Poacher or Protector?

Gail Koelln  0:05  

I walked in. And here's this little short lady wearing a minister's collar, avian scrubs with parrots all over them, colorful parrots.

Hector Orlando Portillo Reyes  0:22  

Something that I respect is the respect that she has for everybody... for the ant, for the bird, for the parrots, for the elephants... for everything. The respect for life.

Gail Koelln  0:38  

I call her the Jane Goodall of parrots, the project literally has taken people who are poaching and made them into protectors... and passionate parrot protectors.

Hector Orlando Portillo Reyes  0:49  

You know, we have been face to face with drug dealers, she's not afraid. she's always tranquil. She's always in peace and thinking about very positive.

Gail Koelln  1:00  

She's got an element of hardiness and bravery, that I think is not typical of your average ordinary person.

Hector Orlando Portillo Reyes  1:10  

She consults to the people, what do you want? What would you like to do? How can I help you? In the process I've seen that the people have changed, from poachers, to protectors.

Gail Koelln  1:27  

Some of the most awe-inspiring things for me were to see and hear the wild parrots flying.

Hector Orlando Portillo Reyes  1:36  

You just lift your head and see they're flying... the beginning, 50... next year 60... and next year, 100. That means that the population is growing. It's the only place in Honduras where we have naturally, in the wild, red Macaus. And that's given me satisfaction... that I am collaborating to recover a population that is declining, almost in extension.

Gail Koelln  2:11  

Before I met her it never even occurred to me that parrots shouldn't be pets. And now I'm totally the other way. LoraKim really did change my life. She really did.

Joel Krieger  2:30  

Welcome to Outside In. I'm Joel.

Pavani Yalla  2:32  

And I'm Pavani. Each episode we'll discover design in unexpected places.

Joel Krieger  2:38  

So these creators may not always call themselves designers. They actually go by many different labels. But they all have one thing in common. They create moments that have the power to change us.

Pavani Yalla  3:00  

Alright, so today we are talking to LoraKim Joyner, who is a conservationist, a wildlife veterinarian, a Unitarian Universalist minister, and many other thing. The voices that you heard at the beginning of this episode, those were Gail and Hector, two of her really close collaborators at One Earth Conservation.

Joel Krieger  3:23  

This episode is about understanding how to transform poachers into protectors. If I had to categorize what type of design this is, this is a story of community design and culture design.

Pavani Yalla  3:39  

You know, if you're a designer who's ever practiced Human-centered Design, you're probably going to learn a thing or two about it here in this conversation.

Joel Krieger  3:49  

Yeah.

Pavani Yalla  3:50  

Also, I love that we talked about science and spirituality. In popular culture, I feel like those are polarized. 

Joel Krieger  3:59  

Yeah, they are. 

Pavani Yalla  4:00  

They tend to be put in different buckets. But the fact that we are, in our conversation with her, kind of hitting on these big topics together, I think was fun for me and significant.

Joel Krieger  4:11  

Those two things should go together like peanut butter and jelly... 

Pavani Yalla  4:15  

But they don't

Joel Krieger  4:17  

Yeah. Alright, so let's get into it. We join LoraKim telling us a story from her time in Honduras.

LoraKim Joyner  4:27  

One story that I say so much, and it had such a profound impact on me, sort of in my middle career was the story of Tomas Manzanares. He is an indigenous Mosquito leader in Honduras. And I first went to Honduras in 2010, like just several months after the coup there, and it was somewhat of an unstable region. And what was happening in Honduras in his area and still is, is the encroachment of illegal land invaders and mostly driven by the narco trafficante, we say driven by the drug trade, wanted the land and wanted to protect their land. And so they didn't want outsiders in and they were taking over the indigenous villages, they were burning them down, they are assassinating people. A matter of fact, over 49 indigenous people have died since January in our area, but on the other side of the Nicaragua border, so it continues to be hot. And Tomas said, I'm tired of this, the government's not doing anything I'm going to... it's called a denouncement. I'm going to turn them in. And I'm going to give names about the people who are taking our land and taking our logs. So he turned in the names of the people. And as typical, the government doesn't have the capacity or the will, or the lack of corruption to enforce the laws. And so the people whose names he turned in, waited for him down at the river to kill him when he took his daily bath in the Rus Rus River. And he was shot four times, and had to be airlifted out and nearly died, and had to abandon his home, the whole village had to flee during this is in 2009. And so I went in 2010 in April, and he came back. Everybody warned him don't come back into the area, it's dangerous. Everybody was packing guns, we picked up the military on the way in because it was a hot area. And we were just investigating to see if we could work with these indigenous people. And so on the first morning, he takes us down to the river where he was shot, and he takes off his shirt, and he tells the story of what happened to him. And he's got scars where the surgeries were in, they're still pink and healing, he's still limping and in some of the places they're still bullets inside of him. And so he tells me the story. And I say, Tomas, why are you willing to risk your life for the parrots. And he said, Doctora, everything is at risk. So I'm willing to risk everything. If the parents don't make it, neither do my people. And that was in 2010, when he told me that story. And I said, OK, I'm in for the long haul. You know, these, this is the kind of solidarity with all of life and with each other that... these are the kinds of communities with whom I want to work. And so I still work with Tomas, he's still in the area, and still has threats against this life as do the other leaders, but they really feel that their way of life is at risk. So that is the story that taught me so much about being in solidarity to take risk and discomfort and messiness of human relationships so we just got to bear up and do that.

Joel Krieger  7:50  

I'm curious, what's the connection between the people and the parrots? Why is the work of protecting the parrots, so important here?

LoraKim Joyner  8:00  

Why would people be interested in helping parents is maybe part of that question. Many reasons. It's their cultural background, it's their wildlife, they grew up with parrots, so people, you know, they want parrots free flying, perhaps, cultural stories, there is myths around parrots, there's a lot of reasons why people want parrots in their environment. And also parrots are maybe not only integral to the Spirit, and the culture of the local people and the Internationals who work with various groups, is that parrots are seed dispersers, especially the really big parrots, the macaws, they carry really big seeds. And of course, they poop them out, and there's a fertilizer effect. So they're known as the farmers of the forest. So if we lose the parrots, we lose the health of the forest, it's sort of like losing the top foragers of various species of Monkey, so we need them. And for that reason, spiritually, as well as just ecologically, we need the parrots, but maybe what you were getting at, the really big connection is the same drivers of socio economic dysfunction that are leading to extraction economies, and are destroying the parrots, wellbeing and their ability to raise and sustain a population are the same drivers that are decimating the people's cultures and villages and lead to poverty and consumerism and domination mindsets. So that's, you know, that's the real core, that if you are going to an area where parrots are in trouble, the people are in trouble too. And so, you know, what can the conservationists do to get and transform the society that's causing all this and that's where it seems so overwhelming and hopeless because who are we we're just little people out there, trying to come to emergency band aids for the people and the parrots, knowing that it's that entire internal and external transformation that has to happen. Parents are like a gateway species that help us see the connections between domination extraction economies and how it relates to the wellbeing of all of us. We sort of see them as a gateway experience for how we want to live in a transforming way.

And can you tell me more about why they're endangered? I mean, I'm guessing it's some combination of you know, habitat destruction with development, and then also the wildlife trade...the pet trade?

Yes, that's exactly right. And depending on the species and the region, it may be more one than the other. And I come down really heavily that if we didn't poach them illegally, they would mostly survive. For instance, in Honduras, Scarlet macaws are only remaining free flying in the mosquito region, they've just been reduced to the most remote region. And that's where most parrots end up in the most remote regions, where it's the hardest to extract them and poach them and sell them. So parrots, many species are fairly adaptable, and they would do okay, if we would just quit poaching them, or they would, they would, they wouldn't be decimated nearly as much as they are. Because we've seen that Scarlet macaws can nest in the palm tree right next to your house. And they can be somewhat adaptable to food. So I come down that it is the illegal trade. And it's international demand that's fueling that there's also a domestic demand. A lot of these cultures like their pet parrots, and it's also legal, and in two countries in South America, it's legal to export them. And in a third country, it's legal to hunt them for pleasure. So that's in the Guiana Shield and South America. So we also have a legal trade issue as well.

Pavani Yalla  11:50  

Switching gears a little bit, could you tell us a little bit more about One Earth Conservation? You know, what is your mission and maybe what's unique about your approach,

LoraKim Joyner  12:01  

It's styled along the ideas of what we think parents and people need right now. And so our mission is to go where other people aren't where there are marginalized communities where people aren't doing parrots, or at least the big organizations aren't, and just show up, and just be with the people witness to the story of losing the parrots and losing the the cultures and the way of life and just show up, and then see if other people are excited about parrots, and then see what a plan we could do to be in solidarity to help them with their parrots and livelihoods. And then what would be fun for us and what we can offer and what is meaningful for us. So our mission is to be in relationship with people and parrots listen to them, and see what calls to us that we could do together. And that's what leads us to so much traveling and so many areas, because there's so many areas where people are not doing parrots, and don't even realize the parrots are in trouble.

Pavani Yalla  13:06  

Yeah. You mentioned being in solidarity with people. You've said that a few times. Is that an approach that is unique to you know, One Earth Conservation or I understand that it is probably one way of going about doing conservation? Can you talk a little bit about that approach and why it's or how it's maybe different or how you've shaped it,

LoraKim Joyner  13:28  

How it's grown on us, or how the world shapes us with the invitation to be aware that we are in unconditional solidarity. It's not like we even have a choice. It's what life outlines for us, you, you are, you are a combination of cells and viruses and fungi and your DNA is not even from one complete mammal species. It's pieced together. So you are a community, you are in solidarity with life in this earth and the ecosystems. There's no no way around that. And what we forget that we, with our cultural overlays and our  need to survive and be true to our closest families and friends. And so we forget that background truth or I do. And so the idea of saying it out loud of unconditional solidarity is basically saying that all beings have inherent worth and dignity. And we want to live in a way we want to structure our lives and even more so our society in such a way that reflects that. conservation is changing, it is realizing that it's about the people more and more. If you if the local stakeholders aren't involved in flourishing, then there's, you have a really hard time with sustainability. And the results are better with local stakeholders involved. And then this idea of transformative conservation is and decolonizing conservation. These sort of some of these bigger words is a way to say it can't just be European privileged people coming in and saying quit shooting your gorillas or quit poaching your parrots. That's beginning to have more force in conservation saying that's, that's the old way we need to transform that, and, and live in just ways for people and for parrots. So unconditional solidarity is another way to tweak that and get at that

Joel Krieger  15:29  

What you're saying really resonates with me, especially about this, this idea of solidarity, you can't really protect an animal species without considering the people. And this was actually a pretty recent aha moment for me personally, because for a long time, I've been interested in and participating in, I guess what you could call more on the end of nature conservation. So you know, caring about the sixth extinction event, that's unfolding all around us, and kind of viewing people as, you know, part of the problem, the problem. And it's kind of interesting that you can't really separate them. All these issues are so interconnected. And if you really want to save birds, or any other type of animal or a forest, you can't really do that without considering the people. And then there's this whole aspect of just what is the word conservation that's like, you know, it makes you think of setting aside and protecting. And while I think we need areas that are, you know, off limits and, and wild and preserve them as they should be. There's also something nice about conservation that integrates and includes, because I think when people don't see nature as something separate from themselves, but as something that's fundamentally a part of them, as you were saying, then that's when that magic starts to happen. I mean, what's your experience been with that?

LoraKim Joyner  17:07  

Well, it's interesting that, you know, we do work on the idea of transformative conservation. And isn't that a paradox? We're conserving and we want to transform, you know, what's, what's, what's going on with that. So I actually liked the Zen sense of that, there is a beauty that we want to sustain and keep going. And we also have to just change everything. At the same time my spouse is very into Zen Buddhism. And so he appreciates that paradox as well. And we look forward to perhaps setting up a Transformative Conservation Center, an intentional community in a couple of years. And we think about changing the name because conservation is so weird, it's not conserving, it's something else going on. But we like the paradox, we like the critique, why do you use the word conservation sort of regeneration? Why do we do that and it just, it plays with the brain a little a little bit. Now we also get criticism, Joel, for, it's so interesting of being too human-centered, or being too parrot-centered. And and so what you were saying about how we really can't separate them is the message and the approach. And it's hard for us to understand that I don't know about you all, but don't you sometimes want to choose one species over another.

Joel Krieger  18:36  

Yes, this is it's a real challenge because it's almost like the problem is so complex, so enormously complex, that you almost it's too much and so it is a natural tendency to say okay, well where do I feel I'm just gonna focus on this one thing and then you and then you find that this one thing is connected to these other things. And so it's it's it's really it's complexity is what it is, it's almost like embracing that is a part of the work right.

