Hey, Dizzy, how's it going? It's going all right. Good. If you had to guess, uh, how many episodes do you think You Know Me Now has released? I would have never guessed 22. Me either, actually. So this is the beginning of our third season, and Wow. And you've, you've listened to a number of them, right? A couple of them, yeah, a few, yeah.

What do you, what do you appreciate most, uh, in the, in the stories? Um, the way you get people to just bring out the, the honesty of the lives lived, and the just, uh, You know, you see somebody on the street, uh, homeless, and, and you just, even, even me, you, you form an opinion, you know, and you don't really know them at all, and so it's important to get to know people.

Yeah, and why, why is that important? Because to solve the issue of homelessness, if you just have this, this narrow vision of, of, of what a homeless person is, then you're going to have some narrow vision of what the solution is, and that's not going to work. You know, these are, these are people with, with lives and, and, and And stories and feelings, uh, just like your own, you know, just experienced differently.

Yeah. Do you have a favorite episode? Well, the one, Being Dizzy is my favorite episode. Yeah, wait, wait, that guy is super sensitive and smart. Smart and funny too. Yeah, good looking. That's a matter of opinion. Who? I suppose. Wait a minute. That guy's me. There you go. Actually, that is, that is one of my very favorite episodes.

Do you think people, um, think people want to be listening to this, this, this podcast? I told you before, nobody listens to this crap. No, I'm just kidding. Um, yeah, I think so. Do you know how many people listen to it? Is there any way to tell? There is. Tomas knows. He's, he's the numbers guy, but he's told me that, that the numbers continue to go up and that we are, for, I think the amount of time that we've been doing this, we're in the top 30%.

Really? Which is pretty good. Of all podcasts worldwide? No, just the ones in the U District area. And what are those? How many are there? Five? Yeah, we're in the top We're in the top 30 percent of two episodes. Um, I don't know actually. Uh, I think that's U. S. Wow. Uh, maybe it's worldwide. I don't know. Hey Dizzy, I want you to introduce our third season.

Tell us, tell us why you think this is important to be doing this, to be telling stories. Just the fact that you care enough to do this could inspire other people to care enough. And that's the only way that's, uh, homelessness is going to get solved, is if people care. And you care because you know homeless people and that they're people, you know?

Yeah, and I think that brings us back to the intent, right? To just come closer so that you can care. Yeah. This podcast contains potentially sensitive topics and strong language listener discretion is advised. When you say, gang, I want you to close your. Say it to yourself and what picture pops in your, your head when you say it, you, you picture somebody black, you picture somebody young, you picture somebody maybe with they pants, sagging, maybe with, maybe with a weapon.

Whatever the, whatever vivid picture pops in your mind, I bet you a dime to dollar. He black. What I'm saying is I believe that this is a strategy and a tool that has been used to criminalize our kids. They think that because they have this membership in this power group, they're more dangerous. This is what they've sold us.

But the fact of the matter is, that's not true. Gangs is a label, and it's a derogatory label. It dehumanizes who you're talking about. When you say gang member, it's no longer a child. It doesn't matter if he's 12 years old. It doesn't matter if he's 14. Right, the fact of the matter is when you say gang member, that means something specific to you, and, and, and none of it's good.

Us being mindful of the words we use, and the way that we categorize folks, is important. We live in a society that loves to label things. And just so happens when these things that they label are black and brown, they have a lot of bad connotations to them. I'm Rex Holbein and welcome to, you know, me now a podcast conversation that strives to amplify the unheard voices in our community.

In these episodes, I want to remind all of our listeners that the folks who share here do so with a great deal of vulnerability and courage. They share a common hope that by giving all of us this window into their world, they're opening an increased level of awareness, understanding, and perhaps most importantly, a connection within our own community.

As an architect, I love the Japanese concept of kintsugi. Translated in English, it means golden joinery. Kintsugi is the art of repairing pottery by mending the areas broken with a lacquer that contains powdered gold or silver. In the process of repair, rather than trying to seamlessly fit the pieces back together again to make the cracks go away.

The cracks are instead celebrated as part of the history of the object. Like pottery, we humans are also fragile, often navigating life with our own cracks, sometimes while being completely broken. How we mend our cracks, how we heal, has a great deal to do with how we move forward in life.

Today we meet David, who embodies this idea of Kintsugi. At age 16, David was sentenced to what amounted to life in prison. In his words, being thrown away at 16 years old wasn't the event, it was the exclamation point. He's referring to the consistent messaging he's been receiving his whole life. Messages from systems that failed to see his humanity.

David was released after serving 24 years following legislative reform of juvenile sentencing standards due to new scientific understanding of youth brain development. In 2018, David became the executive director of the Freedom Project. His team was able to engage with hundreds of community members inside and outside of the prisons.

Actively working to stay accountable to and showing up for the community in a way that's needed in 2021. The Freedom Project was chosen to be part of a 16 jurisdictional initiative under the Biden Harris administration's comprehensive strategy to reduce, prevent and respond to community based gun violence.

Today, David is 46 years old. He is the Director of Vision and Values at the Black Rose Collective. He works to develop community partnerships with individuals, groups, and movements who share an alignment with and affinity for dismantling systems of oppression. David co facilitates anti oppression workshops and was in the second cohort of Unlocked Futures, social entrepreneurs impacted by the criminal justice system, formed through a partnership with New Profit and John Legend's non profit organization, Free America.

Unlocked Futures Sadly, my first memories as a child aren't really good memories. I grew up in a household that had a lot of violence. Those are my earliest memories. Of the chaos that, that came with that. So I don't think I've ever felt safe. I do know that I was a sensitive child. I think that there was, uh, There was always a feeling of not belonging.

Do you have any specific memories that you can share? Um, like a, like some difficult moments? My dad is black and my mom Korean. And so I have mixed heritage. And so I got my mama's eyes and her cheekbones and, and my daddy's nose and, and complexion, right? I'm a, I'm a, I'm a, I'm a good blend of both. I remember when I was younger, though, um, I used to get bullied for these things that I might think are.

