Speaker 1: Media, So listen, this year is going to be a
Speaker 1: ton of wild news that is bleak news.
Speaker 2: Flash like this year's any different.
Speaker 1: But what I wanted to do this year was not
Speaker 1: just present to y'all the bleakness. I want to bring
Speaker 1: to y'all some of the most dopest people I've met
Speaker 1: over the years that are actually making the world better,
Speaker 1: because it's really hard to see that sometimes in amidst
Speaker 1: of all the noise, and even among the people that
Speaker 1: you know, actually like really outside trying to do good,
Speaker 1: it's always some sort of asterisk next to their name.
Speaker 1: I know this firsthand, which we can get into a
Speaker 1: little later. This series is called Terraform. Now some of
Speaker 1: y'all may know I have a coffee company.
Speaker 2: It's called Terraform Cold Grew.
Speaker 1: But that origin story comes from a poetry book that
Speaker 1: I wrote called Terraform Building a Livable World, and out
Speaker 1: of that book has.
Speaker 2: Formed us equallyps.
Speaker 1: The last albums I've dropped have been all based around
Speaker 1: the book Terraform, and what terraform means Terrorform is the
Speaker 1: process of making a planet and livable. And as I
Speaker 1: looked around in the world, I'm like, yo, you know
Speaker 1: this planet is getting less and less livable. So what
Speaker 1: if we saw our own planet, our politics, our culture,
Speaker 1: our nations, our environment, our communities, our families, and ultimately
Speaker 1: ourselves as terraforming projects. So the poetry and those books
Speaker 1: are around those sort of ideas, and then out of
Speaker 1: that the Cold Group company. But ultimately it's a call
Speaker 1: to action. It's a mission build a livable world and
Speaker 1: imagine a better future. Which is why me and cool
Speaker 1: Zone Media got along so well, because ultimately this is
Speaker 1: our hope. We're not just reporting on how the world sucks.
Speaker 1: We're reporting on ways and people that are actually making
Speaker 1: it better terraformers. So I'm going to bring you different
Speaker 1: people that are really outside building.
Speaker 2: A Liverpool world.
Speaker 1: As always, you can go to my personal website, prophitpop
Speaker 1: dot com. You could get the book, you can stream
Speaker 1: the records. But right now I want to introduce you
Speaker 1: to my man Shamil. Now, Shamil is the CEO of
Speaker 1: an org called Search per Common Ground.
Speaker 2: Backstory with that I was for many years.
Speaker 1: I went from a fan to an ambassador, to an
Speaker 1: artist of residence to a board member of an organization
Speaker 1: called Preemptive Love. Preemptive Love had a very similar vision
Speaker 1: to Search for Common Grounds. Matter of fact, it is
Speaker 1: almost like it was. If Preemptive Love did everything right
Speaker 1: in thirty years, we would look like Search. Preemptive Love
Speaker 1: was again a peacemaking organization, right who existed in conflict
Speaker 1: regions wherever there's violence, And if you're a piece building org,
Speaker 1: that's a little different than peace first response, although that's
Speaker 1: a part of what you have to do. Sometimes you
Speaker 1: just got to stop the bleeding before you can broker piece.
Speaker 1: So we were in and still are in Iraq, Venezuela,
Speaker 1: the Juadez, the Mexican border, Israel, Palestine, and then was
Speaker 1: moving into Afghanistan. How you build peace varies based on
Speaker 1: what the needs are of the community. I've mentioned this
Speaker 1: org in multi my music, but a lot of my
Speaker 1: music I just believed in what they were trying to
Speaker 1: do the way that they were doing it. There was
Speaker 1: some drama that happened in Preemptive Love that made it
Speaker 1: to where the org had to merge. And it wasn't
Speaker 1: that they were not working with refugees. They worked a
Speaker 1: lot with refugees, Syrian refugees specifically.
Speaker 2: Problem was internal.
Speaker 1: There was a lot that happened that eventually we had
Speaker 1: to take the org and merge it under org that
Speaker 1: had a much more established infrastructure internally, and that's how
Speaker 1: we got to search for common ground because what they
Speaker 1: were doing while we were in five countries, they was
Speaker 1: in thirty country while we were still ran by our founder,
Speaker 1: they had gone through two CEO transition, was just doing
Speaker 1: a lot right, and that's how we.
Speaker 2: Partnered our up. What they were able to do very well,
Speaker 2: I'm doing all this just so that we can get
Speaker 2: to the meet.
Speaker 1: When we actually talked to Idris or Shamel Idris, that's
Speaker 1: his last name, what we were doing well was we
Speaker 1: were telling our story well like people saw and knew
Speaker 1: exactly what was going on on the ground because we
Speaker 1: was telling y'all, like, this is what we was doing.
Speaker 1: So as you know how NGL's work, like, you got
Speaker 1: to raise money, and that money being raised for us
Speaker 1: was like, well, it's real simple if people just see
Speaker 1: what we're doing and do that. So we had a
Speaker 1: donor base of just like small donors of citizens, community,
Speaker 1: people that cared about it. We had a pretty big
Speaker 1: donor list. Where we were not good at was getting
Speaker 1: the big government grants. So there were certain things that
Speaker 1: we couldn't do. We loved about Search for Common Ground,
Speaker 1: which I'm now on the board of. Over there was
Speaker 1: that they were incredible at getting the big government grants
Speaker 1: because receipts they were able to put together.
Speaker 2: For the things that they've done.
Speaker 1: I mean, by god, they're in Darfur right now, my lord,
Speaker 1: the part of the Memr civil war down there.
Speaker 2: Like guess who was at the table broker in that piece.
Speaker 2: We go talk about it later.
Speaker 1: It's crazy they would get the government grants and they
Speaker 1: wouldn't put their logos on stuff because they were like, well,
Speaker 1: it's really not about us.
Speaker 2: It's about the peace.
Speaker 1: It's about the peace building may be ten year programs
Speaker 1: that they put together, and they felt like, what's lame
Speaker 1: to like put our logo on stuff and like shove
Speaker 1: cameras in our workers' faces because that sucks, Like let
Speaker 1: them just do the work, like it's not about that.
Speaker 1: They felt like it was sensationalized and it would cheapen
Speaker 1: the work if we was putting it all on social media,
Speaker 1: to whereas at primpty level it was like, no, we're
Speaker 1: trying to celebrate y'all, like y'all doing the real work.
Speaker 1: You feel me like if people want to be a
Speaker 1: part of what y'all doing. So there was a mind shift.
Speaker 1: So we had what they needed and they had what
Speaker 1: we needed. Anyway, that's y'all hear.
Speaker 2: From me all the time. Y'all need to hear from Shamille.
Speaker 1: So people saying, ladies and gentlemen, please say what's up
Speaker 1: to the homie hero an incredible person who don't like
Speaker 1: his name on stuff, which is part of what I
Speaker 1: like about him. Is my man, Shamille, My saying that, right,
Speaker 1: Shamille or Shamoh, yeah.
Speaker 2: Shamo Shamo. Okay, I've heard you've heard worse.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I've heard a lot worse. That's fine.
Speaker 2: I tried to I tried to swahiliad.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: So first of all, Happy New Year.
Speaker 3: Happy New Year too, Happy holidays. Hope you got a
Speaker 3: good break.
Speaker 4: I did.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: We had a chance to finally kick it in person.
Speaker 1: Uh this past right before the holidays shut down in
Speaker 1: New York City with the rest of the board, had
Speaker 1: a dope little meeting. I got to meet these people
Speaker 1: in person. Super crazy experience and like I'm like everybody
Speaker 1: else where, I feel like, why why am I here?
Speaker 3: Like many.
