his eyes.

Rev. Johnson: They're kids, mostly.

Mr. Nashashibi: Because the soldiers are 18-, 19-year-old Israeli kids, looking at a group of young Palestinian kids who have been brought up in occupation, who no longer fear them. And the irrationality of a guy armed with an Uzi submachine gun, looking at 8- and 9-, 10-, 11-year-olds as potential threats - and being in that moment, I could, strangely enough, identify with the impossible position that that soldier was in. I don't think I would have as a young, ten-year-old Palestinian kid, but I think part of the work that's shaped me over the last several decades in Chicago have given me a type of privilege to think about mercy and justice in a way that maybe others that are living the raw brutality of oppression every single day don't have.

[ music: "Frontier Ballet" by Brent Arnold]

Ms. Tippett: After a short break, more with Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson. You can always listen again and hear the unedited version of every show we do on the On Being podcast feed - wherever you find your podcasts.

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, I'm with Reverend Lucas Johnson and Rami Nashashibi. They are two pragmatic, young visionaries who model community organizing as a spiritual practice and love as a practical public good.

A child of a military family, Lucas was global coordinator of the Fellowship of Reconciliation, which was founded in 1914 and is still active in over 40 countries. He's recently become the first executive director of On Being's Civil Conversations Project. Rami, a MacArthur "Genius" Fellow, created and leads IMAN, the Inner-City Muslim Action Network, a force for healing on the South Side of Chicago, where he also lives with his family. We spoke at the 2018 On Being Gathering.

Ms. Tippett: This dynamic - and of course, it's extremely intense in Jerusalem, and in many places in the world where you work, Lucas, but it's here now too, that there's all this fear all around. It's like our different fears are pitted against each other. These different kinds of fear from living in different parts of the country - what's happening with the economy, what's happening with - we can talk about all these layers - immigration policy - I wonder what wisdom you have about the spiritual discipline of being a citizen in this moment. And I think part of it is that those of us who do have the privilege to be standing on the solid ground, to not be immediately endangered - what is the responsibility for us in a moment like this, where so many people really feel endangered? And the perception of being endangered is as powerful in our brains as the actual, so we have to take that seriously. Where do you go with that?

Rev. Johnson: I'm not sure if I have wisdom at the end of this story, but something about that description reminded me of one of my earliest times being racially profiled, or stopped by the police. Well, actually, it's not one of my earliest times. This is maybe three times in. I was a sophomore in college, and I went to school at a predominantly white private school. I was walking around, talking - I was in the Baptist Student Union at the time, and I was walking with a young white woman who was also in the BSU, and we were walking around campus, and we were talking about, probably, Jesus.

Mr. Nashashibi: Late-night Jesus conversation.

Rev. Johnson: I mean, it's what you did. It's what you did. [ laughs]

We're having this conversation and walking around campus, and all of a sudden, a police car pulls up, and the lights are shining, and the officer gets out of the car, and he shines a flashlight in my eye. I don't know if any of you have ever had that experience, but you can't see anything. So it's already just a very disorienting experience, because if they're shining that light in your eye, you can't - you just hear the voices. So the officer says, "Ma'am, are you OK?" And my friend says, "Yeah, I'm fine. We're just walking around."

And then they look at me and say - well, I'm assuming they're looking at me, at this point, since I can't see, still. They say, "Are you a student here?" And I say, "Yes, I am." And then I played a trick that I learned to do as a kid, because at the time, I was on student government, and so I had met some of the police officers on the campus. And so I start to call names, start to say, "Officer such-and-such, is that you?" And the flashlight begins to lower, and I think I have to show my campus ID, and then they go away.

The real difficulty of that moment was the next day, when I tried to tell some of my friends who were white about that experience. I'm recounting it - I remember just shaking as I'm talking about it. And my friends say, "Yeah, but come on. I mean, if someone was gonna be on campus that didn't belong, they would probably be black." These were my friends, right? So I thought.

And I knew that, in that moment - because I believe they cared about me - I believe that in order to say that to me, they had to suppress something within them, using the most ridiculous logic, the biggest threats to my - I don't want to say "my girlfriend"; she wasn't my girlfriend, but my friend who was a girl - the biggest threats to her safety were not coming from outside the campus.