Make me exceptional and different, right? You know what I mean? Unique in my own way. I got this, this nice blend of these two beautiful people, but the world might feel differently, right? You know, as kids, kids don't like different. If you, we make it through that tough period of being bullied and shamed for, for being different.

Those things turn into your gifts, right? All the things that make you different are the things that you is that people love about you. So I had a difficulty coming to terms with that blend, that mix. I remember as a child, I got into a lot of fights over these features that I've had. So, so, you know, I think that it was difficult for me to really make sense of the world.

The only thing you want when you're a child is to fit in the pushback or the teasing and the bullying that I received. Right. Which probably had to be pretty hard for my mom to hear. You know what I mean? Um, and, I remember when she told me, listen, you're black. I remember she told me that. And, and I know that she told me that from a place of love, right?

Cause she understand how the world seen me, viewed me and was going to treat me. And she wanted to, you know, from her perspective, prepare me for that. And. You know, she was right though. Like, like that, that's real. It don't matter what I say at the end of the day, the world gonna see me a certain way and they're going to treat me a certain way.

And I think her hope was to be able to reassure me in that sense. Right. Because some folks would say I wasn't, you know what I mean? When she told me that though, it landed differently and, and, and, and it landed for me who, you know, with the way my trauma hit me was, you know, She was creating separation between me and her, right?

And so that's the theme, right? If you can see it and if I can really unpack it, that's what it would be. It's really folks are doing their best. with what they have in navigating a society that has impacted them in the way that it has impacted them. And it doesn't land on me in the way that they intended to land.

I want to name that my parents had their own trauma. You know, I love them dearly. And I, I believe that they did the best that they could with what they had, but I, I do believe that it was difficult to raise two black children in this society in, in, in the way that they could without passing on the generational trauma that was passed on through them.

And I think that when you, you also compound everything that they're holding with the societal pressures. And their deep rooted fear of how the world's going to treat me and my brother, then it kind of starts to make sense why there was such an intensity about how we showed up in public or how we showed up in general, because they seen us, our inability to listen or pay attention.

Um, they saw that as. Potential threat to our lives. Like, like they were worried. Yeah. Like thinking about the day that we leave and we don't come home. And I didn't have that real understanding. If white people aren't comfortable, I'm not safe. Right. And, and I can understand why, because I've had to have that same talk with my son, right.

And really difficult to not want to pour my generational trauma onto him as well. Cause I understand how impacted and harmful that really was to me. So it's difficult. These are difficult dynamics and, and that, that we have to navigate. They did their best with what they had. Just sadly, the way that it landed on the little child that had to navigate this world with not feeling like he had any belonging anywhere, um, reading what they saw as wanting to ensure my safety as.

from me. And so not feeling loved in my family and not feeling accepted by a world, um, was really hard on me. David struggled greatly feeling disconnected from his family and the community around him. He was too young to comprehend the societal pressures and the personal traumas his parents were under.

Later on, as an adult, David was able to appreciate the complexities his parents navigated in raising him and his brother. It allowed him to reach back and feel a connection and love that had always been there. Like, I remember when he got us the, uh, you know, this is going to date me a little bit, but a Nintendo, you know, it wasn't in a package.

It wasn't another fact, but it didn't matter though. Like we was able to get a Nintendo. I remember how happy we were though. You know what I mean? And so to imagine how hard he had to work to make sure we were able to get that. You know, my dad, he didn't communicate well with me. I'll say with me, he didn't really communicate well.

So I didn't know nothing or anything about, about his story. Really. We have those, we had moments where, um, I remember he going through an old box and he, he pulling out, he pulled out some boxing gloves, right? That was a moment where not knowing much about his, his story, the life that he had, you know, I got glimpses and I was like, Oh, he used to box and, and I knew, I remember when I seen it, I was like, I want to box.

You know what I mean? Because he boxed. I used to cherish those moments. You know what I mean? So it was, it was real powerful for me. While those positive childhood moments were something special for David, they were also rare. Growing up as a mixed race child in an under resourced community in Tacoma, Washington, in the 1990s was rough.

Very rough. David needed much more from his parents. He and his brother were quite different from each other. In personality and temperament, David's brother was quiet and did well with his studies, while David was louder, needing to process externally. In school, his learning style did not match up with how lessons were being taught.

Despite the difference in how they navigated their childhoods, Both boys struggled emotionally. When raising children, it is often said, it takes a village. David's parents were consumed by their own trauma while trying to hold together a dysfunctional relationship and family. Any love offered by them or by the extended family was not being felt by David.

Away from home, his experiences were not ones of finding mentorship or even relationships that might have filled in the gaps. His schools were ill equipped to provide support and guidance. For David, there was no village. I think the two things that really come out of my childhood is one, staying together for the kids is a horrible idea.

And the reality is, kids know. The toxic dynamics that are, that are in the home. I think that we, there was a lot of harm that happened to us because of their dynamics and the fact that they believed that they had to stay together somehow would be best for us. As kids, right? And so we suffered from that.

The other thing is the lack of expectations that they put on me. I crumbled under because I think that I think what we needed was for somebody to just pour into us to be able to see us. See us for our unique gifts and the things that make us different. And we needed reassurance. We needed to feel safe.

We needed to feel, uh, like we have somewhere to belong to. We needed all these things that everybody needs, but we just, um, in, in, um, in the way that we navigated, uh, we, we didn't have the funny thing is. The pressure and responsibility that came for being how responsible he was and the criticism, critique, and pushback that I got for being on the opposite end of whatever his spectrum was negatively impacted us both.

Right? And so for me, I think it decimated my self image. I think it decimated, uh, um, any feeling of belonging and value that I might have coveted. And this is what I, the messaging that I got from the world, from teachers, from counselors and of the like, you know, you, you said something that I've, it's new for me and out of ignorance.

And I've always thought of, you know, the, that overlay of the parenting, right? Like how important that is. And. And, and when it's not working, how society, teachers and other mentors for me, you know, you know, I also, my childhood was aided by the soccer coach that I just adored and he was like this amazing person.