LoraKim Joyner  19:03  

It's so hard. And that's the transformative piece. You know, the sort of the, the piece of the transformation that happened in me going from everything is black and white, white, suburban, privileged, North American to going... wait a minute, things are way more complex than I thought... and I have, I have to shift, I don't have a choice. And in that internal transformation that opens up so much beauty and so much confusion. You have to let so many stories go. And I don't know about you all but I’m still letting stories go. I know that humans are story driven. That's how we come together and have cultural expectations and bonding. But sometimes I feel really lost. Because there isn't a story. There's just showing up in the moment. And not knowing what's going to come or what should come or how to even live this life.

Joel Krieger  20:06  

Well, I can definitely relate to what you're saying about losing stories as you get older. I mean, I think there are a lot of cultural, you know, meta-narratives that you don't even see, it's like the air you breathe, you can't even see them, you just take them for granted. And they inform everything about your worldview. And then the more experiences you have, hopefully, throughout life, it pushes you into a place where you have a zoomed out perspective. And you can see those, those cultural stories for what they are, and a lot of them are just fundamentally wrong, you know, our understanding of how life works, for example, our understanding of ourselves as separate from this thing out there called nature. So yeah, I feel like it's totally part of the transformation is letting go of old stories and embracing new ones. I'm thinking maybe this is a good time to switch into the work itself. And, you know, maybe one place to start would be kind of rewinding to our, our conversation about, about people as a part of conservation. So you've written a lot about understanding the needs of poachers. And I think that's really interesting, because often, I think, in any sort of activism, you can get caught up in this war-like mentality, it is like, we are against this, we are fighting against this. But this to me speaks to a really it's not a fight, it's we need to understand why these people are doing, what they're doing, why they believe what they believe. And so I was wondering if you could elaborate a bit on that, and how that's impacted your conservation efforts.

LoraKim Joyner  21:52  

So in the younger years, I was pretty mad at poachers. You know, Diane Fossey was my anti-hero. And always realizing that she maybe didn't have, at least the story says she didn't have the best relationships with the local people. And may have even been part of how she ended up being murdered in the field. So I had that question. I've been really mad at the poachers. We chased them, got people with guns. We yelled at that. We did all kinds of things. We were against the poachers in Guatemala in those years. And yet, there was this nagging piece that... they're people. But I didn't understand. So there was that. But you know, who I was really mad at even more than the poachers. I was mad at people like me. I was mad at the colonizers, the North Americans that have caused such havoc in the States of America, the consumerism, the extraction economies that was killing the people I loved and the people I love. And the wealthy Guatemalans that I worked with, and do that were part of this devastating lifestyle for wildlife. And so that's who I needed to forgive. The poachers, yes, but really the rest of the world, the rest of the world that wants to put parrots in cages, because we're lonely, and they're beautiful. And we want them around us, I understand that. So pet owners, breeders of pet birds, that was my whole community before I moved to Guatemala. So I had to come to terms with the international community of people who look like me and have the privilege to extract economies and put other beings at risk. So that took a lot of work. And I knew that was part of my inner work was to not hate anybody or anything because that's not wholesome. And it's... I don't think it gives much resilience. So that's constant work. reframing that judgment story. And nonviolent communication was very helpful for me in that, yes, we want to hold the poachers responsible. We want to hold the government responsible. We want to hold the drug traffickers responsible. But I also know that they're acting out there, the same needs that I have. And so I try to bring that up in the conversation, as people go off with machetes and guns and try to find the poachers.

Pavani Yalla  24:31  

What are some of those needs?

LoraKim Joyner  24:35  

Belonging. Worth. Family. Respect. Mattering. Being heard. For some poachers, it's sustenance and security. A lot of the poaching families they're making more money. I mean it's income. A lot of poachers like being around wildlife. Not all... some are... seem fairly disconnected and centered on the human species, but a lot of them just like the hunt, they like the risk. They like climbing the trees, they want to hold them, they want to be around them, they like being good at animals. And how is that different than a wildlife veterinarian or conservationists? We're just doing it with cameras and tools to measure bird's nests, but we're all driven to wanting to be outdoors with the animals.

Pavani Yalla  25:31  

So for you, then is it a matter of trying to pivot or work with those needs and help people understand there are other ways to fulfill those needs? What goes into the craft of actually transforming someone?

LoraKim Joyner  25:49  

I wish I had the power to transform people. So in many of the areas, out of the extraction economies, maybe the entire community, climbed trees and took parrots. I had illegal parents as a child growing up, they were sold in pet stores. So I was part of it. So part of the transformation is to be in solidarity with the people where they are. Why do you poach parrots? What's going on? What's your life, you know really feel like you're on their side. And you really have to be on their side, because they can tell you if you're not on their side. And many of the people who were involved in the trade around the trade, they really don't want to lose their parrots because they love them, you know, or they have a strong tie to them. So it's just being in the space with them to say, Yeah, I understand you, you want to feed your family and you want matter and respect. What if we try hiring you as a Parrot Ranger? How many of those needs could you meet, and you'd also keep parrots in your area for your children to come. And that seems to be fairly attractive is offering stipends and hiring people... pretty quick conversion, because they get so many needs met... team work, being rough and tough, mattering all that great stuff out there with parrot conservation, and, and it gives them some economic leeway to experience different choices. And to see if they could, could live in that way. It gives them the space. I get angry at conservationists who say don't pay people, they should just want to volunteer and commit to... it's their parrots. Don't pay people. That's wrong. Yeah, it's wrong motivation. Well, that's usually being set by conservationists that are making $100,000 a year. They're getting paid to do conservation. So why do we expect the most marginalised amongst us to volunteer their time when they're already sustenance farmers, it seems to be an inherent racism. That I see, that's some of that meta-narrative, that we expect them to do the hard work of conservation and sacrifice, their time and their leisure and their extra, somewhat disposable income to be able to buy a Coca-Cola. And instead of never having something sweet, we expect them to give that up. But we're not willing to live in a way to give it up. So I would say livelihoods is a really important transformer. And if we want to say, well, they don't, they're just doing it because they're getting paid. Well transformation for them maybe is having enough to eat and being able to afford medicine and having some choice about what goods they consume and how they consume them. Maybe that is transformation for them.

Joel Krieger  28:50  

Yeah, it's really interesting to think about, you know, there's almost 8 billion people, something like that on the earth. And yeah, if you can't meet your basic needs of providing food and shelter for your family, you're gonna do whatever you need to do to meet those needs. And so like, once you look at it that way, you can kind of easily see how well this becomes a it's not even a question. It's like, if you don't have a lot of choice, if you don't have a lot of opportunity, and this is one way out of your situation, then yeah, it seems like a reasonable thing to do to most people, right?

LoraKim Joyner  29:30  

It does. And so some of the work that I have to do and that maybe we all have to do on the inner transformation is what is fueling the extraction economies is the demand. So it was the demand in the US and Europe that wiped out the parrots in Central America. And because that's where most of the parrots were going in the 80s. And then that set up families and lineages of poaching as a way to get cash income because they had not had it before. And now the markets have just shifted. They're, you know, Arabia going east, and they're still going to private, wealthy collectors illegally. So it's that demand that is putting those choices on the people. It's our way of life where the wealthy, the wealthier can extract and pay people to destroy their culture, in their environment, and their parents for their own benefit. So the transformation that we need to do is we can work with the local poachers and livelihoods, that's great. We have to work with the whole society, this demand and privilege and entitlement to extract other people's wildlife to have in their homes. Columbus did it on the very first trip. You know, he ended up in the Dominican Republic. And he took back people he enslaved and he took back three Hispaniola parrots. It began right away, people and parrots together. 

Joel Krieger  31:02  

I'm curious... you have a really unique background. So you're a wildlife veterinarian, a Unitarian Universalist minister, a certified trainer in nonviolent communication. And so all of these things inform your work and your practice. Could you speak a bit how these experiences have affected your work as a conservationist?

LoraKim Joyner  31:26  

I would say a lot. Yeah. A great deal. The nonviolent communication piece is a practice founded by Marshall Rosenberg that can help us reduce our use of violence in our conversations. And it can help us get along better with people because they feel like we're not judging them that we're actually on their side and the center components are is translate everything that you think and say and hear into feelings and needs of the individual. So it's constant in the moment mindfulness practice, of translating, getting out of your loops of judgment. And so being in a constant judgment, space is not only taking away energy, it, it puts me in a space where that actual moment of conflict and confusion moves from being a draining resource to a powerful resource of adjusting me so that I see people where they are, and I believe it, I don't have proof of this, I believe it helps the conservation it helps the relationships for me to just kind of you know, with all my body language and everything I'm saying, Don't judge the poacher don't judge the rich person. Instead, it becomes more embodied of going oh, well what's going on for you. And that was all practice that was all practice that allowed it to be embodied instead of formulaic so that that informs it quite a quite a bit that that basic lack of judgment and empathy. And the Unitarian Universalism ministry, that came about because I just couldn't do frontline conservation anymore. I just I didn't I was burned out. But I realized that I could do conservation through working with the human heart and so I was looking for a way to do that to heal my own and to help others for transformation in their own heart. And in those days we didn't really have the field of human dimensions of conservation and conservation psychology it wasn't there. So I took a class in Divinity School and said well that's the language of the heart and transformation and justice I'll go do that. What I really want to say is what the work in ministry does is it gave me space to be healed  and to have a community and also a community of faith and a story that says other people and other beings matter, and that's what we're on this earth to do. So it's a kind of a religious story. But that also informs and inspires me to stay present with the work. I'm not so involved with Unitarian Universalism anymore and not so involved with NVC. My regular spiritual practice has faded. It's not as intense. I get up and do conservation all day. And is that not a spiritual practice?

Joel Krieger  34:35  

Yeah, well said. Yeah. And how does that manifest in concrete ways on the ground? I mean, can you describe like what's actually happening? What are you actually doing with these people? When you go to these places?

LoraKim Joyner  34:53  

The concrete work, here's the weird thing. I spend most my time teaching people how to count parrots. People don't know how to count parrots, they don't know that their parrots are in trouble. And so we need those statistics to say parrots are in trouble, what percentage are young chicks coming out. And by counting parrots, you have to focus on parrots. And so all of a sudden, you have to understand their biology and ecology. So you can get young people, poachers, all kinds of people. And all of a sudden, they're super excited about trying to understand their parrots so that they can get a good, accurate number. And so it's team building and citizen scientists, they fall in love with the parrots by counting them. So often, when I go in into the countries, I'll go show me your parrots, show me your parrots, and tell me stories about your parrots. And then let's count them, I'd like to count them. You know, I'd like to know what's going on. And then they'll help me count them. And then usually you can find people in the government, other organizations and indigenous communities that might say, Oh, my gosh, our parents are in trouble. I say, well, maybe we should try to protect their nest, what do you guys think? Maybe I can help you guys do that. And, so then we move on to nest protection, it's urgent. And I think we've got to protect the nests. And so we drop off counting and we start hiring people to find nests and report their outcome and protect them. And so that chicks actually do fledge and with those statistics, we can tell the world and granting agencies that we have 100% poaching in this country, or that you barely have any macaws left, because nobody knows nobody's recording it. So. So that's just that's a huge, a huge part of the work that I do, and also looking for funds to pay local people. And developing and growing a project because we're very small, and growing capacity, and then inviting other people to come in who could help support financially and through networks, the local efforts. So usually just starts with one village, one organization, and then we try to build it out from that to have a greater impact within the region and the country.

Joel Krieger  37:08  

Yeah, it sounds like, so much of this has to do with being with the community, getting to know the community, building relationships, building trust, I mean, this takes time, I'd love to hear about, you know, structures, and any intentional decisions you've made about how we bring these people together and how we get them engaged

LoraKim Joyner  37:36  

And all kinds of people, right? Yeah. Because of demographics and interests. So one is to just share and make available my natural enthusiasm and sense of appreciation for the people and their birds. Just that is a design element. Because it's motivating, it's fun to be around. I'm mostly sincere the internal drama is most days kind of low. And so I think that is a design piece that says, you can trust me, you know, I'm gonna admit to being white, cys, heterosexist, middle class, I'm gonna admit to all of that. And let's go look for some birds. And so I think that's a design piece, putting people that they feel appreciated and heard. And let's go do something fun together, let's just go have experiences together. And that's where the trust in the relationship comes out as shared experiences in nature. People also seem to appreciate... I'd be interested to see how this fits in the design world... I'm surprised at how people appreciate not only the softer pieces of empathy, and presence and enthusiasm, they also appreciate competence. People like science all over the world. They like knowing stuff and knowing their birds and they, and they like learning stuff. They like sharing their knowledge. So knowledge and production of knowledge and lifting up your own knowledge and sharing it and pulling it out of other people seems to be a fairly exciting creative force. And so again, in any science, I can bring and pull out of them.  People seem to really enjoy that space.

Pavani Yalla  39:31  

Education is empowering, right?