Needless to say, those friendships were severed at that moment, because how can we be friends when I know that you would be comfortable with my dehumanization? But in order for us to find our way back, we had to continue to talk, to deconstruct the lie. I couldn't do it immediately. It took maybe a year for us to be able to have that conversation. But in time, we could. And I'm grateful for that. So I don't know if there's any wisdom to be learned from that, but I think it's a challenge, something that I wrestle with in each situation that I'm confronted with, because the fear doesn't show up in the same way.

Ms. Tippett: And it often doesn't show up as fear - doesn't present itself as fear.

Rev. Johnson: It doesn't show up as fear; exactly.

Ms. Tippett: It presents itself as anger.

Rev. Johnson: Yeah, so you have to - one is, you have to be in a place where you can see. And sometimes we're not. I think we have to admit that with ourselves. Sometimes we're not in that space. And it takes, sometimes, a privilege, a distance. It takes a certain set of ingredients, sometimes, for us to arrive at the place where we can see that fear. But it's also something that we can practice. We had to have different types of conversations that weren't about that moment in order for us to come back to some semblance of a relationship. But it also helped that we were on the same campus. We would keep seeing each other, over and over again. So it wasn't as easy for us to retreat to our silos and avoid each other.

Mr. Nashashibi: I like the idea that you were just talking about, this idea of experiential divides. When you think about what you just said - you were on the same campus - I think Bryan Stevenson was once asked, "What's part of the solution?" And he said, "Look, there's" - he talked about what I heard as "the power in proximity." Try to continue to agitate yourself to be proximate to the pain.

Last summer, I leave my house really quickly on an errand to go fill my wife's van up with gas. I'm running, and she's running. I go to the gas station, the closest one, and there's two young black kids, probably 13, 14. One has his shirt off. And two cop cars are there.

So I'm feeling like, yeah. I'm looking at this; I'm like, OK. And then another cop car shows up. Then three, four more come up. Then a white shirt comes up, and I say, "Oh, man." So I just said, I can't sit there filling my gas. So I go walk up, and I'm just sitting there looking at them. And I'm talking to these young brothers. I'm like, What the here is going on? They said, We were walking here, blah blah - again, the kid, he's in shorts. It's summer; he has no shirt. You could see what he has on. The other kid is sitting there, watching this. And there's like 15, 17 cops coming around.

And finally, one cop comes by me and says, "What's the problem?" I said, "Are you kidding? [ laughs] We're in Chicago. We're in the district that Laquan got shot. I'm gonna sit and watch to make sure this doesn't have to unnecessarily escalate, officer. I don't see a threat here."

But the fact that cars could just zoom by that and normalize that type of tension and experience - I think I've experienced, in a much lighter version, of being thrown on a cop car, being arrested for disorderly conduct in the Eighth District, a while ago. And what it meant - the extraordinary, dehumanizing and enraging experience you have when officers are directly lying about their encounter that they had with you in a court of law - and then being found guilty.

But I do think, in those moments - Krista, with, I think the original question - in my mind, I'm hearing about the reality of the experience. How do you put yourself more proximate, in proximity to the pain? And I think, on the flipside, how do those of us who have proximity to the pain don't get jaded and succumb to despair and cynicism about the possibility of reconciliation? And again, I think there are spiritual techniques and tools.

For me, again, in the Muslim tradition, anyway, despair is just so antithetical. In fact, the word "despair," "balasa," is the root word of "to despair." It's, etymologically, directly connected to the word "Iblis," which is "Satan." So the idea of darkness and despair and succumbing to the inability to constantly see - and again, Muslim tradition is filled with stories that you have to present to Muslims, even in the context of something that seems as intractable as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, of people who were at each other's necks during the time of the Prophet Mohammed, people who killed his family members, people who slaughtered innocents but found a way to reconcile as brothers and sisters.

So it might occasionally sound Pollyannish in terms of where you're coming from, but it's an integral part of the tradition. Reconciliation is a part of the tradition. And if you're sincere and genuine about it, you have to strive towards it still and not despair that you have gotten to a point where it's impossible.