Speaker 4: After we broke up, everyone of the on our senior
Speaker 4: leadership team was like, I love that guy, because you
Speaker 4: would come in and you know, we'd be having these
Speaker 4: conversations about all this stuff, complex stuff whatever. You just
Speaker 4: kind of cut right to the g. You have this
Speaker 4: like artist's eye yes, enough of something. Yes, Like you
Speaker 4: would say in like three clear words, but we said
Speaker 4: poor paragraphs.
Speaker 3: So I thought that was great.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's fun.
Speaker 1: Man. That's actually kind of what we do here on
Speaker 1: this show is like, you know, people say a whole
Speaker 1: lot of you know, blase bla, wootie woop, a whole
Speaker 1: lot of big terms to try to say something that
Speaker 1: I'm like, hey, hey, are you are you just saying
Speaker 1: you don't want to pay for it?
Speaker 2: That what you're saying, Like, that's all you're trying to say,
Speaker 2: right is you don't want pay for it?
Speaker 1: Okay, then say that you know, but yeah, anyway, search
Speaker 1: for common Ground one of to me, one of the
Speaker 1: most unique NGOs out there because of one there philosophical
Speaker 1: approach and to the fact that like if it's a
Speaker 1: very much if you know, you know type situation, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's for our community to like, we like stuff
Speaker 1: like that, Like people like the prophet Lil Wayne. He
Speaker 1: has a lyric where he said, real g's moving silence
Speaker 1: like lasagna because the G is silent anyway. So yeah,
Speaker 1: so like so you know, you real if you move
Speaker 1: in in silence, like nobody's there's no you know, your
Speaker 1: logos not on all this stuff, you know, flashy, I'm
Speaker 1: out here doing the work, you know. And that's what
Speaker 1: we really loved about search or common ground. And there's receipts,
Speaker 1: the proofs in the pudding, like this is what we do.
Speaker 1: Here's examples thirty years of thirty years or forty years,
Speaker 1: forty years now forty one, god dog, forty years of
Speaker 1: receipts of experience, of proof that like we're really out
Speaker 1: here building peace.
Speaker 2: So I'm done talking.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna ask you a couple questions to introduce you
Speaker 1: all to the or so that people can see, like
Speaker 1: really what they're doing out here. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: this ORG is not necessarily a humanitarian or first response thing,
Speaker 1: although that's part of what we do. But you your
Speaker 1: ORG is a peace building organization, that's right. So can
Speaker 1: you break down to them like what you really mean
Speaker 1: by that as in terms of it being a distinction
Speaker 1: from like humanitarian.
Speaker 4: Sure, well again, well thanks social for having me. I'm
Speaker 4: here and maybe not as silent anymore about you getting
Speaker 4: a platform, which is.
Speaker 3: So Yeah.
Speaker 4: You know, there's so much going on in the world
Speaker 4: that people get kind of overwhelmed with all the causes
Speaker 4: and all the needs and whatever. And I guess the
Speaker 4: reason prop that doesn't search for common ground is so
Speaker 4: committed to piece is it's kind of like the foundation
Speaker 4: for everything else. Think about it like oxygen, Like nobody
Speaker 4: pays attention to it or recognizes it until it's gone,
Speaker 4: and then it's the only thing that matters, you know,
Speaker 4: because of the biggest priority and peace is really trying
Speaker 4: to create the conditions where you don't have the humanitarian
Speaker 4: crisis in the first place. And I think one of
Speaker 4: the things that we've seen over the last twenty years
Speaker 4: people may or may not. I think people feel this
Speaker 4: in their gut, but the numbers unfortunately bear it out.
Speaker 4: The last twenty years, conflict has been going up, humanitarian
Speaker 4: crisis have been rising every single year, and the gap
Speaker 4: between the needs that are out there in the world
Speaker 4: and what we're providing to meet them has also grown
Speaker 4: every year.
Speaker 3: So it's totally unsustainable.
Speaker 4: Right, you got more and more humanitary crises, bigger and
Speaker 4: bigger gas of unmet crisis and the world needs more
Speaker 4: than just more humanitarian response. We need that too, But
Speaker 4: what we really need to do is get ahead of
Speaker 4: this and prevent more of these crises. And the things
Speaker 4: that are really driving these humanitarying crises are like climate
Speaker 4: and conflict.
Speaker 3: How we deal with conflict, how we deal with our differences.
Speaker 2: That's brilliant.
Speaker 1: So so I love it because it's like you when
Speaker 1: you think about like where the crisis come from, like
Speaker 1: climate situation is is causing misallocation of resources. There's not
Speaker 1: a there's not enough food to go around because there's
Speaker 1: not enough formable ground. So then that means that people
Speaker 1: are gonna grab for what they can have. And when
Speaker 1: you start grabbing and building fences around food, you're gonna
Speaker 1: create violence. Right, Yeah, that's gonna happen, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. So if you're talking about environmental justice, if
Speaker 1: you're talking about you know, food, medical services, all that
Speaker 1: has to do with the fact that peace is lost.
Speaker 1: But if you come in, I know what's dope about
Speaker 1: y'all is again it's a ten year like humanitarian usually
Speaker 1: is like, let's not the bleeding right now.
Speaker 2: What you're saying is like, well, let's make sure the
Speaker 2: bleeding never starts.
Speaker 1: That's right, you know, And that and that means that
Speaker 1: there's some really hard conversations, right, and some really hard
Speaker 1: tactics that again, for you guys, it's at least ten
Speaker 1: years right when you're going to get to a place.
Speaker 4: Yeah, when we think about it, we make generational long commitments,
Speaker 4: so we even go double that's twenty years.
Speaker 3: It's a generation, which.
Speaker 4: Doesn't mean it doesn't mean that you don't accomplish things
Speaker 4: in one year, six months. But in terms of really
Speaker 4: shifting systems, you know, in terms of really creating piece
Speaker 4: at scale where it's not that you're not going to
Speaker 4: have crises. You're still going to have crises, but those
Speaker 4: crises you can be able to rally to deal with them.
Speaker 4: You're not going to fall into violence, you know. And
Speaker 4: it's interesting that you talk about climate that way. You know,
Speaker 4: we have you know, we've got over a thousand full
Speaker 4: time piece builders on the front lines in thirty three
Speaker 4: countries around the world, and in Africa as an example,
Speaker 4: the one of the biggest conflict dynamics across the entire
Speaker 4: continent is the farmer herder conflict, which sounds like a
Speaker 4: small little thing.
Speaker 3: You got farmers and you have herders. Okay, people don't
Speaker 3: realize all the way from.
Speaker 4: West Africa, Nigeria, all the way through to Sudan in
Speaker 4: East Northeast Africa, one of the biggest conflict dynamics is
Speaker 4: because of climate.
Speaker 3: Right you have people who are nomadic, the herders, they've.
Speaker 4: Got their livestock that they're moving, you know, and those
Speaker 4: livestock have less and less area to graze in because
Speaker 4: it's going dry, and so they're.
Speaker 3: Encroaching more and more on the farm land.
Speaker 4: And so the farmers who aren't nomadic, they live in
Speaker 4: their spots, they've got their plot of land, are getting
Speaker 4: angry at the at the herders. And this is all
Speaker 4: exacerbated by the fact that a bunch of national boundaries
Speaker 4: were drawn across that continent, you know, tribal communities and
Speaker 4: all that kind of stuff on top of it.
Speaker 3: So like that's a climate right there, you got right there.
Speaker 3: The only way to.
Speaker 4: Address that is to get all of those people actually
Speaker 4: together and have them figure out a solution, not impose
Speaker 4: them from the top or from outside and the process
Speaker 4: of bringing people together like that and building enough trust
Speaker 4: that they're willing to work together on a solution that'll
Speaker 4: help everybody. That's actually a twenty year process.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it takes a while to let some dude come
Speaker 1: in here and be like, yeah, what do you know? Yeah, like,
Speaker 1: what do you really know about what we're going through?