LoraKim Joyner  39:34  

And learning together and sharing learning experiences together... just wow. Our minds seem to really enjoy that. I also travel with a full medical kit... diagnostic lab, I've done a lot of teaching in veterinary medicine, because that's part of teaching people that birds matter. So I always figured at least a small kit if not a full kit, so there's always a stethoscope. So if we have sick birds in the field, everybody gets to listen to their heart. And they go, Oh, you treat birds just like people? Yeah, they get the same diseases we do. They matter, let's treat them. And let's treat them with care, with high quality veterinary care. And that's often new for people to go, oh my gosh, and so to be able to listen to the heartbeat of a wild parrot, some people have told me it's been the most transformative moment in their lives, to be able to hear the heart of another bird, they're usually young birds, so they don't mind too much it's like babies, they're sleeping through it. So it's not usually a stress for the birds. And and so offering that connection, for joy for people, resilience for people, and to make the connection to parents. So by being a veterinarian, I can do all that and say, oh, let's birds matter. And we've got all these medicines and surgery we can do for them. And it's just really a witness that birds matter. So I think about all those things where I show up with people.

Joel Krieger  41:03  

That's wonderful, it just kind of points to this work can be disarming. And, just human. I mean, I love how you said, let's go, let's just go have a fun experience together. And that's a way for people. And then towards the end of the process, you know, hopefully if everything goes well, there's change that happens. There's a change in the people. There's a change, hopefully, in the parent population, maybe stabilizing, maybe resurging. I'd love it if you could share some examples, just anecdotal stories of the types of transformations that you've seen through this work.

LoraKim Joyner  41:46  

So cultural change takes longer than I'll be alive and present in any one area. Right? It just takes generations. And so the short term success that we see in some countries where there's a leadership core that is interested and capable, and even can raise funds to do their parrot work. That's just tremendous. And it's very fragile. So let's take Nicaragua, they have an island there called Ometope Island. It's two volcanoes. It's gorgeous. Nobody knew what was going on with the parrots there. And I said, Well, not my country. But let's let's go show up, and started working with some local people that were kind of counting parents a little bit. And so that was in 2013. Now, we brought in a really big international organization that has a strong presence in Nicaragua. They got some major grants in the last couple of years. And so they're hiring people that I had volunteer eight years ago, they're hiring them full-time throughout the year. And, I'm still their science advisor, but they're just doing it all. And it all started with me just showing up counting parrots for two nights back in 2013. And they're just like, on their own, I still meet with them for science and write up some of the papers with them. But, what's gonna happen when that money goes away? Or if they're not going to get the funding, there's maybe 100 young people that are really involved and committed, but the people who are poaching are the communities, the people taking the forest down are the communities. How do we fix that? We have a really strong crew, but there's no guarantee that that whole island community is going to change, especially if you look at what's going on in Nicaragua now. You know, it's a dictatorship. You know, people are dying, trying to get president Ortega out of office. And there's just no guarantee there... no guarantee whatsoever, that when money moves and goes away, that that core group of committed people are going to have the resources and the safety and security to keep their parrots on that island. So that's a great success story. But it's so fragile. And that's why we need to find sustainable ways to accompany people for 50, I used to say 25, now I say 50 now I say more than 50 years because you have to weather out these really hard socio economic ups and downs

Joel Krieger  44:33  

Yeah

LoraKim Joyner  44:33  

That was a really positive story. Do you want to hear anything...

Joel Krieger  44:38  

Yeah maybe a positive story of transformation. Yeah.

LoraKim Joyner  44:41  

Yeah, well so in Honduras, well, I talked about fragile... I mean, we just don't know when that we're going to lose the forests, when there's going to be another coup. When  someone else is going to get assassinated there. I mean, it's really, really fragile. However, we went working with the local people 100% poaching them, Scarlet Macau nests in 2014. And it's been up and down, but it's stabilized around 10%. So they're starting to see Scarlet macaws, where they haven't seen them for decades. And it's the local people that, you know, I helped do the finances, the capacity training, but they're out there, risking their lives trying to protect their nests from international interests, and narco people and corrupt officials. And they're doing a huge, it's amazing, 1.1 million acres of 11 indigenous communities in an impossible, impossible area to work in. And they're doing it... this year, I don't know about five years from now, when we have less money, and the political environment changes. But for right now they're saving lives, and they're saving parents. So it's very much a success story this year.

Joel Krieger  45:55  

I wonder very much about how, how we make this leap from you know, it's almost like there's this arresting phase, this kind of slowing down or pausing the extraction and the destruction. And it sounds like that's done in a way that's... you use the word fragile. And it also sounds like temporary, because the reason that these people are able to not do that is because they're being paid to do something else. So I wonder, you know, is, a lot of these countries get sucked into this, you know, the big development, global development, here, we're going to lend you money, and there's no way you're ever going to be able to pay off this debt, therefore, you are going to be tearing down your forests, you're going to be allowing mining. And how do you get out of that? I mean, it almost seems like there's got to be, it all comes down to money. It all comes down to, you know, some other plausible way that their economy could be supported. I'm just wondering how you think about maneuvering around that tricky pivot It seems like we have to make?

LoraKim Joyner  47:06  

Yeah. And how do we tell the story where we're all saying we have no hope we're just witnessing the destruction of the parents and the planet? But how do we live in that space that we're holding on to a remnant? where maybe the miracle can flow out of it? How do we have we turn around that huge, destructive? economy? I don't know I'm not sure I have much hope that we can do it, or we can do it in time. But we know we can do it today. And we know in the way that we interact with each other in our organization, and with other organizations we know, we can live the dream, we can live the transformation now, today, and is that enough? No, most days, it isn't. But it keeps one engaged to go today's enough. Today, today is enough to do that. How to turn it around. One thing I tell people... quit taking drugs. You know, it's the cocaine habit that we have in this country that's fueling so much of that corruption in the Americas. The big money that's that flows for the officials, and it's the danger risk as well. So the demand for drugs, not just wildlife is part of this. And if we need to all just cut it out. And I don't know, I don't know how to do that either. I don't know how, because drugs is an extraction economy. They grow it, they move it. We leave the violence there, and we extract the product. So it's that whole piece. But how are we going to turn around the cocaine trade soon enough. So we don't have that money flow for corrupting the governments where there's no power to keep the forest from coming down.

Joel Krieger  49:04  

It's another illuminating example of how interwoven all these issues are.

Pavani Yalla  49:11  

One thing that I hadn't maybe put as much emphasis on is the responsibility that we all have, outside of just not putting birds in cages, we could be complicit and not even realize it. And so that is that overwhelming feeling for sure. And I'm sure everyone... people are at different stages of that, of that understanding. One question I have for you is for folks who have different levels of awareness of what's going on and then how complex it is, what are different ways that you all engage, transforming, not necessarily the poachers, but everyone else, right. I also remember reading about your nurture nature program, you know, the call for, for birding, you're working a lot of different angles. What is your approach there? It feels like a pretty big thing to take on.

LoraKim Joyner  50:12  

The nurture nature program is, it's sort of getting at the big picture piece, that we need healthy people that connect strongly to other people and to nature. If they are able to care for themselves, care for others of all species, and if they're able to undo the cultural construct that says humans are separate from others, or that some humans are better than others, or species are important and don't have inherent worth and dignity. So this was our attempt to get out the big picture piece to support people where they are to help them connect and nurture nature, which means it goes back to nonviolent communication, really caring and loving and accepting everything that is, so you're present in the moment. And paradoxically, so you have more strength and power to change what is actually in the current moment. So it's like any other mindfulness intentional social action piece. And so we're really subtle about it. I mean, bird walks are heavy pressure for social justice. But we've experimented with all kinds of ways that what we're good at and what we love to do, can help other people come into full realization of the beauty that connects them to all of life. And maybe out of that comes some social change. And so that's what our program is. So what does it actually do? It's writing books, it's giving webinars, it's taking people on bird walks, it's not heavy duty, all the birds are dying and suffering and blah, blah, blah, it's all because we're into drugs drinking coffee, it's not like that. It's just this is a space for us to see the worth and the interconnection of life around us, and maybe a safe space to try a few of these topics about how there's fewer birds than there used to be, and why is that? And how can we use our time together as a birding community today, to do some changes, to have a little more energy to hold the complexity without a demand. Without saying, you must repent. You must no longer... you must drink bird friendly coffee, and bird friendly cocaine, you know, whatever, you know, it's without a demand. So it's, it's a gentle message. If it comes up, it comes up as a shared message of what we're experiencing together as we see a bald eagle flyover.

Pavani Yalla  52:51  

Yeah, that's amazing. So last weekend, I went on a walk with my children, and we saw an owl. And it was huge. And I've never seen an owl like that, you know, in the wild. A few other people were kind of gathered around with binoculars looking at it. And my children were amazed. They were like, their eyes got big, and they're just like, Oh my gosh, because they read about owls in books. And to me, like, it's like capturing that moment, or that type of moment and replicating it. I would love for them and myself to have more of those moments. And I'm imagining that that's part of it... it's just kind of a an innate understanding that there is awe and wonder and then that you're connected, and just reminding yourself of that, that would then eventually to your point be the start of a transformation or maybe a journey, but not a heavy handed approach

LoraKim Joyner  53:44  

To hold the whole complexity. I used to lead bird walks when I lived in, outside of New Mexico and the congregation's children came up for the day and we were going around with all this bird watching and telling bird stories. And one young boy had been born with a cocaine addiction with his parents and he was kind of all over the place, little little, little hard to focus. And we came across a pond of snow geese, and it was a bright sunny days. So they're white, and the sun's reflecting and it's beautiful, which is pretty amazing. So we're all there. And then the snow geese all took off at the same time like a clap of thunder right over everybody's head. This young boy jumped up and down and screamed and ran right into the arms of his grandparents. And they held each other as the birds went over. And of course, all the other children had a very similar response. I didn't have to do any teaching there... little Joey knew that this was awesome and wonder and love and connection were his responses to that. And so those are the kinds of experiences that can help us all maybe grow in resilience to hold the complexity and confusion of being alive on this planet.

Pavani Yalla  55:06  

Well said.

Joel Krieger  55:08  

As you were both talking about the stories of birds, and kind of watching birds I was thinking about... so I feel very fortunate that I live in a very wooded neighborhood. So there's a lot of birds in the mornings, I like to have a cup of coffee out on the back porch, and just you know, it's just very peaceful, just the birdsong. I just think collectively, we take it for granted. I've been thinking a lot about how much of our existence is mediated through man-made environments, man-made objects. And that is shaping who we are, you know, we, we designed our environments, we design these objects, and they're designing us. And so we have stepped out of the community of life. It's not working on us anymore. And that is such a part of this, this struggle that we have is just the simple things, noticing. There's no more time to notice. And sometimes, I think that if we just had more openings like that, for people, if we could only have more of these extended moments, where we remember what it's supposed to be like, what normal really is, then we'd be in much better shape.

LoraKim Joyner  56:28  

And slow down, don't need to read a book, or make more money, or have a teacher, we just need to slow down. And, you know, maybe that's the way to bring it back to the community conservation, the offering stipends, the showing up in solidarity slows us all down and say, let's go look at parrots and give some money so there's some spaciousness around paying attention to their, the animals and around their lives. And so they can slow down, we can also go down together and say, this is what's important. Let me tell you, when you're in a three hour count, and you can't move, and you're in one place, you have to slow down. You have to watch and observe. And so. So I think that maybe sort of is our message is just slow down and be aware of who we really are. We are the earth.

Pavani Yalla  57:31  

What was exciting for you about this episode? What stuck with you since our conversation with LoraKim?

Joel Krieger  57:38  

I don't know I want to be a conservationist. I know, right? Yeah, sometimes I just want to quit my day job and go work in the field. Yeah, I suppose it's the interconnected nature of the work. You know, at the beginning, she was telling the story of Tomas. And he said, if the parrots don't make it, neither do the people. And I was kind of like, well, how can that be? How are they so interdependent? You know, we realize that in order to save the parrots, you got to first save the people. And LoraKim said that conservation in general is starting to realize that it's all about the people. So if the local stakeholders aren't involved, and if they're not flourishing and thriving, then you're gonna have a really hard time. I think she described the work of transformation here is to be in solidarity with the people where they are, you know, don't judge the poachers. maybe ask them, why do you poach parrots? And I thought it was really interesting. She said, you really have to be on their side, and they can tell if you aren't on their side. And isn't that familiar? You know, this idea of transcending sides. It reminds me a lot of what we learned in the last episode with Kevin Jones, you know, asking what is it like to be you? Trying to have compassion, and understand the poachers and understand why are they doing this? They're not bad people. In fact, if you were in their position, you'd probably be doing the same thing. All they need is a decent job, and a fair wage. And so that's why giving them a job protecting parrots is so effective. It's like they can support their families, and they now belong to something bigger than themselves. They matter. I thought that was a really important point. It's that emotion, that feeling of belonging?