[ music: "Saint Rose Of Lima" by The Mercury Program]

Ms. Tippett: I'm Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Today, with Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson.

Ms. Tippett: I want to end talking about love. Actually, I recently was reading King's speech in 1967, where he said, "Darkness cannot put out darkness, only light can do to that. And I say to you, I have also decided to stick to love, for I know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems, and I'm going to talk about it everywhere I go. I know it isn't popular to talk about it in some circles today" - nor today - and then he says, "I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love, I'm talking about a strong, demanding love. And I have seen too much hate. I've seen too much hate on the faces of sheriffs in the South. I've seen hate on the faces of too many Klansmen and too many White Citizens Councilors to want to hate myself, because every time I see it, I know that it does something to their faces and their personalities and I say to myself that hate is too great a burden to bear." I want to, just in the last few minutes - I feel like figuring out what "strong, demanding love" is in public is also our work.

I feel, we, culturally - we have named hate in our midst. We have named it. We call it out. We have created legal categories around it. And that creates a paradoxical - I don't think just an opening and an invitation, but a responsibility to interrogate love in the same way, if he's right that it's the only thing big enough to drive out hate. And I think we actually all know this. I can't prove it politically or scientifically - it's true. We know it. But still, what is this strong, demanding love? What are its qualities, and how do we start to make it happen? And I feel like the two of you are living this, so what have you learned about this?

Rev. Johnson: As the Muslim, I feel like, it's your turn to speak.

Mr. Nashashibi: Oh, it's my turn. All right, I'll take that. I guess I would think about it in two ways and try to be short with it. One, to maybe continue with King and continue with those last words of King - and I sent this to all our organizers, because we do these organizing trainings, and everyone always struggles in our organizing trainings, especially in spiritual communities, with the word "power." We talk about, organizers need to build unapologetic power. And you cannot conflate power with "power corrupts" and "absolute power corrupts, absolutely." "Why do we want power? We're a spiritual people" - no. You need power. Power, the ability to act, to get things done.

And what's so brilliant in that last text is, King positions - one of the biggest, diametric, dichotomous misunderstandings is juxtaposing love against power. And what he was saying is, our love needs to drive us to build power, to build the ability, the capacity to move an agenda that is predicated on a better vision of the world. So I think, in part, that idea of expressing - because in that same text, he talks about love without power being sentimental -

Ms. Tippett: Well, and what we do culturally, we know hate is powerful. We honor the power of hate. But we don't think of love as - we don't put those two things together as powerful - although, in our lives, we know it's powerful.

Mr. Nashashibi: And I think he talks about it very practically in that context of really what it means to build real agendas, coalitions, and alliances to sustain movements. So I think there is that, and I think love in public is about, do we love those who are directly affected, including ourselves, enough to make the type of sacrifices to build collective power to change those realities that are on the ground? I think that's a really important question for all of us, around not just the more, I think, easier issues to talk about, but some of the more complicated set of social issues that really implicate all of us on some level or the other.

And I think that also, then, links to the other aspect, for me, about love, which is the spiritual, more aspirational, I think, harder-to-achieve notion of love, which - again, I think about a hadith, a prophetic saying, that says: [speaks in Arabic] - "Be distant from the dunya, if you will, the worldly. Don't be so caught up in this world. Have genuine spiritual practices that are authentically aligned with the reality and understanding that we are all going to meet our creator and that this world is very temporary and that if you are genuinely rooted in that understanding, that you will obtain the love of the divine." And that if you are, also - the second part of that is: "And be distant from just trying to keep up with the possessions of the people." In other words, if you are genuinely - if your existence is not simply about material competition with others and what does that look like in our context of our modern reality, to be able to say that we're not in it just for a vote; we're not just in it for a particular benefit - that genuine commitment to people. If you are distant from simply aspiring towards the possessions of people, you will obtain the love of the people.