Speaker 1: And one thing that is true about SEARCH is the
Speaker 1: fact that like, well ninety percent of the staff are
Speaker 1: local born and raised, So like, well, actually we do
Speaker 1: know because we're from here, you know. So I think
Speaker 1: that that's again a very unique situation. But like in
Speaker 1: what you're saying, is is there something that we also
Speaker 1: learned in our in our meeting here was the top down,
Speaker 1: bottom up approach.
Speaker 2: Yeah, talk a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Well, you know, it's really popular to say all changes
Speaker 4: driven from the bottom up or all change requires good leadership.
Speaker 3: It's all true. You can't do it. You can't do
Speaker 3: it just bottom up.
Speaker 4: You can't do it just top down, right, you know,
Speaker 4: you need to drive change from the bottom up and
Speaker 4: from the top down. And so you talked about the teams,
Speaker 4: the search for common ground teams, the really key thing
Speaker 4: about the search for common ground teams is two things. Yes,
Speaker 4: they're local, you already mentioned that one. But really importantly,
Speaker 4: they're also drawn from the communities in conflict, like so
Speaker 4: they actually they're not just local, but you've got access
Speaker 4: to all the major political groups, ethnic groups.
Speaker 3: You know, if you're dealing with.
Speaker 4: Conflict between like police and young people in a city
Speaker 4: anywhere in the world, would help a lot if your
Speaker 4: team was made up of retired cops, youth activists, former
Speaker 4: gang leaders who are instead of sitting across from each
Speaker 4: other seeing each other as the problem, are sitting side
Speaker 4: by side facing a common problem together. That sounds simple,
Speaker 4: but as everybody knows, like that takes time. So when
Speaker 4: you talk and then what they start strategizing about is okay,
Speaker 4: look because of your unique insight, Because then I say, look,
Speaker 4: if you use that word, nobody's gonna listen to you
Speaker 4: in my community. Or you know what, if you can
Speaker 4: do something in that neighborhood, you're gonna have credibility for years.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Or you know what, if you can get that partnership,
Speaker 3: go for it.
Speaker 4: Or you know what, if you partner with that guy,
Speaker 4: nobody's gonna talk to you and you only get those
Speaker 4: insights by being both local and we call it multi partial,
Speaker 4: drawn from all of the different parties.
Speaker 3: Right, You're not some like outside neutral person. You are
Speaker 3: the community.
Speaker 4: And so so when you and those are the kinds
Speaker 4: of people who can talk about top down and bottom
Speaker 4: up change, they can talk about.
Speaker 3: What needs to happen in the communities to drive the
Speaker 3: kind of change.
Speaker 4: We need, and what needs to happen at the level
Speaker 4: of politics and powerful institutions to make that change stick.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's good man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you mentioned like a very real situation that hits
Speaker 1: home in the sense that, like, you know, you asked,
Speaker 1: like you're trying to broker peace, and like la hood,
Speaker 1: you want me to sit across the table from a
Speaker 1: person who quite possibly murdered some of my family members,
Speaker 1: you know, and of course we don't want more murder
Speaker 1: to happen, But like, I feel like if I were
Speaker 1: to like sit down and try to talk peace with
Speaker 1: this person, I'm spitting on my family member's grade, right,
Speaker 1: and he looking at me thinking the same thing. So
Speaker 1: I'm like, if you willing to talk to me, I'm
Speaker 1: now questioning youry I'm questioning your gangster because I'm like
Speaker 1: how was you even willing to talk to me because
Speaker 1: I'm not you know what I'm saying, Like, I'm like,
Speaker 1: I don't care nothing about your truth until there's too
Speaker 1: much bloodshed. Right, So there's that hurdle of sort of
Speaker 1: lived experience that again is so interesting for us too,
Speaker 1: because I'm like, at the same time, that person sitting
Speaker 1: across the table from you, man, we was in the
Speaker 1: same after school daycare, We went to the same head start,
Speaker 1: you know, probably went the same middle school, probably was
Speaker 1: on the same league team. Like they're not strangers, you know,
Speaker 1: Like I you live two streets from me, you know,
Speaker 1: so in our and our moms probably went to the
Speaker 1: same church. Like there's this this like thing about community
Speaker 1: that no matter where you put it, like you said,
Speaker 1: like nomadic tribes in Sudan, you know, or you know,
Speaker 1: east side and west side in Los Angeles. It's like tribalism.
Speaker 1: Tribalism and a fight for resources is a fight for resources.
Speaker 1: The idea of dignity is still sitting across from there.
Speaker 1: And it again for me to be willing to talk
Speaker 1: to you, I need somebody, like you said, I need
Speaker 1: somebody super certified from my side that I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: this is my og. I like, I'm gonna listen to you,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, And they need somebody from
Speaker 1: their side that likes when we see r ogs talking,
Speaker 1: it's like maybe I don't this is weird to me,
Speaker 1: but maybe something's happening here. You know.
Speaker 4: That's really Look, that's really powerful the way you talk
Speaker 4: about that, because I don't yet one thing you just
Speaker 4: triggered from you when you said that that one thing
Speaker 4: we would never do We would ever push or strong
Speaker 4: arm or manipulate or like we would never try to
Speaker 4: get somebody to sit with somebody that they're not willing to. Like,
Speaker 4: that's not how piece is made. That's that's kind of
Speaker 4: the worst thing you can do. Like you should really
Speaker 4: like empathize with or understand these people who who are
Speaker 4: trying to annihilate you, you know, in every other of life. Right,
Speaker 4: So that's not So that's a really good point, and
Speaker 4: that dynamic exists pretty much everywhere where we work. That Yeah,
Speaker 4: like real hurt and real not just historical but oftentimes
Speaker 4: like present and ongoing violence and injustice, and so one
Speaker 4: of the things that we do.
Speaker 3: You know, we talked about this a little bit when
Speaker 3: we were together.
Speaker 4: Like, one of the first things that we do in
Speaker 4: any community is instead of asking what's going wrong, because
Speaker 4: everything's gone, there's so much is going wrong that it'll
Speaker 4: be you'd get overwhelmed by it. In any community that's
Speaker 4: in conflict, we ask people like, Okay, if if this
Speaker 4: is an ethnic divide, is there anyone is there anyone
Speaker 4: in the other ethnicity.
Speaker 3: Who you actually trust? Or if you're dealing with the
Speaker 3: corrupt government, you know.
Speaker 4: Is there one minister or even like somebody who who
Speaker 4: you actually feel like is trying to serve the people.
Speaker 4: Or if it's the example that we were just talking
Speaker 4: about with police, if this is about out of control
Speaker 4: police force, is there one.
Speaker 3: Captain or even just a beat cop who you feel
Speaker 3: like is and to the police to do the same thing.
Speaker 4: Is there anyone in the community you say, the community
Speaker 4: won't work with you, they don't want to talk to you.
Speaker 4: Is there is there anyone that you see playing a
Speaker 4: positive old community that you that you respect. And one
Speaker 4: of the things that we found, like one hundred percent
Speaker 4: of the time prop like one hundred percent of the
Speaker 4: time in every community. First of all, people appreciate those
Speaker 4: questions they like not just being talked to like they're
Speaker 4: a problem. They like being asked their own views. And
Speaker 4: then one hundred percent of the time you get lots
Speaker 4: of names. You have lots of names like no matter
Speaker 4: how bad and unjust, the situation is people like, you
Speaker 4: know what, there's this one guy, or you know what,
Speaker 4: there's one organized there's one community organizer that like everyone
Speaker 4: you know. And those are the people, the one that
Speaker 4: we gravitate towards. We try to understand what they're trying
Speaker 4: to make happen, how we can be helpful. Sometimes we
Speaker 4: share examples which they can take or leave of how
Speaker 4: people in similar situations around the world have kind of
Speaker 4: dealt with some similar dynamic system. So you build slowly.
