Zaki, Policy Entrepreneur, NY, Father, Grandfather
“Freedom to still dream, freedom to still execute their dream. Freedom to always be in a space of possibility. Freedom to be adventurous, freedom to explore. And freedom to love. Freedom to care about human life. Freedom to understand - and this just from a spiritual place for me - for them to understand that this life is transitional, that you are here temporarily and that you have a choice of how you live it. A freedom to choose how you live it.“
Michael “Zaki” Smith is a policy entrepreneur at Next100 and an entrepreneur and activist with more than fifteen years of experience in youth empowerment and social justice. At Next100, Zaki’s work focuses on dismantling the collateral consequences of incarceration.
As a formerly incarcerated person, Zaki has felt the full impact of collateral consequences. In 2017, Zaki lost his ability to work in a school he had worked in for five years all because of a past criminal record. In 2018, he co-founded Feast for Fair Chance, an organization with a mission to increase awareness around the 47,000+ policies that continue the silent life sentence of “perpetual punishment” for formerly incarcerated individuals after their terms are served. Feast for Fair Chance aims to change national legislation in the key areas that most impact an individual’s ability to reintegrate into society post-incarceration, including employment, housing, education, and voting. Zaki currently leads strategic growth and development at Feast for Fair Chance in an effort to drive legislative change nationally, while based in New York City.
In addition to his activism work, Zaki continues to be a licensed barber and DJ, using his crafts to connect with the community.
Zaki was interviewed by Erin Raab, Co-Founder of REENVISIONED.
Thanks for coming in, talking with me.
I think the best way to start would be if you could just say a little bit about you, your journey, and specifically at the end of that kind of your journey in the world of education, which I know has some in and outs, so...
Woo! Ok. And we're just going to start right in this room. That's a big question.
A little bit about myself, I was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. I’ve been here in New York City all my life. I'm a product of the crack era. Where drug addiction was rampant in the black community, so I'm a product of that even falling into addiction myself as a youngster, well off into my early adulthood.
And the whole gambit that comes with that going back and forth through the criminal justice system, it was pretty much like a rise of passage for young black men to some degree. It was viewed as a badge of honor to some degree, and I guess in hindsight, just looking back, as an adult, I think it was another way to deal with the trauma of it all, and that is to sort of own it more of as a badge versus the stigma that was associated with it. The realistic response to the stigma that was associated with it was to feel like you had control over it. To feel that that I was choosing it. That I actually was choosing it.
I didn't think of any, systematic structural things, I didn't think of any of that. It wasn't even on my radar or anyone in my community radar. And so being a product of that, my formal education was pretty much from elementary to high school. I made it to high school. And I say “made it” because some people didn't make it to high school. The dropout rate was really high. Again, I was a product of the crack era and addiction was in my home. Biggie said in one of his rap quotes was “either you slinging crack rock or you got a wicked jump shot”. So, I didn't have a wicked jump shot. Those were the two avenues.
It seems that it was like that for black men, either you do sports or you are pretty much a hustler on the street in some way, shape or form or fashion. And so, formal education was not a thing that was on my radar.
And I was pretty much sort of deterred from education, at an early age because of my traumatic experience with school. My stepdad assisting me with homework... it was an abusive process. It was like if learning is going to be painful then I really don't want anything to do with it.
Although I was a good kid in school, I wasn't the smartest. I was average, I got in trouble and I acted out a lot in school because of how my home environment and home situation was, education wasn't a thing that was really enforced. I recall my brother dropped out of school in fifth grade.
So, education didn't become of any importance, at least formal education. My education was more experience based, it was learning how to navigate the street, learning to deal with people and how to survive.
Learning how to count from one through ten. When I figured I could read and I could write? That was pretty much enough for me. And everything else I learned from being in the street. That was my form of education, because it was the only education at that time that seemed to matter.
I needed to get a master's degree in the street, because if I didn't, I would probably be dead. With that being said I did get a master's degree because I am still alive, but that was just the thought or the belief at the time.
And then, any of my other education or learning came from actually being incarcerated and self-teaching and embracing Islam, becoming Muslim - where, being scholarly and learning and reading and studying were very important spiritual and righteous characteristics.
To learn, right. To want to learn history, and learning the authenticity of a history.
So that was how my learning started while being incarcerated.