And I, I could see that picking up the slack, but when you are black living in a world where you're getting not those positive messages from the world outside of your home, and then you couple it with trauma inside the home. There isn't a place to, to go to a safe harbor in that sense. Is that, is that accurate?

Absolutely. And I, and I think that this is also, um, it showcases how not culturally responsive or trauma informed those institutions are right. Teachers and school officials and officials in general don't understand how to deal with trauma. And they don't have a lens to understand how to be culturally responsive.

And so they misread how our kids show up. When you come to school with your trauma, and this might be because you've experienced extreme violence or maybe some other tragedy that has affected you and, and, and it makes it, there's an inability to be able to engage as they expect you to engage, to be present as they might expect you to be present, to raise your hand and to be obedient.

They're too comfortable and a large part of that is is because of bias, but they're too comfortable chalking that up as that's part of the who the kid is. Right? And, and, when you can see a kid hurting, but you can't see them hurting, them hurting looks like they're violent. That's how they're, that's in your mind, like, that's how they, it, it translates in your mind.

I've seen on many occasions where they'll see our kids and they're scared of our kids. And they'll look at these, this kid who's really just sad and traumatized and really just needs a hug and somebody to let them know, like, is everything's going to be all right. Like, listen, you know what I mean? Um, that's all they really need, but instead you're getting scared.

And what I think what some folks don't realize, and I'll speak for myself, I, I, I was extra sensitive to those microaggressions. Like I couldn't read if somebody was scared of me when I was a kid. You don't believe how infuriating that is when you're really just sad and you're at a place where somebody is supposed to be there to give you care and they're scared of you.

In the person's mind, as far as the school official or whatever the case is mine, the way that you respond justifies how they felt because now you don't want nothing to do with them. And you're good and they can't help you and they take your, your reluctance to lean in for help and support as justification.

And that's the saddest thing on the planet. The research shows how judges have an inability to see black and brown kids as kids. When a black and brown kids, Do something, they have a more likelihood to believe that that's their character. That's who they are. And that's why they send black and brown kids to the adult system if they have a choice at a, at a, at a larger clip.

It's because they adult icize our kids. They really believe, they have this inability to see this child in front of them. When they see somebody who looks like them, you see how much different their support looks. That was my experience. I think that for me, everything ain't defined by my trauma. My trauma was difficult, but I was also inundated with systems that had this inability to, uh, make space for my experience and the things that made me special and, and, and, and individual.

The school wasn't built for me. You know, um, you want me to memorize this, this useless information and regurgitate it back to you to prove that I'm smart and that system worked in making me feel dumb. So when I used to suffer in the way that these, these systems were put together, I suffered because I needed a different system.

You were trying to put a square peg in a round hole and, uh, and, and I'm the square peg that feels bad for not being round. Just imagine, um, being a child and it's my responsibility to learn, but not your responsibility to teach, you know, like you don't have to make no adjustments about your process. I have to adjust to your system, even though, um, that's not how my brain works.

And I didn't really understand that because you internalize that. I internalized that coming up. I didn't think I was smart. I didn't think all these things. I didn't think I was worth shit. You know what I mean? I didn't, I thought lowly of myself because I, the, the, because I'm regurgitating what they telling me about me.

And so now I'm letting the world define who I am. And I have no real idea who I am. You know, it wasn't until later when I, when I was, thrown away and in the penitentiary as a child and had to self educate myself that I really started to understand my education style. David struggled in school. He learned quickly to wear a mask, to hide himself, to be someone else as a way of protecting himself.

I used to see kids who could authentically be themselves when I was growing up, man. I used to admire those kids. Now, granted, they used to get bullied and they used to get it bad, right? I really admired them as I grew up, and really understood like, you know, um, the pressure to fit in at that age, and these kids were just them, and it didn't matter.

It didn't matter, you know what I mean, the pushback they got, they just showed up. They were just walking their own walk. Yeah, it don't matter that these guys keep knocking their books over, and, you know what, that's real courage right there. Show up every day to school. I didn't view myself as that as a child, I view myself as, you know.

as using coping mechanisms that are going with the crowd, right? You know what I mean? Um, I, I came up in a lot of trauma and I, and I came up in places that I did, I felt like I didn't belong and I didn't have care and I didn't have love. So I gravitated towards power groups and I call power groups what some folks refer to as gangs.

I don't like that framing. Um, it has such a, um, loaded instant images, images that come to your mind when that's, when that said, when, and it doesn't have any acknowledgement of the fact that. These kids are trying to access power. They're trying to find a place of belonging. They're trying to get their needs met.

And sometimes they do in these power groups. And, and so, um, So I'm not one to want to demonize those things. And when did that start for you? Like, let's take, you know, you're in first, second, third, fourth grade. You're, you know, you're going through this, not fitting in at home and also having a difficult time at school.

Like when, when did, when did your understanding of going into a, into the power dynamic actually begin for you or was it just seamless from the beginning? You get exposed to it, um, them early nineties in Tacoma where I was raised. So it was, it Early teens, it got real. But that's when it became a real option.

I was surrounded in my neighborhood with folks from, from different power groups and the pressure was there. Some wanna initiate you, like you gotta join, or others want to just, uh, jump you because you're not a part of anything. And, and so And jump you means beat you up. Yeah, just beat you up or whatever the case, right?

And, and so, um, that's what it was. But, I, I think from my perspective, I, I, I got put on a different power group that wasn't any of those. Which made it difficult for me. Because it wasn't about numbers, right? Like, like, like, it wasn't like I was always outnumbered, but, um, I think it was more in alignment with my personality to want to, uh, align with folks who, um, how do I explain that?

I want to say have similar values, but you're not going to really understand what that means as far as like when I say that, but it's just, um, I don't know how explicit I want to get about what I, my affiliations and stuff like that. David is clearly hesitant to share about his affiliations during this time of his life.

He is choosing his words carefully because, as he says, the language around these groups is highly stigmatized. He doesn't want to glamorize power groups on one hand, but on the other, for those in the power groups, a community he knows Loves and still works with. He doesn't want to wrongly demonize them either.