Speaker 4: That way, you don't just sort of jump in with
Speaker 4: a solution. And to your point, you got to start
Speaker 4: with we call it's you know again, it's one of
Speaker 4: those clunky terms, appreciative inquiry, right, it's a wholeproach. I
Speaker 4: first came across that term in like a Harvard Business
Speaker 4: Review article. I had nothing to do with a Warren piece.
Speaker 4: It was about how you change culture in your company. Okay,
Speaker 4: and I've read this article and I was like this
Speaker 4: is actually the best description of what our teams do
Speaker 4: that I've seen had nothing And so basically what appreciative
Speaker 4: inquiry says, it's this really well researched field that it says,
Speaker 4: the worst way to change behavior in your community and
Speaker 4: your company, in your family and whatever, the worst way
Speaker 4: to change behavior is to punish bad behavior.
Speaker 3: The best way to change behavior.
Speaker 4: Is to identify and amplify and celebrate and incentivize every
Speaker 4: step towards the desired behavior, even if it's a tiny step,
Speaker 4: even if it's a tiny step. And I've seen this
Speaker 4: with my own daughter, Like if if I yelled at
Speaker 4: my daughter, you know, for not putting her shoes in
Speaker 4: the crate that I got for that specific purpose, it
Speaker 4: works a lot worse than if I celebrate her like
Speaker 4: crazy because she put one shoe in today, she's much
Speaker 4: more likely to put you and tomorrow anyway. So that's
Speaker 4: the approach you take with communities and conflict too, Like
Speaker 4: you don't go in and attack people. Whatever you try
Speaker 4: to understand, Like even if there's one small step someone takes,
Speaker 4: that's what you really amplify. You really amplify the good,
Speaker 4: and you feed the good and over time, it builds
Speaker 4: a momentum that is powerful and relentless.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's that one cop that like whenever he, you know,
Speaker 1: see us on a corner, it's like he wraps us
Speaker 1: up or you know, like it's never he's never out
Speaker 1: here like being crazy about it. It's like if you know,
Speaker 1: if we're selling bootleg DVDs, it's like, all right, Homi,
Speaker 1: how many you got, I'll just buy the DVDs off you?
Speaker 1: And you gotta get out of here, man, like you
Speaker 1: know what I mean, Like just like stuff like that
Speaker 1: to where it's like okay, like I feel you. It's like, man,
Speaker 1: I'm not feel man, how many you need? Okay, give
Speaker 1: me this? All right, get out of here, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean? And like those things are different, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like, hey, what you got in
Speaker 1: that backpack?
Speaker 2: Don't even tell me? Just give your back you feel
Speaker 2: you're like all right?
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: So there's like there's that one dude that like, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean whatever, Like I mean, I don't whatever, but.
Speaker 2: I guess you are right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that's that's that's good. Now let's get into
Speaker 1: some examples. Now, like you said, thirty three different countries
Speaker 1: and every country, Like you said, you said, these are
Speaker 1: like twenty year twenty year at least twenty year processes, right,
Speaker 1: So how you actually implement these lofty ideas are can
Speaker 1: vary as wild as your imagination can go. The two
Speaker 1: that in my head that stick out in my head
Speaker 1: are mem r and was it Nigeria with the soccer
Speaker 1: where was the soccer.
Speaker 4: At We've done soccer tournaments in countries all around the world.
Speaker 4: Of Congo was where what is with the Democratic Republic
Speaker 4: of Congo. It's you know, a huge ninety million people
Speaker 4: center of Africa where yeah, the team so yeah, I'm happy,
Speaker 4: is happy to tell some of those stories?
Speaker 3: Yeah man?
Speaker 2: And yeah the TV show they're like yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: tell some stories.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know in Congo just about yeah, I think
Speaker 3: it was like twenty ten.
Speaker 4: There was a terrible thing that very senior un like
Speaker 4: the most senior United Nations official in the Democratic Republic
Speaker 4: of Congo. She said she called the country the rape
Speaker 4: capital of the world, which was a horrible thing to say.
Speaker 4: But what she was trying to point out was that
Speaker 4: like sexual assault was like off the charts in the country,
Speaker 4: and more than half of the assaults and the rapes
Speaker 4: were committed by people in uniform, so the police or
Speaker 4: the military, you know, abusing the very people they're supposed
Speaker 4: to be protecting. So you just sort of imagine how
Speaker 4: much anger and hatred and fear community had. And our team,
Speaker 4: our Congolese team you know, working there, took what we
Speaker 4: call the common ground approach. It's a three step process. First,
Speaker 4: you build trust, then you turn that trust into cooperation
Speaker 4: that actually makes a difference, and over time that cooperation
Speaker 4: can trigger breakthroughs. Right, So what they did to build
Speaker 4: trust every community, this is different, just like you're saying,
Speaker 4: like it would be different in every community. So in Congo,
Speaker 4: teams use soccer tournaments to get the police and young
Speaker 4: and young people and people in the community actually doing
Speaker 4: things together. It was one of the few things they
Speaker 4: would get them to do together that wouldn't have them
Speaker 4: fighting with each other or getting into an argument. And
Speaker 4: then they turned those into community theater performances where they
Speaker 4: would like go into communities and literally in the middle
Speaker 4: of town square. They'd like bang on drums and call
Speaker 4: people together, would come out of their homes and sit
Speaker 4: in the town square and they put on a performance
Speaker 4: of a play and the play was kind of dramatizing
Speaker 4: what was going on, but with a lot of humor
Speaker 4: and stuff between the police and the community. And then
Speaker 4: they turned and that was one of the few things
Speaker 4: that would get the police and the community kind of
Speaker 4: sitting together talking together. After those soccer tournaments, after those performances,
Speaker 4: those plays, they would open up conversations, right, and they
Speaker 4: start these community dialogues that turn in. So that was
Speaker 4: the initial step, just try to get people, just figure
Speaker 4: out what's people to sit together, right, and different communities
Speaker 4: that different things, but in every community there's some stuff
Speaker 4: you can do, cultural events that will get people sitting together.
Speaker 3: And then the second step was to turn that into cooperation.
Speaker 4: So those conversations they started having, they started talking about
Speaker 4: what they could do together to actually improve the situation
Speaker 4: between the police and the community members. There were rallies
Speaker 4: against sexual assault that some of the police started participating
Speaker 4: in that were organized by the communities and some of
Speaker 4: the more progressive police units. They agreed the community to
Speaker 4: develop scorecards. So all right, let's do this. Let's develop
Speaker 4: a scorecard with the community of the kinds of things
Speaker 4: that the community would like to see from the police,
Speaker 4: and those scorecards will be completed regularly, like every quarter
Speaker 4: right where people would rank how the police were on
Speaker 4: these scorecards, and the police captains would use those when
Speaker 4: they were doing reviews, promotions, act and stuff. So part
Speaker 4: of the feedback that they were getting was what does
Speaker 4: the community think of you?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: And eventually they did enough of this work that there
Speaker 4: was some There were a couple of big breakthroughs. One
Speaker 4: of the biggest is some training that was developed out
Speaker 4: of this program. This took twelve years prop but some
Speaker 4: training that was helped out of this program became mandatory
Speaker 4: in the orientation of both the military and the police.
Speaker 4: Over two hundred thousand soldiers and police officers two hundred
Speaker 4: thousand in the country have now been through that training.