And, I think - we have this one saying. Every morning, we come, and we have these young 18-to-25-year-olds, returning citizens, and we all gather, and it's around 35 of us, and we always say, "Look, we only want one thing from you, one thing from you" - and they all know this now; they say - "your success in this life and your spiritual success as a person that aspires towards something greater." And the context of love - it is profound to see people - we talk a lot, among guys who have really been jaded by this toxic masculinity - to be able to say "I love you."

The other day, I was at the bank, and one of those young brothers saw me as I was coming out. We were messing around with him, and he's like, going, "Make it rain, Rami, make it rain." We're going outside of the bank. And then - this is a kid I knew from the neighborhood for many years, with nothing but that, just, hard look. He looked at me as I was leaving, and he said, "Man, I love you, man." And I looked at him. I said, "Wow, I never thought I heard you say that." He said, "I know, man."

And for me, that was just that moment, that "wow." And the guys, I walk in, and they're like, "We're saying 'I love you' all the time now around here. I can say that, and I mean it." And I think, as corny as that might sound sometimes, it's powerful to see that the force that animates work, for me, is believed - that love is genuine, that it's authentic, and it's part of what drives, I think, a sense of realness in terms of connection.

Rev. Johnson: So I shouldn't have asked you to go first.

No, but I'm reminded of this story. Within the Fellowship of Reconciliation, there's been this - you referenced it earlier. The language of nonviolence wasn't there, so it started as this movement of conscientious objectors, of people who said that "Our faith will not allow us to kill another person. We can't participate in war." But they went on to try to figure out what that looked like. They talked about love in action. And so when early leaders of FOR went to India and met Gandhi and were trying to experiment with these Gandhian tactics in the racial justice struggle in the United States. There was this debate that happened within the organization around 1946, before the Journey of Reconciliation, the first of the Freedom Rides. And the debate was whether or not, by using these tactics, by taking an integrated bus, south - whether or not doing that would provoke the Southerners to violence and, therefore, inviting the Southerners to moral injury. In other words, was it true to our convictions if we did something that was provocative in that sense?

And the answer, from A. J. Muste and Bayard Rustin and others, was: No; what we're doing is, we're inviting the Southerners to a response, the segregationists to a response, and we're holding a mirror to them. And that is the most loving thing you can do, to confront people with the image of who they've become as they've committed these acts of violence. It was oriented towards wanting people to be able to be the people that they believe themselves to be.

That's an incredibly loving thing, and I think, for me, one of the difficult things, because we have a culture that's so oriented towards punishment and punitive measures, and we want to punish people for what they've done. We don't talk about the fact that none of us were born with this desire to be evil. Maybe that's a theological claim that we might have to discuss, but I don't believe that.

And I think that the power of love to - and it is both an internal - another moment for A. J. Muste was, he was demonstrating on a picket line, and the reporter came up to him and said, "Mr. Muste, do you believe that your demonstrating will change the country?" And he responded by saying, "Young man, I'm demonstrating so that my country doesn't change me." And so I think that there's this place where we have a responsibility to hold to the power of love that we know to be true and to not allow the world around us to deaden that in ourselves. And I think it's really tempting. And not allowing that to die in ourselves is a part of what enables us to engage others in that way, but it's a struggle.

Ms. Tippett: That's where I feel, though, that - maybe this is my thing - the power of the words we use and to call these things "love." If people feel like, "Oh, so do I have to become an activist?" - that's problematic. But "Am I a lover? Do I love the world? Do I love my children? Do I know that other people love their children and what I want for my children" - right? So to me, that feels powerful.

I wonder if, Lucas, this is something you've said about Vincent Harding, and I wondered if maybe, to end it - you guys are so great, and what I'm so excited about is that you're out there doing what you're doing, and everybody in here is doing what they're doing, and we're all in conversation. This is a work in progress that we're experiencing and participating in. So can you read it? It's faint.

Rev. Johnson: Wait, this is what I wrote about Uncle Vincent.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah. You can -

Rev. Johnson: At first, I thought you were saying that he wrote it.

Ms. Tippett: No, you wrote it. You can also say it in your own, current words.

