EP023: People don’t change, they heal - Part 1
David Heppard is the Co-Founder and Director of Vision and Values at The Black Rose Collective: www.theblackrosecollective.org
Transcript is available here
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 together, 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 Heppard who embodies the 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 an 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 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 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 injustice system, formed through a partnership with New Profit and John Legend's nonprofit organization FREEAMERICA.
David, age 14
Excerpt from the episode: “When we heal from the society that's so socialized us, we can 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 because they really don't think of those terms about themselves.” - David
David, age 8
David, age 7
Art by Jon Thompson.
Excerpt from the episode: “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 pant 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.” - David