Speaker 4: We produced a TV show with the police, Total Fit
Speaker 4: likes a drama called Inda Pisa. It's a bad guy.
Speaker 4: He used to be a rebel, you know. He goes
Speaker 4: to this un program to put his guns down. Now
Speaker 4: he wants to serve his community, so he decides he's
Speaker 4: going to become a police officer. He becomes a cadet
Speaker 4: and the show picks up just as he's graduated and
Speaker 4: he's all excited to service community, except it's very real,
Speaker 4: it's very pretty. He hasn't been paid for three months.
Speaker 4: The community that he wants, he's surrounded by corrupt cops.
Speaker 4: The community that he's supposed to serve hates them or
Speaker 4: they're scared of them.
Speaker 3: And so that follows this guy his life. He's actually
Speaker 3: trying to.
Speaker 2: Go be a good Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we suck and and and we use that show
Speaker 4: to open up discussions all over the country around the
Speaker 4: around the program. And so, I mean, the last evaluation
Speaker 4: that we did on this, we had levels of sexual
Speaker 4: assault in the most the worst areas in the east.
Speaker 3: Of the country had dropped by more than fifty percent. Yeah,
Speaker 3: the it was cool.
Speaker 4: One of the one of the things that the police said,
Speaker 4: you know, we had like both written answers and like years.
Speaker 4: One of the most common written answers that the police
Speaker 4: put in was that people actually call us. Now there
Speaker 4: really people call us.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: We used to be the last people that yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't call it, I don't call lap. I take it
Speaker 2: right now. I called him. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So the police were like really, they were like, this
Speaker 4: is this is amazing. People actually call us when there's
Speaker 4: a problem. So anyway, that's one story. There's another strike
Speaker 4: to share with you. I just came back from visiting
Speaker 4: our team. I think I mentioned to you when I
Speaker 4: saw you in New York. I had just come back
Speaker 4: with a couple of the other board members from Kenya.
Speaker 2: Okay, yeah, oh yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4: And like you know, one of the things that's happening
Speaker 4: all around the world is, you know, you see more
Speaker 4: and more terrorist attacks and attacks by they call them
Speaker 4: non state armies, right, so people like you aren't you know.
Speaker 4: And so in Keny you had some really bad attacks
Speaker 4: from the al Shabab terror group. You know, they blew
Speaker 4: up the American embassy and Kenya. They came in with
Speaker 4: machine guns and shot up shopping malls, killed so many
Speaker 4: people in the country. And oftentimes what happens is that
Speaker 4: the government's response to these things in some ways, in
Speaker 4: some ways the cure is as bad as the disease.
Speaker 3: Right. They're so heavy handed, they come down, they abuse
Speaker 3: the entire population.
Speaker 4: They're just cracking down on everybody because they don't know
Speaker 4: what to do, right, they don't know how to fight
Speaker 4: these groups. So in Kenya, what they did was they
Speaker 4: they realized that these people from al Shabab, from the
Speaker 4: terrorist group. They were coming in through the from the shore.
Speaker 4: They were pretending to be fishermen. And there's something there's
Speaker 4: night fishing.
Speaker 3: People go out. It's a big part of.
Speaker 4: The economy along the coast of Kenya is people go
Speaker 4: out fishing at night, they bring the patches in at
Speaker 4: dawn and they sell them at the market. Right. Well,
Speaker 4: when the government realized that people were posing as night
Speaker 4: fishermen so they could infiltrate the country with their weapons,
Speaker 4: they just banned it. They banned night fishing. They shut
Speaker 4: down night fishing. Yeah, and they destroyed the economy basically
Speaker 4: of that whole coastal area as a way to stop terrorism.
Speaker 4: And you can imagine what happened, right Like, people lost
Speaker 4: their jobs, they got pissed off. There was a lot
Speaker 4: of clashes between the police and the communities along the shore.
Speaker 4: This went on for six years and are incredibly there's
Speaker 4: a woman there named Judy Kamamo who runs all of
Speaker 4: our programs there Kenyan women who used to work for
Speaker 4: Mongarima Tai, who won the Nobel Peace Prize for her
Speaker 4: Kenyan environmental activism. Anyway, so Judy had this idea. She
Speaker 4: started shuttling back and forth between the police, the fishermen,
Speaker 4: the youth groups. She went to some of the human
Speaker 4: rights organizations that were saving.
Speaker 3: All their money to sue the government.
Speaker 4: Others of them were using their money to organize protests,
Speaker 4: and she said, look, why don't you put some of
Speaker 4: them money for protests and lawsuits into an idea that
Speaker 4: I've got here where we could try to build some
Speaker 4: trust between the police and the community and come up
Speaker 4: with a solution that would allow us to get the
Speaker 4: fishing started again, but would actually prevent some of this terrorism.
Speaker 4: And long story short, it took about six six and
Speaker 4: a half months of shuttling back and forth creatively listening,
Speaker 4: lots of listening, listening with a lot more listening than talking,
Speaker 4: and eventually Judy was able to get these groups coming
Speaker 4: together and they came up with an idea of getting
Speaker 4: these electronic scan cards, Like if you're going to fish
Speaker 4: off the coast of Kenyon, you have to be registered anyway, right,
Speaker 4: but there was never any way kind of verifying it.
Speaker 4: So they got these scan cards that they would say, Okay,
Speaker 4: if you're a fisherman and you get registered, you get
Speaker 4: this little card, and all the police are equipped with
Speaker 4: little scanners and they can just scan. As long as
Speaker 4: you've got a card, you're legity. That simple solution only
Speaker 4: came about when the groups started talking to each other.
Speaker 4: That Judy had brought together the fishermen collective, the youth groups,
Speaker 4: the police themselves, and they reopen night fishing after six years,
Speaker 4: So the whole economy was revived basically because one.
Speaker 3: Woman was like, this is crazy. You know, where nobody's
Speaker 3: being served.
Speaker 1: You know, you're driving us into the hands of the
Speaker 1: very people that's trying to Yeah, and that's something that's
Speaker 1: actually leads me to the next thing where it's like,
Speaker 1: you know, sometimes it's I forget the name of the
Speaker 1: Harvard study, but like when the powers that be come
Speaker 1: cracked down so hard, so hard that you eventually almost
Speaker 1: guarantee the birth of a new resistance or terrorist group,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying, Like, it's it's almost guarantee.
Speaker 1: It's like you just you just prove their point by
Speaker 1: coming down.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, this is like a I'm been having this conversation
Speaker 4: with a lot of you know, Israelis in supports of
Speaker 4: Israel lately in terms of how the war's.
Speaker 3: Going on right now.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what I was gonna ask you.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, if it is, it is not, let's say,
Speaker 4: with the word's going on, even if you're only concerned literally,
Speaker 4: even if your only concern was israel security, even if
Speaker 4: you had no concerns, no humanitarian concerns, no concerns about
Speaker 4: human rights, even if your only concern was I got
Speaker 4: to assure the security of Israel, if that was all
Speaker 4: you cared about, this would not be the way to
Speaker 4: get there. Yeah, because it has never been the case
Speaker 4: that a massive military assault on a terrorist group or
Speaker 4: a violent extremist group that caused huge civilian casualties and
Speaker 4: did the threat.
Speaker 3: What it does is it metastasizes it.
Speaker 4: It either like he says, it either gives birth to
Speaker 4: Hamas two point zero, whatever that would look like, or
Speaker 4: it sort of disperses it and you get a lot
Speaker 4: more extremism, you know, and violent extremism that targets people,
Speaker 4: you know.
Speaker 3: Israeli's Jews, others outside of Israel.