Rev. Johnson: No; this was true of Vincent Harding, who was a dear mentor and friend and who I miss. "He could see us, each of us whom he encountered. He did not see the caricatures of ourselves, nor what our ideological commitments had made us or our fear had tricked us into becoming. He could see in us who we were destined to be: more fully human. And he used his gift of sight to help us see ourselves and each other."

Ms. Tippett: Lucas Johnson, Rami Nashashibi, thank you.

[ music: "Brilliant Lies" by Ovum]

Ms. Tippett: Reverend Lucas Johnson is executive director of On Being 's Civil Conversations Project. Until December, 2018, he was global coordinator of the International Fellowship of Reconciliation.

Rami Nashashibi is founder and executive director of the Inner-City Muslim Action Network in Chicago and a 2017 MacArthur fellow.

Staff: The On Being Project is Chris Heagle, Lily Percy, Maia Tarrell, Marie Sambilay, Erinn Farrell, Laurén Dørdal, Tony Liu, Bethany Iverson, Erin Colasacco, Kristin Lin, Profit Idowu, Eddie Gonzalez, Lilian Vo, Lucas Johnson, Damon Lee, Suzette Burley, Katie Gordon, Zack Rose, and Serri Graslie.

Ms. Tippett: Special thanks this week to the wonderful 1440 Multiversity team, especially Susan Freddie, Susan Coles, Janna Smith, Michelle MacNamara, Steve Seabock, Avery Laurin, Joshua Greene, and David Dunning.

The On Being Project is located on Dakota Land. Our lovely theme music is provided and composed by Zoë Keating. And the last voice that you hear singing at the end of our show is Cameron Kinghorn.

[ music: "The Church of Cause and Effect" by The Mercury Program]

On Being is an independent production of The On Being Project. It's distributed to public radio stations by PRX. I created this show at American Public Media.

Our funding partners include:

The George Family Foundation, in support of the Civil Conversations Project.

The Fetzer Institute, helping to build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. Find them at fetzer.org.

Kalliopeia Foundation, working to create a future where universal spiritual values form the foundation of how we care for our common home.

Humanity United, advancing human dignity at home and around the world. Find out more at humanityunited.org, part of the Omidyar Group.

The Henry Luce Foundation, in support of Public Theology Reimagined.

The Osprey Foundation - a catalyst for empowered, healthy, and fulfilled lives.

And the Lilly Endowment, an Indianapolis-based, private family foundation dedicated to its founders' interests in religion, community development, and education.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Rami Nashashibi and Lucas Johnson - Community Organizing as a Spiritual Practice | The On Being Project

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Krista Tippett, host: I hear the word "love" rising in our time - a question of what love can mean as a practical public good and the only thing big enough to meet the "hate" we've come to treat so seriously in our midst. Love is the most reliable muscle of human transformation.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In this episode, Niki interviews Zaina Alsous, a Palestinian, abolitionist poet, and movement worker in Miami. Processing the urgency of the current carceral and climate crisis, they discuss potential interventions to resist and disrupt fascism, within an analysis of settler colonialism, and the power of new language as a means to world-making and envisioning social and political possibilities.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.keywords[]
getting to the root of it with venus roots

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‎Getting to the Root of it with Venus Roots: Art and Organizing as World-Making, with Zaina Alsous on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
‎In this episode, Niki interviews Zaina Alsous, a Palestinian, abolitionist poet, and movement worker in Miami. Processing the urgency of the current carceral and climate crisis, they discuss potential interventions to resist and disrupt fascism, within an analysis of settler colonialism, and the pow...

# data[].attributes.headline
Fortification with Pauline Helm Hernandez

# data[].attributes.subject
Fortification with Pauline Helm Hernandez

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by Paulina Helm-Hernández. She is the past Co-Director of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), having joined the staff after coordinating the Southern regional youth activism program at the Highlander Research & Education Center for over 4 years.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
‎Fortification: Paulina Helm-Hernández on Apple Podcasts

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
‎In this week's episode of Fortification: Spiritual Sustenance for Movement Leadership, Caitlin Breedlove, Vice President of Movement Leadership at Auburn Seminary is joined by Paulina Helm-Hernández. She is the past Co-Director of Southerners on New Ground (SONG), having joined the staff after coord...