It's not that simple. He's walking a thin line in trying to express his truth. Let me say this, I believe that in this society, even though there's systems, oppressive systems that set the table and the circumstances to create the results, a a lot of the eels that are happening in our community and in our lives.

We live in a society that refuses. to acknowledge any responsibility on the systems side and puts everything on the individual. And so even though these are systems problems, even though we don't criminalize poverty, even though we didn't criminalize blackness and, and, and, and they got all these systems participating in the criminalization of these things.

If you watch the media, if you watch how folks frame things and put things, it's really about the individual. You know what I mean? It's really about, you need to pull yourself up by your bootstraps, irregardless if you have boots. So there's this hyper focus on the individual. And I believe that that hyper focus is to, uh, let the systems off the hook.

The dismantling and rebuilding these systems is difficult work. And instead of doing that, and plus those who have resources and power enjoy that the system. They benefit is held in place. They still benefit and they appreciate their benefits. You know what I mean? And so I, I think that the problem are systems.

They're not people. I really believe that. And so I said that to circle back to talking about gangs, right? The term, right? So this term is loaded and it's been weaponized in a way to, to have a real impact on black and brown communities. When you say gang, I want you to close your eyes, say it to yourself.

And what picture pops in your, your head when you say it, you, you picture somebody black, you picture somebody young, you picture somebody maybe with a pants sagging, maybe with, maybe with a weapon and whatever the, whatever vivid picture pops in your mind, I bet you a dime, a dollar he black. And so what I'm saying is I believe that this is a strategy and a tool that has been used to criminalize our kids.

They think that because they have this membership in this power group, they're more dangerous. This is what they've sold us. But the fact of the matter is, that's not true. Gangs is a label and it's a derogatory label. It dehumanizes who you're talking about. When you say gang member, it's no longer a child.

It doesn't matter if he's 12 years old. It doesn't matter if he's 14, right? The fact of the matter is when you say gang member, that means something specific to you and, and, and none of it's good. Us being mindful of the words we use and the way that we categorize folks is important. We live in a society that loves to label things and just so happens when these things that they label are black and brown, they have a lot of bad connotations to them.

As a young child, David did not understand any of these dynamics. All he knew was what he felt, and that was the shame of struggling in school, feeling like he wasn't smart, and also the pain of a strained relationship with his mother and father while growing up at home. Most of his interactions with the adult world at that time were telling him he didn't fit in, he wasn't good enough.

But the streets were different. The people he was meeting there showed interest in him. There was an opportunity for belonging. And even more. Alright, so I'm going to be blunt, but I don't know if we're going to be able to use this. I was surrounded by

Out of respect for those communities. To keep the flow of the conversation, we have decided to leave the dialogue as recorded with added censor beeps where David mentioned power groups names. What I, when I became, got associated with was, and so they're different in the sense that view themselves not as a gang, but a nation, right?

They have literature, they have different doctrine, and they don't view themselves as gang members. Like they, they think that they view the, That term, like it's a derogatory term if you call them a gang member. So as a kid, I was enamored with the literature and with the deeper meanings that, that came with, with that.

Some of these tenets that came out of the, the. Was are things that I still carry on me now. They, they, they used to say, you know, there are no big Gs or little Gs, right? Uh, um, this is a concept of there's no big me's and little you's, you know what I mean? Like we're all as one. There was this, these positive elements to it.

That really planted seeds on me, in me, that were allowed to start to grow later on in my life. And, and so, it's a funny thing, as much as I struggled in school, how easy it was for me to learn literature. Right? You know what I mean? I, I memorized that, and some of it, just tell me, and I got it, and I could regurgitate it back.

It sounds like that group began to build some of the foundational underpinnings of who you are today. Like when it did with the things that they made important and and also I'm guessing I don't want to put words in your mouth But maybe for the first time you felt like you were fitting in like you were yes, you were being seen.

Yes Absolutely. It fed me. You know what I mean? We navigate through this world with, with, with, with all these unmet needs and it starts to meet some of those needs. You feel valued. You feel, um, and it, and it counteracts some of the messaging, right. That, that, that said that I was. I wasn't smart or I wasn't ever going to be nothing or, or whatever the case was, right?

It was a means for me to access some of my power and, and growth and growth, right? Um, and, and that was, so that was pivotal, um, for me. I think that what I connected to was the substance and not to be disparaging of other power groups, but my perception of what the substance was spoke to me. It really made me feel like I was a part of something bigger than myself.

When you think about these other power groups, they're really localized. There's a lot of in the world, but if you're a part of a particular hood, that hood is usually localized in the community. This was more, was, was worldwide. There was this, all this one perspective to it, where you believed that you'd be Chicago or New York or wherever the case and there was some type of connection there, right?

And, and so I think that that was, there was a level of that, that, um, that I appreciated. This seems like an obvious leading question, but if, would you have joined if you felt like you would fit in at home? Is it, is it, is it that easy to say kids that don't feel like they're fitting in are susceptible to joining a power group?

Is that, is it that simple? Let's put it this way, if a person is able to access power and get their needs met with what is available to them, the likelihood that they look elsewhere is not likely. Yeah, I think what I took out of that is that when I spend time trying to understand the influence or the negative connotations.

Of being in a gang or power group, right? And, and I'm trying to tease out all the pluses and minuses of that dynamic, because those are really just collections of people, individuals, that have their own trauma, their own issues, coming together in solidarity, right? What we really should be talking about are what are the systems in place that actually are creating that vacuum?

Yes. Is that Absolutely. I think if you took a hundred people off the streets, Coming out of office buildings and you ask them that question about gangs, I, I, I, and told them that I, I don't think people would, would connect those dots. They wouldn't get past the word gang. Absolutely. Just as you said. Let me say this.

I think everybody wants to feel safe. Everybody wants to feel safe. I, and folks don't want to see other folks get harmed. And, and, and I, I, I really believe that. You know, I don't believe in good and bad people. We all have the same universal needs, right? We just have different strategies. I want to just always stay connected to folks, humanity, man, even the folks on the other side of an issue with me who really just care about their safety.