Pavani Yalla  59:39  

Yeah. Yeah, the whole time she was talking about understanding the needs of poachers, I couldn't help but think about, you know, what we in the design community, call Human Centered Design, and design thinking that initial phase of like empathizing and understanding your audience or your users, so that you can design for them and solve their problems, right? That is very familiar to me like she was talking about all those like, Oh, yeah, you're thinking about what people are thinking, feeling doing, what do they need. And so she is applying design thinking, again, whether she calls it that or not to the work, and I think in a much more pure way, to be honest, than most of us do. Because they don't really teach us and I don't know, I mean, it's been a while since I went to school for this kind of thing, but they don't really teach you how to truly empathize with your audience and understand their needs. And I think we often come to it as designers with our own objectives, whether they're individual, you know, I want to do this project, because I want it, I want to check off these skills, or I want something in my portfolio, or you come to it with the objectives of the business that you're working for, or the industry that you're a part of. And so there are I think, preconceived notions and judgments that are baked into all of those. Whereas what she's doing, and I think her unique training in nonviolent communication, as a minister, those have all helped her show up in a very different way, when she's doing those early phases of the design process, where she's actually really, truly in solidarity with folks and trying to understand what they need, what do they want to do?

Joel Krieger  1:01:31  

Yeah, there's a really emergent process you described there, where it's almost like she's coming into these communities without necessarily a preconceived notion of what has to happen. But it's almost like the formula is: go there, get to know the people build relationships, and together, figure out what needs to happen. Which to me is very different than how a lot of design is done, it's almost forced... I'm going to create the circumstances to force the thing to happen, to make a thing happen. Well, this is a more organic way to let things unfold.

Pavani Yalla  1:02:05  

Yeah, for sure. You know, the other thing that was interesting to me, as we think about that process of just showing up and understanding what people really need. One of my favorite moments in the interview was when she said that people say, it was such a transformative experience to hear the heartbeat of a parrot. And it reminded me of some of the work we used to do, you know, educational work, experiential education, like learning by doing. So what she's doing is providing knowledge, but experiential knowledge. So it's not just theoretical, where she's going in and teaching people about parrots and telling them that they're endangered, and you need to help. But she's putting them in situations where they feel it in their bones, they feel the loss innately. And it starts with, like she said, getting them to count the parents, right? Like, she probably knows that there's parrots, the numbers are down. But she's getting them to count their own parents so that through that process, they realize, oh, wow, we are in trouble here, right. And then they're invested in, in a problem that maybe they weren't thinking too much about before. And then the experiences that she has with them where they are, you know, treating the parents feeling the parents, these are all very hands-on experiences that get you to feel invested in the problem, but also understand the problem in your bones in a way that you wouldn't if you were just being told something, I think it's very effective.

Joel Krieger  1:03:35  

Yeah, I was thinking about the job that they give a lot of the former poachers is the job of a parrot counter. And it makes me think about the significance of attention. It's a slow, very meditative thing, you're going out into the jungle, and you're watching, and you're observing. And in a way, it kind of directs their attention to the parrots in a different way than they've been looking at them before. So they, it's almost like this job gives people the space to just notice the beauty. You know, before they may have seen it as a commodity, as a dollar sign. And she actually said, they fall in love with the parrots by counting them. So, you know, it just brings us back to how very little of our attention we give to the natural world today. You know, maybe that's really just all that's needed, at the start, anyhow, is just to notice.

Pavani Yalla  1:04:33  

Yeah. You know, I was thinking about the notion of time, also. Thinking about, gosh, it's gotta be hard to go into this work, to be doing it for not only years, but for decades before you start to see the fruits of your labor. Yeah, how do you first, motivate yourself but also motivate others, to commit to this type of work when, you know we live in a world now, where increasingly we rely on instant gratification, whether that's in our careers or in our day to day. So, how do you do that? That just feels like a really hard thing to solve for to get people to commit to something that is a big problem that you don't actually see change. Change is slow. And it takes a long, long, long, long time. And as I was thinking about that i was also remembering some of the things she was saying about how nothing is permanent, right? Like when we were her asking her about transformation and what's happened to some of these places. She says, you know, today, this is working, but we don't know five years from now, 10 years from now. So she acknowledges that, but I didn't sense despair. And maybe this is where her spiritual training helps where you focus on each moment. And you focus on the now. There's no despair about the future, because it's very much about the experience in the present moment. And so maybe for her motivating people to work on this type of stuff isn't all about... hundreds of years from now, parrots will be here, but it's about... this is fun, in the moment, right now. You're enjoying doing this work. This is the type of work that you can be engaged and be fulfilled in the moment, regardless of what might happen in the far future.

Alright, that's it for this episode. But one quick note before we wrap. The work that One Earth Conservation does depend so much on the livelihoods of the indigenous people who are putting their lives on the line for the parrots and their people. Please consider donating to their cause by visiting the One Earth Conservation website at oneearthconservation.org. Here you can also learn more about the organization, LoraKim, and her collaborators. And special thanks to Hector and Gail for providing their perspective on One Earth Conservation and the work that they do with LoraKim.

Joel Krieger  1:07:00  

And as always, if you like what you hear, and we really hope that you do, please support our work by giving us a rating and review. Or think of one person in your life who would find value in this podcast and share it with them.

Pavani Yalla  1:07:16  

See you next time.

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Through The Red Door

This episode contains strong language and depictions of violence, which may not be suitable for some audiences.

Kevin Jones  00:09

What you were about to hear will not be pleasant for your ears. 

Montage

Another cop puts his gun to the back of my head and says, Yeah, take a breath. One move and I'll blow your fucking head off. Suddenly, I see flashing lights behind the quick shrill of a siren. The officer gets out. If you drop your hands while I remove this gun. I'm gonna shoot you in the face. I’m a social worker, psychologist, paramedic, referee, public relations representative, judge, jury, and sometimes, tragically, executioner. Anytime I see that uniform, I think about all the time those bastards have harassed me ever since I was 14 years old. I don't think I'm stopping him because he's black. But I do think I'm stopping him because he fits the description. I didn't want to shoot this baby. But I know this baby was on his way to kill somebody else's baby. I'm not supposed to get frustrated. I’m not supposed to get angry.

Joel Krieger  01:26

Welcomed outside. I'm Joel,

Pavani Yalla  01:29

and I'm Pavani. Each episode will discover design in unexpected places.

Joel Krieger  01:34

So these creators may not always call themselves designers, they actually go by many different labels. But they all have one thing in common. They create moments that have the power to change us.

Quote Montage  01:47

So evolve, takes the nuance, the conflict between two sides, and puts that on stage.

Oh, I was brought to tears several times. The longer the performance went on, the harder the story's got to take.

All I could think about was I wish I had seen this many years ago,

This kind of theater goes in under the radar. It allows these kinds of feelings to go both ways. And that's what's different. 

Could you solve this by pushing yourself to be a little bit less comfortable?

It changed my way of thinking. And my mind doesn't change that often. 

The hardest part about being a police officer is to have people not see your humanity. I was just to the point where I was done listening. Somehow, this show made it so I'm ready to listen again. 

Joel Krieger  02:41

So you just heard from several audience members, reflecting on their experience with evolve, which is the subject of our episode today. And that super intense segment at the very beginning was a montage of monologues from the play itself. And we put that together because we wanted to give you a glimpse into what this experience might be like. I almost hesitate to call it a play because it kind of defies being labeled. I mean, Evolve is really more like a process that enables us to meet moments of polarization and conflict in a really brave way. And it helps people reclaim their curiosity about others, and helps them to ask the question; what is it like to be you? So today, we're going to be speaking with a remarkable creator. He's been an actor and a director who's performed on stage for over 40 years now. His name is Kevin Jones. And he's the artistic director, the CEO, the co-founder of the Red Door Project. This group is kind of like a theatre company with a twist. The story we're going to follow is a still unfolding creative evolution. So we'll begin with a play called Hands Up, which is about the black experience of police profiling, then to Cop Out, which examines the same subject from the perspective of police officers. And finally to Evolve, which weaves both these perspectives together. So I would encourage everyone to kind of listen to this story with a bit of a wide angle lens. Because while we do talk a lot about issues of race, it's really about something much deeper as well. So Pavani, I never realized theater could be such a transformative medium. I mean, what they put together here is really something special.

Pavani Yalla  04:38

I think he’s come up with a platform for change. But it's really, it's more than a platform for change. It's a platform for dialogue, for discourse. We, myself included, want to go change the world. And in order to do that we need to work together to do it. Right. But if we can't even talk to each other, how are we going to work together? How are we going to collaborate and, you know, change anything? How are we going to solve some of the biggest issues of our time, if we can’t even have a conversation? And I find myself in that situation a lot. I am, you know, often these days, especially talking to folks who I think maybe have different values or have different beliefs than I do, that I don't agree with. And it's difficult too... I'm a pretty open person, I'm a nice person. And it's difficult to navigate the conversation because I feel like we don't have a pattern or just, you know, a guide for how to go about having these conversations in a productive way in which neither of us is going to shut down. And we come out on the other end actually wanting to work together.

Joel Krieger  05:55

Well said, Alright, let's go and get into it. We'll join our conversation with Kevin telling us what the red door project is really all about.

Kevin Jones  06:06

Let me just try to give this conversation as sort of a heading so that he can make sure that we are, you know, careful about how we frame things. So you know, we're talking about race, we're talking about issues that are very volatile, and people have a lot of feelings about it. So I'm going to say something that I think that for a lot of folks is really incendiary. But I'm gonna say it anyway, you can edit it out. But I don't really feel like race is the problem. I mean, I think racism does exist, you know, we all know that race is, is a social construct as the term. But the reason I want to talk about it now, I should say, is because you know, I'm a black guy, and I'm going to talk about race a lot. And I just wanted to, I think it's just important. So yeah, I don't think race is the problem. I think, you know, the fact that we hurt each other as human beings, is and that we do that, you know, that that is part of being human. And that we have also criticized the nature of hurting each other. You know, we compartmentalize it, well, you hurt me, you’re prejudiced. Now we have words; like microaggressions, and things like that, that actually really hone in on this notion of hurting each other. But we do do that. And race is not the problem. Race just becomes an excuse you know racism or sexism or homophobia, this is me talking... classism, these have become the reasons that we assigned to these become the story. holders of race, I got a story about racism, I got a story about sexism. I got a story about classism, right. But the bottom line, the thing that holds the structure together, I think, is the fact that we as human beings hurt each other. And we haven't quite figured out how to reconcile that. But the problem will never get solved. I don't think unless we recognize that, that's what we're doing is we're hurting each other. And it doesn't really matter. If you know, someone is racist towards me or whatever. What really matters is whether or not they want to hurt me. Right? And how that manifests itself. So I don't know, I just, you know, that's something that I want to talk about a lot. I would actually... and listen a lot. I'd love to hear other people's ideas and reactions to that, because I just said something that I think can be very incendiary. And I'd love to. Maybe you want to tell me how that lands on you right now?

Joel Krieger  08:33

Yeah, well, actually, it lands quite well, to be honest, that's part of what appealed to me about this was that you can very clearly see how what you've created has had a profound impact in this one topic, but that it applies everywhere. And you just look at what's going on right now around the you know, vaccine versus anti Vax. I mean, it's, it's amazing. There seems to be no end of labels we can put on each other, to “other” someone. It's this; “Us versus Them”. And there's something inherent about the human psyche, that unless we can get past it, this is never gonna go away, we can cure the problem of racism, and then it's going to be something else. It's a constant... you know, just line them up, label after label—there seems to always be a way that we can create an “Us” and a “Them”.

Kevin Jones  09:19

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's well said. So I'll leave that there for a moment. And please feel free to keep me on track. So going back to your question around what theater and acting did for me, there are a lot of different ways to enter that because I got into theater at a relatively late period of my life. But I've always liked watching people, whether it is an airport, bus stop on the street or whatever, and all different kinds of people. And I was always fascinated with that. So I think that was kind of my way in but then once I started to take acting, consider acting as a serious advocation. I noticed that I was always being asked to play people that nobody else wanted to play. Let's just put it that way, right. And I remember telling a director once, just years ago, I said, I don't like these people. And he said to me, well, no wonder you're such a bad actor. And I thought, gee, I thought I was a good actor, but okay. He said, Yeah, you can't play anybody, Kevin, unless you actually learn to love them, not just like them, but love them, you know? Because when you love them, then you understand their motivations. You understand the story behind why they do what they do. Not only do you understand, but you're curious, you have to know you're, you're very active, listening in, you're listening. And you're, you're very adamant about getting the answers to your questions about, you know, like, why does he do this? What you know, everything from, you know, when was he raised by his mom or dad, both parents? Were they together, were the parents loving? How much education did the parents have? Were they religious? Were they not religious? You know, it's like, because you recognize that all of these things are the milieu  that make this human being... It's like a systems idea, right? You know, all of your influences, all of the people that have you that have had influence in your life, the ones that you've gotten fights with, you know, what was your dad? You know, what did your dad, what was his vision for you? Right? What was your mom's vision for you? So, that to me was like, once I got that, I was like, Whoa, you know, it really changed the way I thought about race, right? Because, you know, I mean, I remember I was raised in an all black community in New York City, Jamaica, Queens, and the cops were always around. And they're mostly white. And they were, you know, pretty rough. Right? And I remember I tell the story in the TED talk, but I, you know, just being harassed by police officers on my way back from Carnegie Hall, he throws me down on the ground, you know, they all surround me, they look at me, they go, Well, you know, where the fuck are you going so fast, you know, just and, you know, get your black ass on the ground, and yada yada, yada. And it shocked me because these were authority figures. Right, these were the personifications of right and wrong. These are the people that have... that wield all power, you know, I was like 14, 15 years old. And they're talking to me like I was dirt. And I've never been taught to like that before. So it really stayed with me, to the point where I did believe the rhetoric, I did believe the stories about racism, and I did believe that cops hated black people. I've come to learn a different... I have a different story that I tell myself now, a much more nuanced, much more complex story about why cops are hard on black people. But that's where it started. And so when I got introduced to, you know, this idea of really being curious about my characters, it just, not only did it give me a sort of a bridge into someone's perspective, but it also gave me a kind of a welcome sign. And once I was able to do that, then I just noticed that this idea of prejudice and subjugation and oppression and all the language and the stories that we tell about — that they are stories, and you know, and they think stories don't mean what we think they mean. Let's just put it like that. And so the stories I was telling about why police officers were hard on black folks was very different after I played a cop and played a cop who was an alcoholic cop who had been shot too. Especially while doing all of this work as a, with the police officers, that just gave me a certain level of insight into character and understanding how hurt how scared and frustrated how hopeless police officers are. How wounded and some permanently wounded and traumatized police officers are. I think that you know, one of the things about being an artist is maybe you can't know everything that the person was thinking and feeling. But you can get really close. And, and the most important thing is that we can reach a level of empathy and understanding for that individual.