Speaker 4: And that's a big fear that of God right now
Speaker 4: in terms of where this is all heading and saying
Speaker 4: that it is not, you know, intended to sort of
Speaker 4: negate in any way that the Israelis need to be secure,
Speaker 4: But it's just like it's interesting because there's this you know,
Speaker 4: the UN Development Program is like the biggest agency in
Speaker 4: the UN. So this is the people doing development work
Speaker 4: all around the world. And they put out too, like
Speaker 4: the biggest reports on what drives people into violent extremist groups.
Speaker 4: And they were particularly studying the case of all the
Speaker 4: African nations and I think it called it was called
Speaker 4: the Pathway to Extremism then it was. They did a
Speaker 4: study in twenty seventeen, and then they repeated it I
Speaker 4: think five years later and five years later in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty two, and they had the same and this is
Speaker 4: huge research, right, and they said, look, there are lots
Speaker 4: of different factors and lots of different places, but the
Speaker 4: number one most common experience of young people who joined
Speaker 4: violent extremist groups was being mistreated by security forces. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like that, And that goes to the Kenya example too,
Speaker 4: like those people who were being you know, getting into
Speaker 4: street protests and being beaten up by the police because
Speaker 4: the night fishing had been closely Like you said, they're
Speaker 4: much more like if I'm an el Schabadev recruiter, that's
Speaker 4: right territory for me.
Speaker 3: I can get those guys.
Speaker 2: You know, see what they're doing to you. People don't
Speaker 2: care about you, Yoe. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, So uh, I'm I'm gonna dial up the difficulty
Speaker 1: of the questions now, you know, because we've been we've
Speaker 1: been softballing you.
Speaker 2: So now again in the context of like.
Speaker 1: Kaza and Israel, which like, obviously there's certain things you
Speaker 1: can't talk about because it's still going on right now.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying as far as like what
Speaker 1: exactly the step is and the hope for when the
Speaker 1: bombing stops, like what we're supposed to do.
Speaker 2: But I think that there are times.
Speaker 1: That there there are moments where like the right and
Speaker 1: wrong is pretty clear, like this, who's this is wrong?
Speaker 1: You know? And to be still in a position of
Speaker 1: saying peace building, it's like to keep people coming to
Speaker 1: the table, there may be some things that you can't
Speaker 1: say out loud for the purpose of keeping them at
Speaker 1: the table. At the same time, the other people you're
Speaker 1: trying to keep to the table is looking at you,
Speaker 1: going like, but you know this is wrong, right And
Speaker 1: with something like like you said, with something like the
Speaker 1: response of of the Nation of Israel to this situation,
Speaker 1: it's like, well, this is tactically, pragmatically and humanitarian, like
Speaker 1: this is wrong, you know now you know this is
Speaker 1: the Hamas is a whole other conversation I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: like where we are right now, and like you said before,
Speaker 1: which you told us earlier, where it's like, well, we
Speaker 1: were no closer to a two state solution or a
Speaker 1: peace on October sixth than we were October seventh. Like
Speaker 1: there's like there was we were, we wasn't making no
Speaker 1: progress before, you know what I'm saying. And when you
Speaker 1: listen to the leaders of Hamas, they're like, our biggest
Speaker 1: thing was like the world stopped talking about us, like
Speaker 1: people stopped caring about our situation, Like y'all just like
Speaker 1: everybody's normalizing with Israel. But when ten years ago you
Speaker 1: were saying they need to figure out this situation, now
Speaker 1: y'all not worried about it. So we was like, well,
Speaker 1: how do we get y'all to still talk about us,
Speaker 1: you know? And then in the middle of all that,
Speaker 1: twenty one thousand people are dead, the hospitals failed, there's
Speaker 1: no you know what I'm saying, Like, there's there's all
Speaker 1: this carnage that happens in the middle of that to
Speaker 1: where anyone with a heart, like you say, anybody with
Speaker 1: a heart could be like this, this, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is wrong, Like how do you stay at the table
Speaker 1: or yeah, how do you stay at how do you
Speaker 1: not you jamil? But as an org how do you
Speaker 1: stay at the table? How do you stay in a
Speaker 1: peace building when in your heart there is something that's like, well,
Speaker 1: this is wrong, you.
Speaker 4: Know in the all right, our identity, yeah you were
Speaker 4: you were nice in your introduction to me of sort
Speaker 4: of saying that I'm you know, I don't put myself
Speaker 4: out there as much or whatever. But that's that's not
Speaker 4: just an issue of being sort of humble, like, yeah,
Speaker 4: our power is our identity, and our identity isn't just
Speaker 4: because I'm the CEO. In each place where we're working,
Speaker 4: our identity is a multi partial team that's drawn from
Speaker 4: the community. And they're not doing what they're doing out
Speaker 4: of charity. This is life and death for them and
Speaker 4: all the places we're working. So when you ask that
Speaker 4: really powerful question, just now imagine my Israelian pasting and
Speaker 4: colleagues sitting here right and the question is, how the
Speaker 4: hell are you all willing to do anything together? Right
Speaker 4: in the midst of what's going on, shouldn't you be
Speaker 4: calling it out? And you know, these are the hardest times.
Speaker 4: The power of work, not surprisingly, is kind of the
Speaker 4: most invisible when you're in the midst of massive, horrible,
Speaker 4: unacceptable violence and people get really I mean, look, I
Speaker 4: don't think that. Let me start from this place. There
Speaker 4: are two ways to drive change. I think there are
Speaker 4: probably a million ways to drive change, but there are
Speaker 4: two ways to drive change.
Speaker 3: What I want to what I want to share.
Speaker 4: There's an adversarial approach, which basically says, I'm going to
Speaker 4: find everyone who agrees with me, and I'm going to
Speaker 4: identify everyone who disagrees with me on this issue, and
Speaker 4: I'm going to organize.
Speaker 3: Myself with the first group against the ladder group. We're
Speaker 3: going to go to more literally or figurative.
Speaker 4: And that's an adversarial approach, and it's a wind lose approach, right,
Speaker 4: and it's it can be effective in a lot of places.
Speaker 4: The other approach to driving change is I'm going to
Speaker 4: take an issue I really care about, and I'm going
Speaker 4: to find out everybody who has a stake in how
Speaker 4: that issue plays out. Everybody, including the people who most.
Speaker 3: Disagree with me.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and then I'm going to figure out how to
Speaker 4: build trust between them so that we can come up
Speaker 4: with a solution where everyone's dignity is respected. Now it
Speaker 4: might sound like I'm avoiding your question, but I'm jumping
Speaker 4: to the end state, which is as really as Palestine
Speaker 4: is ant going anywhere.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're not going anywhere.
Speaker 4: This is where they're going to be, And so I
Speaker 4: would not push anyone And right now it's kind of
Speaker 4: the hardest time to get Israelis and Postings to do
Speaker 4: anything together. We would have pushed them to do together,
Speaker 4: but we are staying in very close touch with our
Speaker 4: teams and then without our partners to provide whatever we
Speaker 4: can to sustain them and to make sure their dignity
Speaker 4: is intact and that their voices are being heard. And
Speaker 4: as soon as the openings are there for us to
Speaker 4: start building, we're going to start helping them to build.
Speaker 4: But that twenty year clock we talked about is going
Speaker 4: to start again when the guns fall silent. That's what
Speaker 4: violence does. Like you can have decades, you can have
Speaker 4: decades of development that are wiped out in weeks of
Speaker 4: vinyl conflict. Yeah, that's why we when we start we
Speaker 4: talk about peace being the foundation, being like oxygen, everything else,
Speaker 4: everything else depends on it.
Speaker 3: So you know, I don't know if I answer your question,
Speaker 3: but it's it's you know, we could we could spend.