And so they believe that taking. These kids off the street in droves is going to somehow make them safer. Now that's not true. It doesn't make you safer. Uh, the super predators stuff of the early nineties and, and, um, the war on drugs, all that stuff is the failed wars. They, it wasn't real. It decimated our community.

And, and, um, but it didn't. It didn't lower crime. It didn't do none of that. It didn't do what you wanted to do. You didn't feel safer. You know what I mean? We got more guns in this country than people. I'm just saying. So, so all I'm saying is that's not working, right? And so I want to feel safe too. And I want my kids to feel safe.

I want these kids to be able to grow up and have childhoods and be able to grow up into well adjusted adults and live amazing lives, man. I want that too. And nothing I've read, seen, or know from my lived experience, um, throwing people away doesn't work. And, and, and what's also atrocious about any time that this, this system has a decision to make, it's always disproportionately harmful to black and brown.

So when you have a decision to make about who dies or who lives, Just so happens, um, there's going to be more black and brown people, the folks that they believe should live or die. If you have a choice to, to charge somebody with first degree murder and somebody with aggravated murder, just so happens, they're going to be more black and brown in the aggravated murder.

When you have a decision to send a child and decline them into the adult system so that they can get treated as adults or keep them in a juvenile system so they can get the benefits of that, that come with the juvenile system. Just so happens they're going to be more black and brown getting sent to the adult system.

So all I'm saying is this system doesn't work in any way that you're saying that it's supposed to work. So if it doesn't work, what do we do to make it work? Like what, what, what can we do different? And all I'm saying, and what a lot of folks who come before me say, like I ain't invent none of this and this ain't coming from my brain.

Like there has a lot of amazing elders who are doing this work in the community long before I was here. It's the systems. These systems are the constant here. We keep pretending like it's bad people, but it's not bad people. They're people in systems. And when these people get put in these systems, the most number one thing that I've heard a cop say when they cause harm is, I'm just doing my job.

It's not because it's not for no, I'm just doing my job. I'm doing what the system tells me. Absolutely. When you see somebody in, in any of these systems, DSHS, or any of these systems where they have a resource to give and, and something harmful happens, I'm just doing my job. The policy says I got to do this, this, that, and the other.

I don't want to even, even, I don't want to really be doing this. But I have, yes. And, and that's, and so when it comes to folks in system in general, that's the number one thing that you hear, right? And so, which tells me, or are these just a lot of brilliant liars who are just elaborately lying to us? They really got this larceny in a heart and, and, and, and to get away with it.

They're just going to not take responsibility and blame it on the system. Or maybe. Just maybe we have a system that creates this inevitable result. We have the system that has so many disconnected pieces that you can call decision that you can make way over here in this ivory tower can cause a whole lot of harm over there.

And because you don't have to see the harm or experience the harm or see the ramifications of those decisions on a real level, that it's not going to impact you in any real way. Yeah. So it stays intellectual. Yes. And so I think that that's the real thing. When we talk about the context of my childhood, the fact of the matter is we talk about all these systems that were bared down on me, that, that, that have criminalized my blackness, that has criminalized poverty, that, that all these systems from the school system to, to, to, to, to, to the healthcare system, to the financial system, to all these systems.

That impacted my life in a way that decimated my self image, my self worth, and have me show up. Now, not to say that I don't, there's no personal accountability on my part. There is. You feel what I'm saying? But what I'm saying is, and that's, and that's something that I'm gonna have to deal with, uh, uh, uh, that I'm gonna have to heal.

I'm gonna have to take accountability for, for the things that I've done in my life that has caused any type of harm and all that. I have to do those things. I absolutely have to do those things. But if we want to fix the problem, then we have to fix systems though. You know what I mean? Me taking accountability is not going to fix the system, but, but it, it is going to be something beneficial for me and my community, me, my ability to be able to do so.

So I want to be children and their children. Absolutely. So I want to just make a distinction of the two, because I think that sometimes when folks hear these conversations, they believe it comes from a space of folks not wanting to take accountability. Right. And that's not the case. Accountability is an important, is, is, is super important.

You know what I mean? But I have, but there's this, this, But there are two different things, right? One is stopping it from happening again, and the other is healing from what happened to you. Yes. Thank you. That's, that's, and that's, that's, that's very well put. And so, I think that my energy comes around understanding how, All these systems have negatively impacted our community and and how we're going to have to dismantle these systems and rebuild if we have a chance of the little kids that are coming after us not having the same experience.

As complicated and difficult as David's parents relationship was, they were not unaware of the changes in their son, but they were also unable to help guide him through those changes. David began to show up differently, dress differently, and move differently. When he was around 15 years of age, things came to a head and he was kicked out of the house.

We got into a really bad argument and, you know, told me to get out. And, um, I did. Just grabbed what I could and just left. Not having a place to go at that young age kind of pushes you further. So you get kicked out. Where do you go? Do you go to a friend's house? You go to a friend's house. You go to a different friend's house.

But what happens is, you're a kid. So, friends have parents. So, the house you're gonna go to is what we call the trap. You know what I mean? Where folks sell dope out of, right? And, and you can stay there, right? Because ain't no parents there, right? I think when we say that your esteem and your self image gets decimated, I think that It starts to make sense that you start to, uh, self medicate.

And so, I started drinking, started smoking weed. And it's really just to self medicate, right? Just get numb. I think that that's what it was at that age. I just always felt like this was a mask. You know what I mean? Like, like this was a mask. You weren't actually living who you are. Right! Like, like, like there was always this, this gnawing, right?

And in my mind, in my young mind, you know, that justified me self medicating, right? Because I think I wasn't It wasn't you self medicating. It was, it was this, this otherness or mask or whatever. Right. And you justify that. Like you have to, you know, this is what you got to do. You know what I mean? Like, like, you know, I think the saddest thing, I really thought I wasn't going to make it until I was 21.