Pavani Yalla  15:13

I'm curious, in the trajectory of becoming an actor and then having this realization that as you get to know the folks that you're acting, you understand them as a whole person. Was there a moment...  is the moment that you played a cop where you understood that this was a very specific thing that you were interested in, in investigating further? Or, you know, at what point did you feel like this? 

Kevin Jones  15:41

Right. Yeah. So I think, so that takes us back. Right. So I think if I understand your question is this. What was the impetus that got me into this and so that started with the program of Hands Up? So this might be a good time to talk about Hands Up?

Pavani Yalla  16:00

Yeah, tell us about Hands Up.

Kevin Jones  16:02

So I'm going to read you a couple just just excerpts from two monologues. One is from Hands up, and then the other one's from cop out. So we did one play was, it was called Hands Up, seven monologues written by seven black playwrights depicting their life experience as it relates to police profiling. And um, I’ll just go into that monologue now: “I think there's a difference between a Caucasian person and a white person, a Caucasian person is one whose skin just happens to be lighter than yours, they're just trying to get along and get through life and get through America just the same as as a black as any black person. And they don't treat you any different than anybody else. But a white person. When a white person walks into the room, you can tell by the way they've looked at you that they know that they're white, and you're black. It's the smugness in their face, when they look at you they come into events in our community. And they act like they should have special treatment, or even some merit badge for coming off their high horses and spending an evening with the help. And when you enter into the majority of white areas, they look at you like you're lost. What you're about to hear will not be pleasant for your ears. You see, when I speak of white America, I do not speak of every white citizen in America, I speak of the majority of Americans who influenced the laws that keep the good old boy network in power, or reap the benefits of it. While giving their silent consent, in order to protect their privilege. It's pretty much the same as I feel about cops. I know they’re not all assholes, and I know some who actually do a lot of good in the black community. If my loved ones or I were in danger, I would surely call them. But as for the majority, I hate cops. I wish I could stand here and tell you something politically correct. I wish I could make my language nice and plentiful for your ears. But I wouldn't be true to myself if I stood here and told you that I trusted any cop that I didn't know personally before he put on that badge.” So that monologue is from Hands Up. It's called “Superiority Fantasy.” It's about a 15 minute monologue. And that is written by a playwright who actually had this, tells the story about police profiling, how he was stopped, and so on and so forth. And we have six more monologues that tell a different perspective. We have one monologue from an African American man who was biracial, and people who looked white. And people thought he was white, and the internal struggle that he has as a black man who wants to be identified as a black man, but also is aware of the privilege he has from having white skin. We have a monologue from a black man who is adopted by two white parents who talks about he's never, you know, never experienced racism or police profiling, except from his parents, and talks about how he was never able to talk to his parents about being black and so he felt dismissed. So they're very complex, very nuanced. And we said we were going to take the show and present it to six different venues around the city of Portland, just six, we'll just give it to the community. And essentially what we wanted for our community to receive from us were two things. For the white community, we wanted to educate them, because we realized that the stories that they have been told about being black are usually taken from TV, the media, the news, radio, the entertainment industry. And they're so they're jaded. They're, they're not, you know, they're not honest and not real. And so we wanted to give them stories that were real, so that they could start to understand what this relationship with who these people are, and the kinds of relationships that are available to them. And then for people of color, we wanted them, we wanted to give them a place to heal. And what do I mean by heal? You know, I probably have been pulled over and stopped and harassed by police officers more than 100 times in my life. I'm 69 years old. And I remember I was with a friend of mine who was white. And we were in a car together and I got pulled over and the cop just talked to me awful. And he just, he was really rude. He was so rude that my white friend was sitting next to me leaned over and said, “Hey, what the fuck is wrong with you? Calm down.” I’ll never forget. And I freaked out. I was like, “Kenny, don't do that. What are you doing? Never talked to a cop like that. What is your What is? Have you lost your mind?” He said, “No, Man, fuck that. He's, he has no business talking to you like that.” And so they had a little exchange. And the thing that was shocking to me was that the cop calmed down. Never apologized. But he calmed down and he went away. And Kenny and I sat on the curb for a good hour. Me telling him of my experience with police officers. I said “Man, that happens to me all the time. All the time.” He said, “Kevin, I did not know.” He broke into tears. We were in our 40s at the time. And he said “I did not know that is not okay.” That is you know, and, and I realized that two things he'd never, he didn't know the story of what black folks go through. And I never was able to be witnessed by a white person before. I'll be honest with you, and you talk to most black people about this. two things. One is when it happens, they don't tell anybody. They don't tell anybody. They don't even tell their best friends, because it's too much shame in it. Cop pull you over, you must have done something wrong. So there's always a doubt. So you don't tell anyone. So here I am. Here is he's witnessing it. I didn't even have to do anything. I didn't tell him the story. He was a part of the story. So that was very, very, very profound. So black people need that opportunity. So when they come to Hands Up, that's the deal for them. They get to come there, they get to see this. And at the end of it, they go, “That shit happens to me all the time.” And they can say it publicly to everyone, to each other. And we've heard so many black people that would say people of color, not just black people, people of color who would say, “Man, I got a lot of shit to work out here. I got issues. I'm wounded internally. I've been wounded by this.” They realize that for the first time, many times, so I thought that was a great thing. So during the time that we were doing the show, and touring it all around. Someone said the police want to see this show. And I said yeah, okay, but when it doesn't, it doesn't bode well for police officers. This is not a show that you want to bring cops to. You know, there’s a lot of “we hate cops” here. Well, you heard it in that monologue. So I was like, yeah, okay, well, fine. But then someone did come to the show, as a cop, and stood up and said that I think that every police officer should see this show. And I freaked out. And he said and he came over to me at the end of the show, and he said “would you mind in me introducing you to our Director of Training?” that was Bob day at the time. So I met Bob and Bob was like, “Hey, you walk in here, you think you’re going to come in here and tell me how racist cops are? You might as well just turn around and walk out right now. It's not going to happen.” And I said to him “No, that's not what I was gonna say. But I'd love to hear more about what you're thinking and feeling there.” And that began a relationship. I told him that I wanted to interview police officers. We hired playwrights from all over the country, most of them black, to identify police officers in their life that they wanted to interview. And if they couldn't find anyone, we would help them find them. And we produced about 25, 30 police monologues from that powerful model. How about if I read you a short one from Cop Out. Is that okay?

Joel Krieger  25:34

Yeah, that'd be great. And this is from the second show?

Kevin Jones  25:37

Right from the second show, Cop Out: “Are you kidding me? Are you absolutely fucking kidding me? Stopping you because you're black is against the law. Profiling is against the law. You saying I'm breaking the law? That I'm willing to risk my family, my home, everything I stand for just to stop you because you're black? You have any idea how much I don't want to stop you because you're black. First of all, profiling is illegal. And don't tell me I'm getting and don't tell me I'll get away with it in this culture. Please. Shit you can't even even make jokes about it. Yesterday, I stopped the car because of the taillight. So I get to the car and a black guy loses his mind, because it's the 14th time he's been stopped in a white neighborhood in the last three months. He launches into me, you're a fucking racist. You're profiling me. Okay, he's not entirely wrong. Was he stopped all those times because he was black? Probably not. But was he stopped because he fit the description? Possibly. You see, we're trained for possibilities, not probabilities. Here's an example. And this is how it works. A resident calls 911 and reports a robbery. The call taker types in the computer 20, 5’10”, mask, dark skin, maybe, and gives the report to the dispatch. Dispatch gets the report to me, interprets it, and tells me male Black 20s. And I'm on the street at 2am. And I get the report. And I see a black guy, 20 year old male. He's not happy to see me. If we were in a place where there were more black people, New York, Chicago, Oakland, I would have to look more closely. But here, Portland. I don't think I'm stopping him because he's black. But I do think I'm stopping him because he fits the description.” So that's just an excerpt of a monologue called “Full Stop” from the next series of monologues that we produced. And we've created a show called Cop Out. And this was one of the monologues from there. So to go back to your question, how did this happen? It happened through this process. How did how did I why was I interested in playing police officer is because I went through that two, three years of being I'd been heavily entrenched in the world of police officers, interviewing with police officers, spending time having coffee with police officers, being coached by police officers, going on ride alongs with police officers. Hearing, you know, police officers are interesting people, they don't... they don't talk a lot. But then they're incredibly emotional. They're more sensitive than your average bear. And that, you know, so when once they were able to realize that I was trustworthy, that I was on their side, they believed in what we were doing. I just, I had a wealth of material to work with when performing as a police officer.

Pavani Yalla  29:22

So one thing that I didn't realize was that it wasn't necessarily with the intention to have cops come experience it?

Kevin Jones  29:29

Oh, yeah. No.

Pavani Yalla  29:30

So that kind of emerged. And that's when you realize the power of these monologues. I also love the structure or the strategy of leveraging monologues. I guess it's not even a strategy. It's just art. Right? But can you talk a little bit more about that and why you think his monologues were so powerful?

Kevin Jones  29:53

Sure. So the power of story can probably start there. Before we had language, we had stories, right. And then language came as a compliment to stories, but they weren't separate. You know, this is how we learn to do everything that we do. This is how we navigate our conflicts is by watching how other people navigate their conflicts, we learn how to accomplish the certain, all the things that we want to accomplish in our life is by someone first sharing a story about whether it be through a lesson or telling us what happened or, you know, let me tell you something that I want in the future, whatever, it's all wrapped up in story, the learning process is all wrapped up in the story. So realizing that first person, “let me tell you what happened to me” kinds of stories... There's a kind of linkage that happens in the brain. And I'm not a neurologist or cognitive scientist or any of that. And it's kind of amazing that, you know, that thing that happens when someone, “let me tell you what happened to me.” So the monologues are all written in first person. And the design of them is to bring out the humanity in the individual. So how do we do that? Well, first off, we don't assign names to the people, we don't give anyone a lot of background that we let the person come up and talk about. So as you heard from these two monologues, these are just you don't get a lot of context. But because it's in first person, because it's acted well, because it's an emotional arc. It has an impact. So the monologues usually start with Let me tell you a little something about who I am. Let me tell you something about something that happened to me. Let me tell you how I felt about it. Let me tell you about a challenge that occurred because of that, like something that got in my way, or something that I had to overcome in order to accomplish or get to what I wanted. And then let me tell you about the prize or the thing that I received at the end. So monologues tend to have all of those things, because that's what Joseph Campbell discovered is the hero's journey is built into our cognitive map for learning, for mastering, for achieving stuff. It's just, it's just laid in there. That was the amazing discovery that he made, is, you know, they're in the hero's journey as the hero he's in the land of the familiar, he gets a call to the adventure, a call to become something else a call to do something else a call to learn something, to save someone, that takes him out of the world of the familiar, he has to cross a threshold. As he crosses that threshold, he then has to make some, ask himself some questions like, do I really want to do this? Yes, you do. When he does that, he meets his spiritual aide, his mentor, his teacher, his guide, the guide prepares teachers and runs them through some lessons, and then he's tested; did you learn what you needed to learn? Did you accomplish it? And once you do that, then you go and you face into it on your own. And once you face it, you slay the dragon if you will. And you discover in slaying the dragon, that you weren't really afraid of the dragon, or the thing that you thought you were afraid of. It's not out there, it's actually something in yourself. And then you get the prize and you go back to the beginning and share that with your world and with yourself and become a more self actualized human being. And that is just sort of cooked in. It's baked into our storytelling, you know, so we when we told us when we asked our subjects to tell their stories, like we say to the playwright, the writer of the monologue, okay, I'm going back to designing the actual monologues, we would say to the playwright, find a subject and focus on these things. And then they'll allow your creativity to do its thing. Just Just tell whatever story catches you, but remember, just remember that it's got to cover these areas, but the nature of the work and the way in which we approached it, I realize now looking back on it actually allow for us to be able to interview cops and to be able to embrace that process just as much as we did with Hands Up, we had when we were doing Hands Up, which is the show about that was written by black playwrights. There's a lot of anger, there's a lot of fear. There's a lot of histrionics. And we were doing a show for high school kids. And two, black high school kids stood up after the show and said: “I guess this means that I'm going to be dead before I reach... before I become an adult.” We looked at each other at the same time, we thought, Oh, I think it's time to move on from this. I felt almost, I felt guilty. I felt like Oh, geez, you know, if I'm just now seeing this, how long has this been happening? You know, how long have we been propagating this message? And how long have we, you know, benefited from it through our own self, ego, and our own need to be first or whatever. And we had to stop for a minute. And we realize that the only thing we could do at that point was to really, eventually bring both monologues, both sets of monologues together, because we recognize that there were conversations that were starting to emerge from what we had started that weren't based on truth. And we wanted people to become more self aware, and less reactive. I guess, you know, because when we're less reactive where we are, we're just less polarized, and we were realizing that what we were doing was creating a lot of polarization. So I just want to say that was an emergent property of the work that we were doing. 