Speaker 4: A lot of time with me issuing statements about Israel
Speaker 4: and Gaza right now, but frankly might It's not that
Speaker 4: they're irrelevant. People need to know that you actually really care,
Speaker 4: You give it damn about their dignity and their humanity,
Speaker 4: and that's really important. And if there's going to be
Speaker 4: a time where we can create a future where that
Speaker 4: both Israelis and Pausines can live in real dignity and security,
Speaker 4: that's going to have to be created by them collaboratively,
Speaker 4: and we are unfortunately decades away from that happening now.
Speaker 2: Nah, thank you.
Speaker 1: That's great because it does sort of get you out
Speaker 1: of the polarization loop because there is something that's like,
Speaker 1: in some senses, it's like, well, we're at the table.
Speaker 2: We're here because.
Speaker 1: Well the violence is wrong as we're here about you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, Like nobody wants they babies to
Speaker 1: die like this. I mean, that's nobody wants their babies
Speaker 1: to die. So, like you said, I can issue statements,
Speaker 1: I could rally around the team, or I can say
Speaker 1: what you said, which I think is beautiful. It's like,
Speaker 1: who's invested in this, Who's really invested in this? And
Speaker 1: let's build trust around this and have a conversation around
Speaker 1: providing dignity for the people invested in here. And like
Speaker 1: you said, once the shooting stops, then the other things happen.
Speaker 1: So like you know, without without being too trivial, there's
Speaker 1: a man out here named Big U former Rolling sixty crip, notorious, notorious,
Speaker 1: notorious anyway, he started a football team league for like
Speaker 1: Pop warner It's just you know Crenshaw Cougar's you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying to where it's like I am you
Speaker 1: all know what's said.
Speaker 2: I'm from.
Speaker 1: I have sworn enemies, don't get me wrong. You know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, like they're there are I am a
Speaker 1: crip like that. I don't know what I was able
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: I'm a crip. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: But our children should be able to play outside, and
Speaker 1: it's just say it is what it is. Our children
Speaker 1: should be able to play outside, you know. And over
Speaker 1: the years, like when I did finally I get a
Speaker 1: chance to meet him. It was in passing because since
Speaker 1: I didn't live on that side of town, I wasn't
Speaker 1: really a part of a lot of stuff they did.
Speaker 2: I lived in the Latino community, but I was.
Speaker 1: A part of intervention programs that were inspired by him,
Speaker 1: you know, and was able to say, hey, man, like
Speaker 1: I lived, I lived with the Latinos, but they was
Speaker 1: inspired as Yeah, so can.
Speaker 3: I ask you a question of that? So like before
Speaker 3: he did that, would you have ever guessed that he
Speaker 3: would do that? Or would anyone never a million years?
Speaker 3: I feel like this is what this is the thing about.
Speaker 4: Let's take this to interid Pals sign again if we
Speaker 4: want to stay on that hard topic, like, yeah, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of things I don't know, and people who
Speaker 4: predict the future of this conflict, you know, whatever moral
Speaker 4: power to them. But there's one thing I know, which
Speaker 4: is that when peace comes here, it's going to be
Speaker 4: negogostiated by people you never would have expected, agreeing to
Speaker 4: things that you never would believe they would have agreed to.
Speaker 4: And we saw that between the British government and the
Speaker 4: IRA and people forget the IRA was bombing hotels, they
Speaker 4: were bombing they set off. You know, I saw that
Speaker 4: between the FARC rebel movement and the Colombian government after
Speaker 4: fifty years of civil war, we said, you go out
Speaker 4: down the list. Even even in this conflict right between,
Speaker 4: you know, when we're being an Arafat signed the Oslo Accords.
Speaker 4: Like everything that's being said about Hamas right now was
Speaker 4: set about the PLO.
Speaker 1: Got to be a ploy listener as We have an
Speaker 1: episode coming up about that backstory of the PLO and
Speaker 1: the Oslos.
Speaker 2: But I'm gonna do that history.
Speaker 4: But yeah, go on, yeah, so and and and you know,
Speaker 4: the policy and authority which is in the West Bank
Speaker 4: is the descendants of the PLO. That's what the PO
Speaker 4: turned into when they signed a peace agreement and they
Speaker 4: said were laying down our weapons. Now we're going to
Speaker 4: administer the West Bank. Right And you take that model,
Speaker 4: and no one's saying that there they've turned violent. They
Speaker 4: haven't even through all of what's been going on. You know,
Speaker 4: you take that model and you compare it to a
Speaker 4: model of a military attack when the military, when there's
Speaker 4: really military went into Lebanon to get the PLO out
Speaker 4: of be Root, which is where they were quartered for
Speaker 4: a while. That massive military invasion led to the rise
Speaker 4: in Hesbola, which now is seen as a bigger threat
Speaker 4: than anyone else. It's like what you said earlier, like that,
Speaker 4: if I'm not saying that military action is you know,
Speaker 4: you never people never use military actions. I don't know,
Speaker 4: but I will say that when you're dealing with an
Speaker 4: extremist group, a group that's using violent needs to pursue
Speaker 4: political ends, right, and they're embedded in a community, any community,
Speaker 4: if you're going to use military tactics that kill a
Speaker 4: lot of civilians in that community, it's inevitable that you're
Speaker 4: going to create for what you seek to destroy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Man, even today the uh there was a leader of
Speaker 1: MOSTA got popped in Lebanon today.
Speaker 2: So we'll see what comes out. We'll see what comes
Speaker 2: out from it.
Speaker 1: Uh But yeah, I think Okay, So lastly, we've been
Speaker 1: dancing around it, or not dancing around it.
Speaker 2: We've actually been defining it this whole time.
Speaker 1: But it's this last term that has really stuck out
Speaker 1: for me, which is multi partial and multi partial is
Speaker 1: not neutral, right, it's not this you know, disinterested. I
Speaker 1: think a lot of times people say, well, like I
Speaker 1: want I'm neutral in this situation, and it's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's doesn't that don't capture it? Like neutral don't help
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: No, they are I love you know this is this
Speaker 3: is our core identity.
Speaker 4: Yes, and it's and it's you know, people hear the
Speaker 4: term impartial or neutral and they think, oh, you're like
Speaker 4: a third party arbitrator, Like you're coming from the outside
Speaker 4: and you hear the different proops and you ormediate that's
Speaker 4: not who we are, like they're there. There's six things
Speaker 4: about being multipartial that I think are uniquely powerful. First,
Speaker 4: there's real humanity in it. We were just talking about
Speaker 4: it with Israel Plisin. You could talk about in La
Speaker 4: with communities. You were just talking about, like, there's a
Speaker 4: real humanity when the team is not only local but
Speaker 4: represents the divided communities. That means that when they're they're
Speaker 4: they're not they're not detached about what's going on. They're
Speaker 4: directly feeling it. Their families are future is at stake.
Speaker 4: It's a life and death thing for them. So there's
Speaker 4: a humanity to it. Second, there's a credibility to it.
Speaker 4: You've got unique access and convening power. When if your
Speaker 4: team again includes like former youth activists and leaders, former
Speaker 4: gang members, retired cops or whatever, and you're trying to
Speaker 4: deal with police community violence, there's going to be unique
Speaker 4: credibility to that team if they could ever create themselves
Speaker 4: as a real team.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's there's wisdom. And this is where what you
Speaker 3: were talking about.
Speaker 4: Before, Like this, this relationship between justice and peace I
Speaker 4: think is really misunderstood, really misunderstood. I think the notion
Speaker 4: that piece is just you know when Martin Luther King
Speaker 4: said that piece is not just the absence of tension,
Speaker 4: but the presence of justice.
Speaker 3: Like, I don't think that. I think when you have
Speaker 3: people who.