Right? I really didn't. Like, like, like, that was like a foregone conclusion for me, right? Like, I, I had too many dead friends and, and, and, and I'm talking, I'm a kid. You're, you're surrounded by death. And this is how disconnected from me I was. I didn't know how bad that was until I said it out loud and somebody, and I saw how they responded to, like, what, they're like, what the hell were you doing that you thought she was gonna die before you're 21?

And then makes you think about All the unhealed trauma that I had and how that looked bleeding out. You know, uh, you ever heard of the concept like suicide by cop? Suicide by cop. Yeah. Nope. So what they, they say is like some people kill themselves by, but they make the cops do it. Right. And push them to that edge.

Yeah. Yeah. They really want to kill themselves, but they can't kill themselves. So they put themselves in a position where the cops were going to do it to them. Right. And, and so it's like, um, Suicide by street, right? You know what I mean? It's just like, I couldn't do it, but it's just like, I'm just going to put myself in this.

Yeah. And you're going to put yourself in a position to, to, to, to where the world going to do it for you. Right. And, and that's probably the best way that I can frame it, man. Like it's just real culmination of all these, all the stuff that I didn't share it. And I was going through when I was holding exploding in my teens.

You know what I mean? Where I was literally bleeding out and melting down. Did you have anybody that was loving, loving you like a grandmother or an aunt or anybody out there? I'm going to say like, it's not always what is actually happening that sometimes it's your vantage point and your positionality.

So if I changed my address and folks were showing up at my old address and sending a whole bunch of love. You know what I mean? So it's not that people didn't show love, and that people didn't care, it's that I wasn't receiving it. You just wasn't getting it. Right? And, and that's the, the, the, the problem with trauma.

I think that the sad reality is the society gives you a lot of wounds. And those wounds Are now triggers and now it's harder for even people who want to care to care because it's harder for you to even hear right and and and so now you get these issues you get like a abandonment issues and the issue with an abandonment issue is that you can even show up.

Could show up and that's a trigger you showing up to care as a trigger because my issue isn't that people didn't show up is that they showed up and left and so now even for folks who want to helicopter in and help coming is the first part of leaving. Yes and so emotionally when something good happens.

Your body has the adverse reaction of, man, it's about to end. Um, I hope if folks are able to follow me when I, when I, when I'm trying to paint that picture, because I think it's, that's how it feel. And so, which is also a direct lesson for all of us to say when it, when shit hits the fan, it's the time to hang in there.

Right. Like you, because you're not, you really are. That first wave is experiencing. Their trigger, their trauma. Yes. And and if you can, if you can hang in through that and get to the other side of that, then, then the heal. Absolutely. Then the healing starts, and I'm, and I'm glad you said that, and that's how we aspire to give support, right?

To understand that's what we talk about culturally responsive and trauma informed. The, the fact of the matter is that people need love and care and, and, and, and, and some people believe that because. You give what you believe is love and care, that that should be enough, that they should receive that, but that's not true.

Because the fact of the matter, just like you said, that first wave, they might have an inability to be able to see it. Because you don't realize their problem is that they haven't gotten it. Their problem is that they've gotten it and it got taken away. And so, so, so you just showing up with it isn't going to be enough.

And so when, when, when trying to give somebody support, it's about being in it with them, right? And, and, and, and, and, and what that might look like is consistency. I want to, I want to go back again to the, your state of mind, your place, uh, in your life at 14 up to 16, like, was there an increased level of disconnect for you or were you, you know, maybe describe for me, like, were you getting angrier?

Were you getting, were you feeling more confident and fitted, fitted into? Tell us about that, that couple of years. I think when you're in a power group and we all have this shared trauma and I believe that my value is in my ability to do what the power group needs you to do, I think that's how you show up.

I think at that time in my life, I could, I could look at me and I was depressed. I thought I was going to die. I thought I was on borrowed time. I thought the, I, I, I didn't think I was going to make it. Now you now everything comes from, from, from that picture I just painted. I didn't think I was gonna make it.

I thought I was gonna die. I thought my only value is in what I, what I did for the hood or whatever the case. Like I, that's what I really believed. And so I, I, I think that I was, I was okay with not being there anymore. I think when you couldn't understand that everything else makes sense. I think that the messaging that I received.

Um, my whole life, I started to believe. I think that that's the saddest thing is I'm lucky. I'm still here. It wasn't because I was, I took precautions or something like that to ensure that I would be here in my forties. It wasn't man. I, I was, I was really okay with leaving. I thought that, um, you know, maybe that's the only way to make the pain stop.

I think what was, it was kind of this feeling of, um, you could be in a room full of people and you still feel alone, right? It was this, this self isolation piece. When I think back to, cause I can, I can, I can go back there, man. And I'll be right back into that little 14 year old's head. Right. And I can remember how I was feeling.

And, and, and, and the sad reality is that the things that I felt bad because I felt different. Right? I felt I didn't belong. I can see that, the way people talk to me, and the way that they, you know what I mean? Like, some of my peers and stuff like that. And instead of that being a good thing, instead of that being a gift that I have, that's looked as a bad thing.

Like, maybe I'm weird. Something's wrong with me. But these things were my gifts. These are things that propel me today. But all these things made me feel wrong. And then, when you cause harm, that compounds it. Right? That kind of justifies, like, you're like, they've been saying I, I, they, they've been saying I ain't been shit my whole life, and now you're, now your internal dialogue is, man, maybe they right.

Maybe they right. Throughout early childhood development, we all work to create an identity for ourselves. This feeling of who we are becomes the framework for how we move through life. David, for his entire childhood, had been hearing from the adult world that he wasn't measuring up. that he didn't fit in.

As he internalized this message, sadly, he began to believe it. The power group he entered gave him an alternative narrative, one where he had something to offer, and in return, received the love he needed. This is how a young individual accesses power, what he perceives as power, right? When you're living a life that you're powerless.

You're under resourced. The way that society views you is inundated with bias. And so, This is how we access power. This is how we project power to the world, right? We feel like we're, we're better together, right? And other folks who have shared trauma and, and, and don't have the, the, the level of judgment that the rest of society might have, they make space for you, like you have value here.