Pavani Yalla  37:11

The focus first with you on Hands Up, and then Cop Out, they were kind of two very, almost opposite sides of that discussion, and you wanted to bring them together so that you have a more holistic…

Kevin Jones  37:26

Yes, Thank you. I wanted to reflect back to the general audience, our actual state, the kind of conversation that we need to be having. And the state that we're in, we are in conflict. And I wanted us to be able to see ourselves on stage with all of our emotion with all of our vehemence with all of our certainty with all of our hurt and pain on both sides. To see how compelling both sides are. Right? It's like we only see one sided. Absolutely, right. I mean, I can't say that's wrong. But when you see both sides being both logical in their own way, there's a symmetry that forces people to look at themselves. Like, Oh, well, what is the truth? What do I think? What do I really believe? Well, I always thought that the black guy was always right around this, but like, you know, he's, the cop is making sense over here. When he talks about, you know, for example, police profiling, it's against the law. Why would they want to do it, of course, they don't want to do that. So yeah, yeah.

Joel Krieger  38:37

It's a very nuanced thing we're dealing with, it's like, we're so conditioned, to have a side. Why does there always have to be a side? And there's something really powerful about, well, there is no side.

Kevin Jones  38:50

Right? Yeah. And why? And, and, given that there is no side? Why are we, as human beings, so invested in creating those sides? It's like, we know plenty about the problem. What we don't know is about each other. It's really what I'm just trying to say. We just don't know how to be curious about each other. And if we could do that, we wouldn't have to be some fancy schmancy, about all of these theories and ideas about why we're not getting along. That's what I believe. I mean, and that's been my observation, I should say, I just, I don't feel safe in the world. like I used to. I feel like I have to find my tribe and, and stay with them. And you know, because I look out, you know, I look at the faces of people on TV and the news and, and what they're up to, and I think oh my God, people are like, just really, like that whole January 6 thing was. Just what was that? You know? Talk about theater. Yeah. Anyway.

Joel Krieger  40:07

Yeah, it's going off the rails, it's almost like this, I think everyone can feel it. There's this underlying sense of something's not right. Something's deeply not right. 

Kevin Jones  40:17

Something is deeply not right. That is, that is it. Something is, and we all know it. And I have to feel like, you know, like this conversation that we're having and how we're thinking about this, I have to think that there were the majority, I can't you know, it's so there's a very loud minority of people that are making me scared, right? To the point where I don't trust my ability to connect with other human beings, like I used to think we just have to find ways to do it. And that's what evolved is supposed to do for, for the audience is supposed to give people insight into our problems. And what we try to do is we try to portray some of our most gnarly issues, issues of race. Issues of what we're doing monologues now, judges, we're doing monologues of the homeless, we want people who work with youth. We want to talk to social scientists, we want to talk to people in religion, we want as much from the Zeitgeist, the current days, I guys we want, we want as much as we can stand without confusing folks. We don't want to just stay on the race and police issue.

Pavani Yalla  41:42

It strikes me that you are kind of investigating or learning and are on a journey yourself. Right? It seems like you're really trying to understand what's going on and what those narratives are, rather than having kind of a topic like a single topic that you want to go about in like, an angle, if you will. Yeah. So that's, I think, what is also interesting to me, because you are discovering this work, and really trying to inspect it and understand what it what's really going on here.

Kevin Jones  42:16

Yeah, yeah. Sure. Curating. It's like, how do you curate a culture, you know, like, we were, our job is to reflect back to people. Like the homeless problem. As an example, I have a series of monologues from the homeless right now, homeless women, and the stories about how they got there. Break your heart, shocking, scaring the shit out of you just because it can happen to anybody. And it's the reason why we don't want to look at the homeless problem. Because we can see it happening. Like, I don't want to go, I can't look. But the bottom line is, we don't really have an answer to the problem. And it is a byproduct of how we live. And so to look at that, we immediately have to look at how we live. But everybody's telling me, Kevin, we can't do monologues on the homeless. Why? Because nobody would come. I go, you know how many times we've thought that and we were wrong? Why do you think that now? Because now it's really serious, people don't want to hear or deal with the homeless. I think that there's something in us, a survival mechanism, maybe that will not allow us to face into that kind of hopelessness, or death. You know, and because we are there, we can see how complicit we've been in this. So I have these wonderful monologues that I really want to get out there. And they're just, yeah, they're just beautiful, beautiful stories, but they're hard. They're hard. And they can be, these are people who could be living right next door to you, or be at on your job or people who, you know, go to your church, you know, there's so many things to learn in this relationship with with, that we have with with the homeless, there's so many things that we can learn about ourselves and, and each other, we can really find a way to face into this.

Pavani Yalla  44:26

So you mentioned that this was a really hard topic, but all of the topics that you've delved into are really hard. And when you say that they're hard topics, like do people want to come see this? That's what you're thinking? Yeah, you're thinking about the emotions that they're going to feel. And so can you talk a little bit more about what people feel when they come and experience some of these stories? Like what is that emotional journey that your audience is going through?

Kevin Jones  44:54

Yeah, yeah. I think where people come to, you know, come to the theater to be entertained. I think what happens for folks is because it's one person coming on the stage at a time, and there's no background, you know, we just let him walk out onto the stage, there's maybe some transition music from once one monologue to the next. It always gives them the sense of being entertained. And what they go through is a transformation in what they believe. Right? They think that on a fundamental, fundamental level, they come in believing that life is like this. And they come out understanding that it's not, it's actually like this. So when it comes to white folks hearing about how black people experience their reality, it's like, oh, wow, I really just thought black people were just the ones that were were angry, were just, you know how to, had a problem had anger issues, or there was something that was going on in the culture that just made them that way. But now I understand that, yeah, if I was being harassed by the police, as much as these people are, I would think differently. Holy mackerel, I never thought that before. And the same thing is true for black folks who see this and go, you know, what, I kind of did think this was just my problem. I mean, I know what happens, I hear about it. But you know, and she is thinking, and internalizing these incidents in the same way that I internalize them. And that is very uplifting for most people, it's an illuminating experience, I will say that it's an illuminating experience. It becomes a series of epiphanies for people to where they want to talk about it, you know, the talkbacks that we have, what happens is it becomes like church almost, it's like the room becomes the energy shifts, things get really silent. When the show's over, I will say something or Leslie, my partner will say something like, so we don't want to hear what you think we want to hear what you feel, we ask that you maybe check in with your body first. And just speak from that we don't even if the thought even the thing you're going to say doesn't make any sense. We would much rather hear that. We'd much rather feel that as a group. And that always, you know, creates even more silence, because then people will hope because we immediately want to go into what I think right? And like, then they sort of put the brakes on that. And then, you know, ask themselves, what do they feel? And for some, it's much easier than others. And we as facilitators are trying to sort the space for those groups of people who are on the edge of something, you know, how are some people who are just very fluid, you know, they come to these kinds of things, they immediately know what to say, boom, boom, boom. And then there are some people who are very quiet and stoic and have nothing saying there's nothing you can do to make them say something. But then there's a group of people who are just kind of like... yeah… well....

Pavani Yalla  48:40

Yeah, I can relate to that. Same.

Kevin Jones  48:45

So we try to pull those out. But then what happens is, you know, there's this amazing gathering of people like this, this networking process that happens, people share telephone numbers and contact information. They bring others and they make agreements to get together later. 

Pavani Yalla  49:04

Do you feel like then that the monologues themselves? There's a transformation that happens to the point where people are then primed for the talkback. And that the talkback is kind of like a necessary cap to the experience?

Kevin Jones  49:24

Yes, yeah. People would say the show is great. But you come for the talkback, that's what people would say. Because it's the opportunity to hear and share. feelings. You know, we had one audience. It was a black woman. She's sitting in the back of the theater and afterwards she just howled like a wolf. Just howled. An old woman. She was older than me, she was in her seventies. And that's that's it. And an echo that sort of like, bellowed in space. And either I said it or Leslie said it's this is, let's just be with that, please let's not, let's not feel like we have to respond or speak to it or describe it as just let that be. And it was to this day, probably the best talkback we've ever had, where we just were able to go to a deep place as a group, where people were talking about their experiences of being, for example, white and how their parents were, were racist, and how hard it was to, to get over that and how much shame they had in that because of their connections to a racist history or whatever. And hearing, you know, the amount of internalized white oppression that we rarely get a chance to hear publicly. And not in a way of putting them down or shame or feeling any kind of internal shame, but really a way to help them celebrate this, this epiphany that they're having an opportunity to let it out. And watching the marginalized group and black folks and people of color, hold space for them and welcome them and allow that to happen, was really quite powerful. Because, you know, and I think I know, it came from this woman and her howl it was just, I mean, oh, my God, it was gut wrenching. You know? And,

Pavani Yalla  51:41

Yeah, so you created a safe space, basically. And for however many minutes that that lasts, people don't get to experience that really anywhere else. And it's a very unique room at that point.

Kevin Jones  51:57

It's so true. We just don't get to experience that anymore.

Pavani Yalla  52:01

And we should be, to your point earlier around community, you know, how we communicate and dialogue? And

Kevin Jones  52:07

yeah, yeah.

Joel Krieger  52:10

It's almost like, so few of us have ever I mean, I just feel like as a, as a culture, the art of listening, is this forgotten practice? And what you're describing is, I imagine this unfolding. It's almost like the play broke down whatever barriers we have to actually hearing another human being. And then there's this time where you're listening at a level that you may not have ever listened before.

Kevin Jones  52:40

Exactly. That's exactly right. I think, you know, listening is not easy. There's a lot of different kinds of listening and the kind of listening that happens when first person storytelling happens, is the person who's listening. There's a transformation that can happen doesn't always but when it does, it's it's really amazing, is that you become dropped into this container that removes all judgment, it becomes an agnostic listener, you become just, I don't care what the story is, I don't care what this person did. I just want to hear this one, I want to learn. I'm fascinated. I don't even know why I'm fascinated. But I'm just, I just want to hear the end of the story. I want to hear  everything. I'm rooting for them. Like a child, you know, I have a grandson, who's six years old. And it's so amazing. When he's you talking to him, it gets up on your lap, he's this close to you. And he's like, listen to you like this. That's where we all came from, is, you know, that kind of listening that kind and so... when we listen, we change, we do change.

Joel Krieger  53:57

Well, what I've noticed about listening to you talk is that your process seems to have this very emergent quality of paying attention and reacting in real time and designing in real time. But at a certain point, you've kind of noticed these patterns, and put it into a kind of a theory of change that I think you call the protect, expand and evolve cycle. I'd love to hear you unpack that process for us.