Speaker 4: Represent the different communities themselves, they understand that you can't
Speaker 4: get justice without peace, and you can't get peace without justice.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: And it can be hard to say this because it
Speaker 4: seems like you're letting oppressors off the hook. But unjust
Speaker 4: systems I was always inspired by by Mendela and King
Speaker 4: and Tutu and James Baldwin evenough also like who understood
Speaker 4: or Gandhi. They understood that unjust systems trap everyone. Yes,
Speaker 4: which is not the same thing as saying they oppress
Speaker 4: everyone equally. That would be really obscene, but like they
Speaker 4: we know that's not the case, but they limit everybody,
Speaker 4: and and they what all of those activists created was
Speaker 4: a future that uplifted everyone's dignity and humanity. It didn't
Speaker 4: just flip the power tables, didn't just okay, you oppressed
Speaker 4: this to the group. Now the other group's going to
Speaker 4: be in charge. So there's wisdom. There's wisdom. That's the
Speaker 4: third thing's humanity, credibility, wisdom. The fourth thing is pragmatism.
Speaker 4: Like you know, there are all these international advocates people
Speaker 4: issuing statements on the in Israel Paleston.
Speaker 3: You just put your finger on it.
Speaker 4: We're always going to defer to what our Israelian Palasinian
Speaker 4: team jointly is willing to say and do. And I'm
Speaker 4: not going to override that by saying but wait, our
Speaker 4: organization has to say this, whether or not you think
Speaker 4: it's no. We either say things because they think we
Speaker 4: should say them, or we keep our mouth shut because
Speaker 4: they say keep your mouth shut. We're working for something right,
Speaker 4: And so there's pragmatism. In that fifth there's authenticity and
Speaker 4: I love this. You can't create a more inclusive world
Speaker 4: with more like exclusivist advocacy. You can't create a cooperative
Speaker 4: role through adversarial advocacy, like you really align your means
Speaker 4: and your ends right like you Gandhi's whole thing about
Speaker 4: be the change you want to see in the world.
Speaker 4: There's real authenticity in that because you're not saying, hey,
Speaker 4: we're going to get to this peaceful place, but the
Speaker 4: way we're going to get there is really adversarial, and
Speaker 4: naturally that doesn't work.
Speaker 2: It doesn't.
Speaker 4: And the sixth thing is there's a real bias towards action,
Speaker 4: like when you multi partial, when your team as local
Speaker 4: and from the communities, they don't have a lot of
Speaker 4: patience for.
Speaker 3: Just having talk shops.
Speaker 4: They're like, look, I'm a dialogue is necessary, but it's
Speaker 4: totally insufficient.
Speaker 3: You've got you need dialogue to understand where people are
Speaker 3: coming from.
Speaker 4: But if that doesn't translated into action that's meaningful to people,
Speaker 4: that actually meets communities' needs and demands, people can get
Speaker 4: really negative about dialogue. You see this in the Middle
Speaker 4: East about peace process like a dirty word because people
Speaker 4: are like, you know what, we've been there, We've done
Speaker 4: that in that Yeah, we've done that anyway, those all
Speaker 4: those things are all those are like to me. Those
Speaker 4: are like the power power, themes of multi partiality, of humanity, credibility, wisdom, pragmatism, authenticity,
Speaker 4: and this like bias towards action.
Speaker 2: Are yeah, beautiful. It's peace possible, It's.
Speaker 3: Inevitable, but not without a hell of a lot of work. Right.
Speaker 3: I will tell you one thing.
Speaker 4: When I was, you know, sister Helen Praison, she she okay,
Speaker 4: so like the author of Dead Men Walking and the
Speaker 4: Catholic nun who's she is now she's now accompanied six
Speaker 4: men to their death and the uh leading anti death
Speaker 4: penalty activists in the country probably, And I had the
Speaker 4: honor to meet her recently, and uh somebody said this
Speaker 4: is also hopeless, Like what can we do? And I
Speaker 4: can never channel her? She used, played you should I
Speaker 4: just send you the audio what she said. But she
Speaker 4: just said, she said, just do one thing. She said,
Speaker 4: when you, when you, because when you're standing on the
Speaker 4: sidelines and you're just watching how horrible everything is, you
Speaker 4: just go into despair and cynicism. But when you do
Speaker 4: just one thing, no matter how small it is, even
Speaker 4: if it's even if it's like just very little. It
Speaker 4: only makes a little change in your own little community
Speaker 4: with one person. You're actually releasing an energy into the
Speaker 4: community that gathers momentum, right, and you generate hope in
Speaker 4: yourself and in others when you do that one thing,
Speaker 4: and you can never understand like how far that hope
Speaker 4: is actually going to go.
Speaker 3: So yeah, pieces possible as long as we work for it.
Speaker 4: You don't just and I think she said to the
Speaker 4: one of the first men, one of the first men
Speaker 4: who she accompanied to the.
Speaker 3: Death chamber.
Speaker 4: They had an argument, a big argument when she was
Speaker 4: trying to convince him or encourage him to acknowledge what
Speaker 4: he had done to seek forgiveness. And he said, well,
Speaker 4: all you do is pray, And she said, no, no, no,
Speaker 4: I pray and I work. I pray and I work.
Speaker 4: So anyway, pieces possible. But only if we work.
Speaker 3: We pray and we work.
Speaker 1: Hollyluit, dud okay, you are preaching, mail be preaching, y'all.
Speaker 2: Man, Hey, thank you so much for your time.
Speaker 3: Dude.
Speaker 1: I know you're super busy. It's like there's so much
Speaker 1: happening on the planet right my lord, Like I know
Speaker 1: we're involved in Sudan right now, like I know there's
Speaker 1: just so much happening right now. Thank you for taking
Speaker 1: your time to holler at us in and present this
Speaker 1: to us.
Speaker 4: Thanks so much for having me proud, and thanks for
Speaker 4: being such a supportive search for Coming ground.
Speaker 3: It's great to have you on board.
Speaker 1: Of course, guys, please go to the website sf CG
Speaker 1: dot org. Uh will take donations and uh yeah so
Speaker 1: yeah yeah, please tap in with us man. Like again,
Speaker 1: it's people out here, Like I know how bleak the
Speaker 1: world is, but it's people out here actually on the
Speaker 1: ground doing the good work.
Speaker 3: Thanks thanks man, pace B to you.
Speaker 1: All right now, don't you hit stop on this pod.
Speaker 1: You better listen to these credits. I need you to
Speaker 1: finish this thing so I can get the download numbers. Okay,
Speaker 1: so don't stop it yet, but listen. This was recorded
Speaker 1: in East Lost Boil Heights by your boy Propaganda. Tap
Speaker 1: in with me at prop hip hop dot com. If
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Speaker 1: can go there dot com and use promo code hood
Speaker 1: get twenty percent off get yourself some coffee. This was mixed,
Speaker 1: edited and mastered by your boy Matt Alsowski.
Speaker 2: Killing the beast softly.
Speaker 1: Check out his website Matdowsowski dot com. I'm a spell
Speaker 1: it for you because I know M A T T
Speaker 1: O s O W s ki dot com Matthowsowski dot com.
Speaker 1: He got more music and stuff like that on there,
Speaker 1: so gonna check out. The Heat Politics is a member
Speaker 1: of cool Zone Media, Executive produced by Sophie Lichterman, part
Speaker 1: of the iHeartMedia podcast Network. Your theme music and scoring
Speaker 1: is also by the one and overly mattow Sowski. Still
Speaker 1: killing the beats softly, So listen. Don't let nobody lie
Speaker 1: to you. If you understand urban living, you understand politics.
Speaker 1: These people is not smarter than you.
Speaker 2: We'll see y'all next week.