You know what I mean? I think what I really wanted was love, right? And, and, and, and this was a semblance of what that looked like. You know what I mean? I'm getting this family. And, and how did that love come to you? Was it somebody putting their arm around you and saying, Hey man, you are, you're really great, or?

What, what did it, how did it show up? How did it show up? I think that, um, dealing with toxic masculinity. It didn't show up in us articulating how much we loved each other, right? It, it was, um, space being made for you, right? It was in positive reinforcement. It was in, um, It was powerful to have folks who had similar trauma and similar experiences as you.

So it gives you a sense that it's not just me. Yeah, you belong. I belong somewhere. And that sense of belonging, I think, is what everybody chases. So that's what it looks like. You know, it might come across in different ways. It might sound aggressive, but it's really They looking out for you, you know what I mean?

The fact of the matter is when I got kicked out of my house, you know, I was let in, you know They gave me a place to stay now granted granted. It was a trap house, right? And granted they wanted to look out for me and their way of looking out was maybe to give me some some dope to sell You know what I mean?

It taught me how to sell dope but the energy in which it came from was was something that you, like, they cared about my circumstances. They, they let me in when they didn't have to let me in. And they gave up themselves to see that I am able to take care of myself. Folks look out in the best way that they know how.

And that way, when I was a kid, wasn't always legal. And, and can you dive into that for just a second? Why does it have to not be, you know, illegal? Why, why is it illegal? Is it pushing back against the system that is creating that space, or No? When you get left with certain options, you try to make your best decision on which option to, to, to utilize and to take.

I'll give you a perfect example. I have a friend of mine and he was a part of one of those. It wasn't a scary straight, but as a kid, he went inside the prison to talk to folks and I, cause I, and I got to talk to him as a grown adult and he was in the penitentiary and he had like 20 years. Right. But what I'm saying is I had a chance to be like, what could they have told you?

And then he told me, he was like, listen, you know, he just had a child that he needed to take care of. His mom was strung out. He was the breadwinner. As a kid, like he was the breadwinner, like he had to take care of his family. And so he went up into that space of, of these folks that he respect, all these folks, he's older folks who really wanted to pour into him.

And he said, he told him what his circumstances were. And he said, give me a better option. They said, stay in school. And he's like, all right. It did, but you weren't speaking to what I just told you, like, how was staying in school going to make sure that my daughter get fed? And, and how am I going to bring any money into this house?

If you would, if they would have gave me a tangible option, man, I would have jumped on it, right? Folks look at folks who are, um, doing things that are illegal from the lens of folks who are well resourced. If somebody who's well resourced break, you know what I'm saying, break a law, that's because they want to break a law, right?

Like, like, like, like, like, like, like, if you're rich, Bill Gates doesn't have to go to the corner store and rob anybody. He doesn't have to go out there and sell dope. He's well resourced. So for them to conceptualize why people commit crime is going to be flawed because a lot of them aren't really connected to the fact that these are systems and this is poverty and they're not connected to that.

Yeah. They haven't had to come to that edge. Right. And I do explain, I completely agree with you. I, this is one of the things that I, a lot of times talk about in regards to homelessness is, is that in every moment, every person. Is trying to do the best they can in in the sense of looking at their options and choosing the best option for them because nobody wakes up in the morning and says, Hey, today I'm gonna really mess myself up.

I'm gonna look at all my options and pick the worst ones. Nobody does that. Nobody does right? What are your available options? And sometimes there's There's one, maybe two, right? And, and, and I think that's what's so flawed about this system. You have to be exceptional. You have to like, you know what I'm a suffer and just go to school.

People don't like committing crime, and I think that's the biggest disconnect. People think that people are out there and they somehow like it, or and I might even talk like I liked it when I was young, right, to really justify or really make sense for myself, but the fact of the matter is nobody liked that.

Even though it might fulfill a need, what comes with it is devastating, right? When you're committing crime, you have to get away every time.

You know, those are horrible odds to any game you're playing, to anything you participate in. I know when I was a kid and, and after I got, uh, kicked out, I remember I went, you know, you went to a folk, a person who had resources, who you felt had resources. And you're like, man, what are you doing? Like, I want to get put on.

And what's crazy is he could have told me anything. You know what I mean? He could have said Robin. He could have said, he could have said play in the stock market and whatever he would have told me, I probably would have been like, well, I want to do what you're doing. I think that the reality is, as you said, people are making the best decisions that they can.

Nobody wants to be out there. And but what keeps folks out there is the barrier of stigma. When you're stigmatized because of the decisions that you make, you feel like you have no other options. Some folks go back to it, not because of any other reason, but because that's a place that they're not judged.

That's the place they feel like they belong. That's the place that people are happy to see them come. At 15 years old, David quickly became a well regarded and loyal member of his power group. People relied on him and he relied on them. They were all members of a chosen family, a family that was providing so much of what had been missing in David's life.

I was well regarded. There was a lot of folks that poured into me. If I'm being honest, I learned a lot about leadership. There were all leaders and that was always the messaging. Right. And I think that that always, I always appreciated that. And I had a lot of amazing folks who were older than me who saw me and I remember that they used to do their best to, as we say, lace me up.

Educating you, uh, but Investing in you. Investing. And so, a lot of people look at our journeys like they're ours. You know, we do that sometimes. We believe like, I made it through this. And I made it through that and other people reinforce that by saying you made it through all this stuff and you did this and they don't realize like I've always had a community man that poured into me man and that supported me and and and it's hard for me to separate what part is mine and what part is theirs.

In February 1994, at 16 years of age, David took part in a serious crime that changed everything, altering the course of his life and everyone involved. My wife now, she was my girl at the time, she used to live in the outskirts. She used to live like in Puyallup. I lived in Lakewood, Lakewood and Puyallup are both towns separated by about 12 miles in the South Puget Sound near Tacoma.

I wanted to go see her, but I didn't have a ride. There was this one individual that I know, like he's 21. Like, and so I asked him for a ride, man. I was like, I need a ride up to, you know, and he said, yeah, but, um, we going to hang out first. He picked me up, and he picked up with some other kids from the neighborhood, and I'm the youngest in the car.