Kevin Jones  54:21

One of the things that we've learned in the work that we do is that there is truly a cycle that occurs for people when we are changing, when we change our minds, when we learn something new, when we get into a conflict as systems. We do three things, human beings are systems, we protect, we expand and we evolve. Now when people hear that they think linearly they think well, this first this happens, and then this happens. And then this happens. And it's, I think of it more as a quantum thing, it's always happening. But to think about it for the brain to be able to sort of lay it out and understand that it's probably best to lay it out linearly. But just know that in hearing it that way, it's not necessarily how it plays out. All systems on this planet, for example, have a boundary, we have a boundary, we have skin, we have immune systems, and it's there to protect us, it's there to keep us whole. Now, if I need to, if I go outside, and it's really cold outside, then my protective mechanism, which is also protecting my temperature, is going to have to make some adjustments. And now as a human being, what do I mean by that? What is protected look like in the human being, it means I hold on to my values, my beliefs are dear to me. I hold on to my identity, I must be seen as this kind of person, you must see me as a X person, not a THIS person. So those are all of the kinds of mechanisms that keep us in protect. If you make a suggestion that I eat a certain food that I don't believe in or don't like, or it reminds me of something, I'm going to bristle. I don't want that food. Why not? Why don't you try it? You never had it before? Well, it looks bad. What do you mean, it looks bad? How can you tell it's bad, just by the way it looks? Look, if you keep at me like this, I'm gonna hit you in the face, right? All of this is protect. So and so what happens, expand is like, well, you know what, maybe I should give it a try, you know, it looks kind of good. Well, it smells good. Or, you know, I should be more open to things. I'm going to start to try to be more open to things that I, you know, I'm usually closed down to. So I'll give it a try. Let's expand. Now, two things can happen when you expand, you could say, shit, I knew this was bad. And you can go back to protect, because you didn't like what happened. Or you can allow yourself to stay open and curious to the experience. And that's what we try to get people to do, we try to get people to let go of the protective boundary, let go of the protective barrier, and open up and be available to something new. And then in our case, you'll hear something different that you don't like you'll hear if you're a police officer, you're going to hear stuff you don't like if you're someone from community of color, or whatever you're going to hear stuff you don't like, what we are asking you to do is to not shut down know that this is part of the process, what you're feeling angry, protective, judgmental, is all part of the change process, don't give it meaning that it doesn't really have. It's a mechanism. So we can try to get people trained to that, to accept that. So that they can understand it gives them permission, sort of a way to change, we find that when people can embrace that, that gives them sort of a platform to move into expand, and considering new thoughts and ideas. This notion of evolve, you know, think about a caterpillar turning into a butterfly, No, there's nothing about a caterpillar that you can recognize in a butterfly, the whole system is different. And we don't realize it, but we as human beings have that ability as well to, right. I mean, we can't change our physical makeup in that same way. But we can in other ways, but we can change our beliefs completely. We can change our values completely. We can change our attitudes, we can change our ideals, you know what is most important, we can literally change those things. And there is a process for doing it. And art is one of the ways and one of the mechanisms that is used to help us get into that process. So the butterfly so the notion of changing and changing completely i think is just understated. Like, we live in a culture where we get the message that it's important to become a fixed person, you know, we establish a fixed sense of self, right? That's what we all are supposed to become something. What are you going to be when you grow up? Who are you going to be, you know, and so, you know, you get your job, you get your degree, and then you're good, you're good to go. So, is that a bad thing? I don't know, I know that there are consequences to that though. Because when you become so fixated on an idea of who you are, then it makes it very, very difficult to evolve. Because evolving means you'd have to find a way to let go of those things. Right. So that's the, and letting go of those things, does require a leap of faith, does require that we are willing to step into the danger. And that's where the hero's journey can help us. Because understanding that through the hero's journey, there's your gateway, there's your template, there's your guide, for going through to that world that's different, that's new for you, you don't have to be afraid that's actually a good thing. And we're aren't does that where art comes in is art helps us through storytelling, through metaphor, through mythology, through mysticism, it provides us with the the messaging, the imaging, the symbols, the sense sensations that we need, in order to be able to determine if this is a safe place, if this is if this transformation is safe for us, we need to hear stories, the mystical thing about hearing a story is that it's not my story, I'm hearing your story. But somehow my brain thinks it's my story. And what I hear you solve the problem, I'm actually solving it for myself. That's kind of mystical. And so that helps us in the process. How do you get there without art and music and celebration? And, and ritual? And sensation? How do you get to that place of transformation without those things, it is not a brain thing. Let's remember that every civilization that has come before us in this world is gone. Right? There's not. And what makes us so special, that we think we're going to be able to figure it out and know that this is this is my PSA here, if we don't figure out how to make that transformation, if we don't figure out how to use the, the human mechanism of art, to the make these transitions that we are attempting to make in our in our world, that we won't have anything left to do, but to do things like figure out how to get to Mars and, you know, keep expanding out, taking, you know, I mean, that's all that's it. That's why I think, yeah, so protect, expand, evolve, is simplistic. But when you really, you know, if you meditate on it, for example, just this notion that you're always in that fluid motion of protect, expand, evolve. And when you can embrace it and understand it and really believe in it. Then it can in fact, transform you in the moment it transforms your way, your orientation in your relationships with people. Because you don't think just because Oh God, I got a funny feeling in my stomach, or, like, the way she looks at me is just really pissing me off. We don't have to, like react. So you know, as if it means so much. It's just the cycle of you protecting, expanding and evolving.

Joel Krieger  1:03:51

So we really wanted to talk to somebody who had experienced a change from attending Evolve. Kevin recommended we speak with Bob Day. Now Bob is a 30 year veteran of the police force. He actually retired in 2019, as deputy chief of police. Bob has a really remarkable journey that goes from being an audience member of hands up to collaborator of cop out, and eventually to serving as a core member of The Red Door project staff. So at the time of Hands Up, Bob was the captain of the training division for the Police Bureau, one of his colleagues saw Hands Up and decided that this is something that Bob should have on his radar. So we set up a meeting between Bob, Kevin and Leslie. So here's Bob telling us about that initial encounter with Kevin.

Bob Day  1:04:41

And I told Kevin that if he was coming here to tell me that cops are racist, he could leave. And Kevin's response was, well, tell me more about that. Which was remarkable, that I never had that response before. And I'm not proud of my delivery, but that's kind of where I was in 2016. You remember, we're coming have, you know, a lot of events, including Michael Brown, Ferguson, Obama had really been on the police, there's just a lot of energy around this conversation that I wasn't prepared or skilled or knowledgeable about how to navigate, as I think is still the case today with a lot of cops. And so when Kevin said, Tell me more about that, that really opened up a door, a conversation that I'd never had before. And so that's what launched us on this, on this journey, was really his willingness to, to be the first one to say, you know to be curious.

Joel Krieger  1:05:37

What were you expecting him to say? When you told him that?

Bob Day  1:05:41

I figured he'd leave. I mean, I was pretty clear in my remarks. And I just, you know, I kind of figured it was an easy way to end an uncomfortable meeting. And then, in that meeting, you know, they really encouraged me to go to Hands Up, they told me about Hands Up what it was, and knowing how I'm seeing that, I've had, you know, 25 years of people telling me, I'm a racist, and I'm a bad person, and cops are bad, and this and that. So I went home, and I told my wife what a crazy invitation I received that day. And she looked at me and said, I think that might be a good opportunity for us, which I tell people now as marriage lingo for: get your coat, we're going to the play. And so we went, and it was exactly what I expected. It was, you know, seven monologues of black people saying all these things about the police that were, you know, largely, you know, hard to hear. And, you know, some of it because it's for the stage is embellished, inflammatory, you know, hyperbolic whatever, but it's a show, but the core essence of it is true. And I knew it was true and accurate. And it's their experience. And at the end of the show, they do a talkback, where the audience can, you know, 250 people in the room, the audience can sort of say what they want. And I was not in uniform, I didn't tell anybody I was a police officer, I just was sitting there with my wife. And towards the end, this black man, he was sitting about, I don't know, six or seven chairs over from me, just an average looking dude, just like me. He wasn't angry, wasn't, you know, intense, he just was talking about how tired he was of the treatment of people of color and city of Portland by the police and this and that. And towards the end, he essentially said, you know, if that doesn't change, I'm, we're going to take matters into our own hands. And I'm like, Huh, that's a fairly significant statement to make. And, you know, this guy is a community member, a person who lives in the city, he seems pretty normal. It's like, it was just like, caught me so flat footed. And I remember thinking, now, I should probably know more about that. And, you know, I did not connect with him. But, you know, going to Kevin afterwards and saying, okay, clearly you're, you're reaching somebody here that I'm not. And my initial, you know, reach out was along the lines of my role as a captain of the Police Bureau responsible for leadership responsible for the men and women doing the work of police in the city of Portland. And then over time, I had no idea how it would, you know, impact me and change my life personally, that that was kind of the beginning of the journey.

Joel Krieger  1:08:34

Yeah. And when you think back to the way you felt, during the show, and after the show, can you describe some of the emotions that you went through?

Bob Day  1:08:46

You know, there was anger, there was frustration, and probably the biggest thing for me was, you know, I wanted to just shout out, you know, that's not true. That's not accurate, you know, policing. So we pride ourselves on, you know, the facts, we just want the facts, what are the facts? Well, I've learned, you know, the facts don't always tell the truth, right. They're not always all of the truth. But we, we try, we strive for accuracy. So it was odd for me to be in this performance, and see it, you know, as a theatrical production. I want to go up there and correct everything. What Kevin's helped me to understand, you know, is the power of art and the power of story. And it is a production. It's not a, you know, documentary. Yeah, you know, what I mean? It's, you know, once I was able to wrap my head around that, then I was able to listen differently and listen to it as a story. And, and what I've learned from that is, it's easy when things are uncomfortable to want to dismiss versus lean in. So what I was essentially doing was, you know, looking for an out like, well, that, you know, that story can't be real because look what they said about Michael Brown, right? So that person's experience can't be real, because they're not even saying the truth about that. So it's you know, you find that you're looking that you're into that uncomfortability level, you're into that dissonance, you know, where something's rubbing up against something that you believe, and it's not the same thing that you believe. So it's like, you know, fingernails coming down a chalkboard, you're trying to get rid of that dissonance, that noise, and the best, easiest way to do that is just dismiss it like now, you know, that's just not right, that's not accurate. So I can move on. And what I've learned is that's, you know, that's, that's the last place I want to be, actually want to, I want to be more curious, I want to sit with that uncomfortability, because that's where the growth and the change and the excitement and the richness really lives in my opinion. After that one, I said to Kevin, you know, I need to know more about this. So I started going to more Hands Up shows. So this is in, like August of ‘16. And just, I mean, I don't want to say this lightly, so please bear with me. Two weeks after we saw that show, we lost our son to cancer, our son was 15 years old, he was diagnosed at age nine, and he fought for six years against Ewing sarcoma. You know, it was really, I mean, in lack of a better word intense, doesn't even partially describe. In fact, it'll be five years this month on August 27, that we lost him. So that's an important, excuse me, that's important note towards sorry, what's going on in my life, right, you know, this, impacted by this, you know, monumental loss that you know, even to this day is still is still painful. So, from you know, I saw the show, had conversations with Kevin, Sam died, then I kind of just, you know, checked out for 30, 60 days, didn't work, you know, just healing, family trauma, all that. But, you know, life does go on. So I got back into conversation, I got back into work, and so forth. And I started attending these Hands Up shows, just because I wanted to hear these stories. And I wanted to hear, you know, what the audiences are saying. And I was sitting there after one of the shows, and this black man stood up as a father. And he started to talk about how he was afraid that his son was going to die at the hands of the police. And I went right back to my dismissive nature. But the likelihood of a black man being killed by the police in this country is actually really low, the argument would be that it is high. But if you look at the numbers, the police kill about 1000 people a year. So 50 to 60 million people a year contacted 10 million people arrested, 1000 of them killed, about 225 of them black. And now that 225, probably, on average, and don’t quote me on this, but the numbers are around 20 a year that are quote, unarmed. So I'm running through all these numbers in my head, like, anyway, as he's talking, his son sitting next to him, he's like, 14, 15 year old kid, he's just embarrassed as hell trying to blend into the theater seat next to his dad. This dad starts to cry, he starts to weep in front of this audience of like, 250 people, and he just starts weeping. And he says, I just don't want to lose my son. Well, I've lost Sam, like, six or seven months earlier. And I'm like, I mean, that just hit me. Because I knew that fear, right? I knew that that sound in his voice, I knew that emotion. And suddenly, you know, I didn't see him as a black guy, me as the police. I just saw us as a couple of dads. You know, we're just a couple of dads who are, just love our kids. It occurred to me in that moment, like, my desire to be right, to be justified, my numbers are accurate. I mean, really, that the likelihood of his son dying at the hands of police are really low from just a pure statistical everyday standpoint, that's irrelevant in this conversation, the tendency for I think all of us, but certainly for me, you know, you want to be right, you want to be justified. You want to be on you know, your side and say, Hey, we're on the side of truth. We're on the side, you know. And in that moment, I realized, you know, what, that's not what's important here, right now, what's important is to hear the fear in that man's voice. And to realize that, you know, rightly or wrongly, that message is being communicated to his son. I mean, it's been communicated very publicly in that room. But we know that, you know, at tables across America, every day, black families are having a totally different conversation about the police than white families are. And so whether I agree with that or not, I needed to understand that's happening. And then I need to understand so what's my role, particularly as a police leader? What's my responsibility in this and that goes back to the curiosity piece. I went back and I sat down with my officers, and I'm like, here's the story. And of course, they're all the same place, you know, and I'm like, no, that doesn't matter. If this 16, 17 year old kid has been told this messaging and believes that, and then we contact him on a traffic stop that we think is just super benign and super, you know, I ran a red light at one o'clock in the morning, we're just going to go up and tell him to knock it off. And as we're walking up on the car, he thinks he's gonna die. You know, and we teach our officers to look for furtive movement, nervousness, sweaty brow, lack of cooperation, you know, reaching around the car, you know, all the things that if you thought this was your moment, you'd probably be experiencing and doing, you can see how these events continue to escalate into these tragic outcomes oftentimes. And so really, that was the transformative moment for me was when I was able to see, you know, it was less about who's right, who's wrong here? And who's on what side and see, actually, what's my role in helping here? What's my role in being a part of the solution? How do you hold competing views? I have strong personal beliefs. Don't get me wrong, I don't. But how do you hold those beliefs in the face of you know, those other competing views, and not just completely shut down, lose your mind, walk away or resort to violence. And that's a muscle that we just don't work very often in this country, particularly in the last couple of years. You're either with me or against me, you're either on my side, or you're not.