And so, um, he's talking about, he wanted to do some robberies or some stuff, and so we did some, and some, one led to a place that, you know what I mean? Um, it was really bad. There was a moment, man, where we're all in the car, man, and, and, and, and, he's driving, but we're all in the car, man, and I know the kids.

Kids, I know we looking at each other like, like, man, I don't want no part of this, right? Um, but it's just like, uh, you know, um, you get, there's this dynamic, right? Where you're, you're, you're, you're like, you don't want no part of something or you don't want to do something. But then there's this other dynamic of you don't want to look soft.

Right. And so, and so, um, This is all that David was able to share with us regarding what happened on that day. We're choosing deliberately to leave out the details of the crime, but we'll say that it involved a robbery and great harm to another human being. I asked David to help us understand why it's so hard for him to discuss the events of that day and help the audience understand why we are not talking about the details.

I always like to pose the question, like, what is the most embarrassing and most shameful thing you've ever done in your life? I want you to hold the picture of whatever that is, right? And, and, and then think about having to lead with that in every conversation that you're in. And, and not leading with that for some lands like, you're not taking accountability for what's happened.

You know, not leading with that means, Somehow symbolizes the fact that you didn't do 24 years and you didn't do, you weren't always beat to death in Walla Walla hood. The trauma that you got from your incarceration really didn't happen, right? And that you didn't come to a place in your life where you really, um, not understanding that you forgiving yourself was probably the most difficult hurdle for you, right?

To, to, to really be able to forgive yourself for the harm you caused. So as much as work that I've, I've done, like, okay. It's still hard. I want you to just hold that moat. The thing that you bring to you, the most shame, just saying embarrassing isn't enough because that doesn't really hit the depths of what that represents and how that hits you.

But like, let's, it's something that brings you the most shame. And, and, and that might be, um, something you've done when you were young. Um, or, or, or wherever at a stage in your life where you were still trying to figure the world out and just imagine, I just want to just, just imagine a world where you have to lead with that.

Everybody knew that about you and they, and, and, and from that point, everybody became, um, an untrained judge and are, and are able to, um, reconvict you and not hire you and not give you a place to live, find a place to stay, call home. Um, Not give you a valuable resource that you really needed or not treat you with some level of decency.

Just not even, just not even see you. I try. I think about it like it's a magic trick. Now you see me, right? And now you don't because when you see me and you talk to me and you and you, you see the person in front of you and you see how I show up and you see what I talk about and what I value and And you can see me.

Yeah. The father you are, yeah. The husband that you are, that stuff becomes easy to see. And then what happens? When now you don't and, and you're looking at a person through a stigmatized identity. And now everything you see goes through those glasses and through that lens. I hope that we can all heal as a community and as a society.

Um, cause we, I really do believe that people don't change, they heal. And when people heal systems change, I really believe that folks are amazing, right? And, and brilliant. And, and, and I think they were amazing and brilliant when they were born. But this belief that folks are amazing, not to have to do anything to be amazing, but are brilliant and are amazing.

And then trauma hits and then we're socialized a certain way. And now these things impact how we show up. Now we're not showing up in our brilliance. We're showing up in our, our coping mechanisms. We're showing up with trauma responses. Now we're not showing up in all the things that make us amazing.

We're showing up in the ways that we've been socialized. To that, that this is how you show up in this situation, in that situation, that these are beliefs, these, these, these, some of these hateful beliefs and some of these things that aren't conducive to us being a caring and a kind society. These aren't the things that you start to lean on.

You start to really believe that, that, that you got to be cutthroat to be successful, that people don't really care about you. You got to take care of yourself and all these things, right? You get socialized with. So just imagine all of these things impact. How you make every decision you make as you move in this world.

What I really believe, I believe when we heal, we heal from what's harmed us, the trauma that, that, that has impacted us when we heal from the society that's so socialized us, we could show up in our authenticity and in our authentic selves. And I really believe that our authentic selves is always beautiful.

It's always amazing. It's always kind. If folks can really connect to that. That, I think, is, is, is what's important in us becoming the society that we believe in. Because the sad reality is, folks don't think in those terms about other people. Yeah. Because they really don't think of those terms about themselves.

Yeah. When you center stuff The stigma of a stigmatized identity. You prevent folks from wanting to heal. You prevent folks from wanting to, to, to, to, to do the necessary work so that they can grow to the best versions of themselves. I think that that was one of the last barriers that I had to get through when I was at the earlier stages of my, my growth and my healing was what if.

What if it doesn't matter? What if I do all this? What if I become the best version of myself and you still don't want to live next door to me? Like you still don't want to hire me. Like I still ain't worth, uh, um, it'll never be good enough. Right. And, and, and to understand the way my trauma hit, I already believe that.

It's, it's like when you don't think that you're worth much. And I did at one stage of my life. That impacts how you show up. That impacts the decisions that you think are okay. That are suitable to do right. That, that impacts who you aspire to be. Me getting, um, so much time at 16 years old, wasn't the event.

Right. It was like an explanation point on this consistent messaging that I've been getting since I was a child that I would never be nothing right that I, that, that, that I wasn't worth much. I wasn't worth the time or the attention or the investment. I was always a problem to be solved. So when they, when the explanation point hit me, it was like I was watching a movie and I knew how it was going to end and I finally got to the end and it was worse than I thought it was going to be.

It's, it's more along the lines of that. It's more along the lines of. They were right. On the next episode of You Know Me Now, David shares about his incarceration and his journey towards healing. You Know Me Now is 100 percent supported by folks just like you. If you find worth in listening, please consider visiting our Patreon page found on our website to donate.

We also have a very active Facebook page titled You Know Me Now, where you can join in on the conversation, and I hope to chat with you there. You Know Me Now is produced, written, and edited by Tomasz Bernatski and me, Rex Holbein. We would like to give a heartfelt thank you to David for sharing so openly with us, and to all of you for listening.