Joel Krieger  1:16:31

Most often when we're having a discussion, or a debate, the goal is to win, the goal is to be right, and to convince the other person, but how often do we enter into a conversation? Not trying to be right, but trying to understand why the other person believes what they believe. You use the word curious, that's really what it's about, isn't it? It's just getting people curious to know, why do you believe that? Why do you feel that way? I want to understand.

Bob Day  1:17:01

Well, and the thing about it is, see what curiosity does, Joel, is it, it starts to allow you to move past all those, you know, presuppositions or stereotypes. And then all of a sudden, you start to see that humanity. You know, like, I saw that dad, in a more dramatic way. I am so grateful. My life is richer, I mean, not only just conversations like this, which I love, but I mean, I have sat in the room with some people who have been really, really mad at the police for a long time. And I sit in the room with some really strong white male straight conservatives. I mean, I've had incredible opportunities on both sides of, of this divide. That's just been rich, and that I've learned from, and I think if people would be more open to that, then I mean, I said, I can only speak for myself, but my life is forever changed the relationships, the conversations, the experiences, the places,

Joel Krieger  1:18:00

What is it about Evolve that makes it so powerful? I mean, what is it about this medium?

Bob Day  1:18:05

The crude way that I say that this evolved experience works is we sort of put everybody shit out on the street. Like, we don't hold back the monologues, both by the cops and by the African American participants are pretty raw, pretty in your face, and pretty one sided intentionally so. So I like to say these are the conversations cops are having at Starbucks or in the locker room with each other. These are conversations black people are having in their homes or on the street corner, but they're not conversations people are having together. Well, you can put it on stage. And when it's over, it's kind of like, Huh, well, it's all out there. I guess we need to talk about it. It's a lot to take in. I mean, it's you see it, and you're like, wow, okay, I didn't know anybody actually said that stuff publicly. These emotions are coming to the surface. And now we're actually going to address those, through facilitated conversation through reflection through questions. I mean, it's incredible. I've never seen anything like it. It's using the media and of art, to evoke a response to bring those emotions and ideas to the surface. And then creating space for those to be able to be to be able to be talked about, your voice will be heard, no matter where you're at, on the spectrum, if you go to this thing, your voice is going to be heard, you're going to hear yourself and see yourself in some part of some story somewhere. And that's, you know, that's a good thing. I mean, you want people to connect at some point. Yeah, I can see, you know, I can see that I can understand that. And then you're also going to hear a lot of stuff you don't like, and you don't agree with and that's why we're here. We're here to both affirm and challenge and give you practice and sitting in that space. And, you know, I don't think you can do that in just an everyday conversation because people get too caught up in the moment and the emotion but if they sit through a few monologues, they have time to kind of absorb and process it.

Joel Krieger  1:19:59

Yeah, well, for somebody who's very change adverse, you seem to have embraced change in this part of your life and just, you know, gone all in. I mean, I love it. You're telling me you weren't like that before?

Bob Day  1:20:14

No. Like I said, I just cannot emphasize enough how exciting it has been to have this awakening. I mean, I am your quintessential 100%, conservative, straight fundamental guy. I mean, I'm, you know in my core like, I don't like change, I like things the way they are at Starbucks, I get the same drink. I've gotten the same drink for probably 15 years. We just moved into this house this week, my wife started telling me we were going to move two years ago, because she knew it would take that long to give it up, you know, I mean, I am the model of consistency. And so this is a huge shift for me.

Pavani Yalla  1:21:07

So I didn't get to meet Bob. But you had, it sounds like a great conversation with him.

Joel Krieger  1:21:12

Yeah, it was such a remarkable story. I really enjoyed my time with him, we talked for like two hours, it really left an impression on me, I mean, that you can't really understate the amount of change that he went through. And, to me, that just speaks to the power of this platform that Kevin and his team have developed. But he just kept talking about this richness, this world that has opened up for him. And how grateful he was for this change. It's almost like it has enriched his life. And he knows it. And he lives it every day. It's amazing. But he's kind of made it a practice to be curious about other people. And he had all these stories about being in the middle of these super intense situations, just taking it all in and listening. And it's almost like, I don't know, he's developed these muscles, to be able to sit down and listen to someone who not only do you not disagree with but they kind of hate you without getting triggered. I mean, he's, he's figured out how to maneuver around this reactionary reflex that we all have when we brush up against dissonance. And he just channels it into curiosity. It's amazing.

Pavani Yalla  1:22:26

It's like he recognizes it, names it, and it's like, oh, yeah, it's that thing again, and then just like dismisses it. And then forces the other way of being right. Which is like living into curiosity. And

Joel Krieger  1:22:40

Yeah, Kevin uses this phrase, “embrace dissonance”. Dissonance is something that's unpleasant, we shy away from it, you almost you just don't want to go there. But that's almost what this requires of us, is to, is to lean into it. And that's what I think is so powerful about this project is it gives us a way forward, it gives us a model, to, to wade into those waters of dissonance and to navigate through them.

Pavani Yalla  1:23:10

You know, Kevin, definitely gives credit to storytelling in our conversation. And you'll hear him say several times, like, I'm not a neuroscientist, but it's everything that he's talking about, though, is backed by the science. And we know now through several research studies, that your brain when it's listening to a story, there's a lot that goes on, like a lot of fascinating stuff that goes on both neurologically and chemically. And when someone when you look at the brain of someone who's listening to a story versus when they're just being told facts, their brain will not just the language processing parts of their brain light up, but all the parts of their brain that they would normally be using, if they were experiencing the story themselves also light up. So it's as if your brain thinks you're experiencing the story. It thinks you're there. And that's why we feel transported often when we're listening to a good story, right? And what's also really fascinating is that, so Kevin, you heard him say, Oh, you know, when someone says, Let me tell you about something that happened to me. There's a linkage that happens in your brain. And he's absolutely right. I went back and I looked into this because I was curious about it. When someone is being told a story, their brain mirrors and synchronizes with the brain of the person who's telling them the story, and that's called neural coupling. Which means that you're connecting with this person, neurologically. Which is so interesting because it means storytelling has the power to connect you physically, literally connect you to another person, step inside their shoes, understand their reality and all the things that we talked about when we talk about empathy. I mean, he just there was so much that he talks about and then again, the science really backs it up like he was saying, people listen, when you tell a story. And like, chemically, what's happening is your brain starts to release cortisol, which is kind of like the stress hormone because your brain is trying to figure out what's going to happen in the story. It's trying to figure out how things are going to resolve and that's the attention grabber and the attention capture gets you to listen. Oxytocin is released when you're listening to a story. And that's what gets you to care about the character and gets you to empathize. This is art. But at the same time, there's a lot of science going on, as well.

Joel Krieger  1:25:53

It's almost like it's deceptively simple, because, you know, there's really two parts to this design. There's the two major parts, there's the story. And then there's the dialogue, the talkbacks. These are things that I guess, are taken for granted, in a lot of the design world, it's like, you know, there's this desire to want to use technology are these sophisticated things. And it's almost like this is really all the technology you need to break through this polarization trap. It's like stories and dialogue.

Pavani Yalla  1:26:24

Yeah. So both of those right, story and dialogue, are ways of communicating. And they're just very different. The whole time he was talking about what happens in these talk backs, I couldn't help but wonder and wish that the environment, the ethos, the energy of that room, like how awesome would it be, if that could be replicated? Everywhere that we find ourselves in discourse with folks who might have diametrically opposing views? Too often, we're not in that type of a room when we're talking about these things, right? We're either in an echo chamber, or we're engaging through social media, we're consuming the news. And like, those are the stories we're getting. We're having dinner conversations that are very ineffective. And yeah, it just made me wonder, how awesome would it be if we could just replicate those conditions? Every time we were having important conversations about things like this?

Joel Krieger  1:27:27

Yeah. I mean, speaks to the power of ceremony and ritual. I mean, these are hard conversations, and you cannot just jump right into them. Our default mode of existing and maneuvering through this world does not allow for that type of listening, and dialogue. It just doesn't. I mean, dialogue is a lost art. We talked about this a little bit, how we're kind of losing the we're losing our ability to listen to each other to be curious about each other. We're losing the ability to have real conversations. It's very easy for us to mistake our beliefs for us, you know, it's like you, you are not actually your beliefs. One fun little, I don't know what you call it, if it's like a metaphor, like a little experiment or way of looking at it that I've found helpful. Because I've actually been told that I changed my mind all the time. Yes. So I'm going to take that not as a sign of wishy washy this but as a sign of open mindedness. Sure. So yes, so, but I like to think of it as trying on clothes. So if you think of ideas as clothes, and it's like, oh, here's a shirt, or here's some pants, it's like, oh, that's like, not something I would usually wear. But like, let me put it on for a little bit. I'm gonna walk around in these pants for a day. And it's really kind of fun. Because you, you're not attached to it. It's just a pair of pants. If I don't like it, I'll take it back to the store. But it allows you to inhabit those ideas in a non committal way. It's not threatening to your sense of who you are. It's just, Hmm, what would it be like to believe this, and it's really easy to do. And it's kind of fun. And you just, you know, like any other pair of clothes, when you outgrow them, you discard them, and you get a new pair that fits you. So, you know, I feel like there's lots of techniques like that, we could be playing with to develop our muscle memory for this. It's like, it's like, we almost have to get better at leaning into the dissonance and just being with it. And I think a lot of that has to do with not attaching your identity to these ideas. Because when you aren't so attached, you don't feel threatened. And that's that protect thing that Kevin was talking about. It's like, you don't feel the need to protect to be defensive, if you don't feel like you're being attacked. So if you're able to separate your sense of I from this idea, then I feel like it's easier to steer through that channel, you know?

Pavani Yalla  1:29:53

Yeah, I think these are muscles we all need more and more. Now. I think I know I find myself struggling to have conversations more now than I ever did.

Joel Krieger  1:30:06

Kevin had this great phrase, we're in a state of conflict, we are trapped in opposition. It's, it's the perfect way to capture this moment in time, this structure, this platform they've developed, really should be looked at as a tool that can be built upon that can be used in different ways to tackle really tough subjects to move us past this very binary polarized state that we're in. 

Joel Krieger

Alright, that's it for today. Thank you for listening. So it's important to point out that evolve is not only a live event, it's also offered online as well. Now, this version has already been presented to community leaders, law enforcement, judges, and the criminal justice community, as well as corporate clients interested in augmenting their DEI programs, or implicit bias training. You can learn more about this by visiting their website at reddoorproject.org. This podcast is offered for free in the spirit of the gift. It takes an enormous amount of time and energy to put each episode together. So if you find value in these stories, and we really hope that you do, please let us know. You can actually do this right now. It's really easy. Just take a moment, go to our show page on Apple podcast, Spotify, or wherever you're listening, and leave us a rating and review. It will only take a minute of your time and it will really help us out.

Pavani Yalla  1:31:47

To get key insights from this episode, visit our show notes at outsideinpodcast.org. You can get links to everything we discussed and can learn all about Kevin, his collaborators Evolve and the Red Door Project. If you want to stay in the loop for when new episodes are released, you can follow us on Twitter, Instagram, our handle is @outsideinxd or sign up to our mailing list, subscribe on the contact page of our website.

Joel Krieger  1:32:14

Let's go ahead and close with a bit of gratitude. Thank you to Kevin Jones, who gave so freely of his time to dig into his work and his process. It was truly inspiring for us on so many levels. And thank you to Bob Day, who shared so openly about his own personal transformation. Special thanks to our dear friend David Waingarten, who put Kevin's work on our radar and connected us. And thank you to our friends at Blue Chalk Media, who supplied us with the field audio and audience interviews from the Evolve play that we remixed into that mosaic that you heard at the beginning of the show. We’d like to acknowledge the monologues that Kevin read during his interview were excerpts from “Superiority Fantasy” (written by Nathan James) and “Full Stop” (written by Bonnie Ratner).

Alright, that's it for the story. We hope you join us next time.

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