Even though it was a struggle then because I still had the residue of the trauma from learning as a kid. Because of that experience, a lot of things became very intuitive to me, some things I just did not have to learn - it was instinctive that with every situation I was able to assess it immediately. Those were skills that were developed as a result of being in prison, and being on the street. That is how my journey landed me to eventually working with young people in schools. How about that?
And from that experience, because of my past sort of coming to, I don't want to say bite me, but coming to tap me on the shoulder and say, “hey, remember this here, you want to be here but over here is where you’re needed. You also can speak to this”. And so instead of working with young people in schools today, I am currently in a space of a policy reform.
I'm a policy entrepreneur for The Next 100, doing some criminal injustice reform. Specifically around the barriers and the perpetual punishment that formerly incarcerated returning citizens experience as a result of having a criminal record.
Yet it’s just the disparities that exist amongst that in how the criminalization of poverty, the criminalization of addiction and the criminalization of education, actually, when you think about it, it is the criminalization of those being miseducated or not properly educated in the school systems, a failing school systems that became criminalized.
One of the things we do with REENVISIONED, is we try and really root in our own experiences and our own hopes and dreams for the kids that we care about personally rather than talk about other people's children and or talk about the systems.
I'm wondering if you would think about a child that you care about. I happen to know you have children.
So, it could be possible to think about a child. Well, you know, like, I'm a dad. I'm a granddad, like, you know, I'm saying. So, you're going to have this part recorded because they will say what, why didn’t you pick me?
I know that you love them all equally. It's interesting when you have multiple children you care deeply about as you do. And so personally, one thing that could be interesting as we think about the questions is for you to say if there are differences, because sometimes there are personal differences. And it's interesting to see. So, you can talk generally about your children and grandchildren, if you like, or you can choose one.
But think about this child or children that you care about and just tell me a little bit about them and their unique personality. Who are they in the world, how old they are, etc. - preferably this would be someone who is under the age of 18.
I have one that's 18 and my much younger ones, of course. So, yeah, I can go there. So, I'm going to as they both come, that's pretty much off the top of my head. So, one I want to say he's definitely a protector, he's charismatic, he's brilliant. Yeah, he's brilliant and I'll get to what I want to say with it, because, you know, I just want to give who he is. He's a brilliant kid. He's daring, he's brave. He’s challenging, he's not afraid. He's a really bright kid and loving kid. And I say he's brilliant but the current system as it is set up, does not allow him to acknowledge his brilliance. Even though he may be behind in school or may not learn the way that other young people learn, his brilliance is not celebrated.
I want to come back to that in depth, because that's at the core of what we're hoping to get at for sure.
There is another one, she is brilliant, loves learning, has been and is an ‘A’ student - from the beginning. She is honorable, beautiful smile, bright and daring, she just loves to learn. When she's committed to a something, she wants to do it right. Yeah, I must stop there because I think we'll address a lot of what I want to say about the both of them. As we go down further, based on the questions I know that I saw.
When you think about them through their childhood, they might be ending their childhood or they might be in the middle of it, but what were your hopes for them or what are your hopes for them as children? What makes a good childhood to you?
That they can experience being a child, that they could live in the world of a child.
And that looks so much different now is a comparison, I guess, to at least I know what it’s like being a child. Like, I loved going out to play. I loved going out to do group activities with the rest of the children on the block, playing freeze tag or football or we all brought our skateboard out together at the same time and it was maybe 15 kids riding their skateboards up and down the street or learning. We learned how to do gymnastics together and we all watched Saturday cartoons early in the morning. At three o'clock we watched the Saturday karate movie that came on and as soon as it went off, we all came outside and thought we were literally the martial artists. That was the childhood. Although even in the midst of that, I was navigating trauma but I remember being a kid.
I remember there was a distinction between adult business and child business or adult conversation and child conversation. There was a place that I understood as a child. So that I didn't necessarily worry and wonder about adult things.
That's what I wish for these children.
I was listening to a friend of mine. His son and my grandson were in the same class, me and the boy's father worked in a barbershop and I didn't know I knew his son. He didn't know my grandson and my grandson and his son were arch enemies, fighting each other. And so one day, my daughter was up at the school to address a matter that he got in with this kid. My daughter kept telling me, Damon keeps getting in altercations with this kid and I'm thinking nothing of it. And then one day, the guy in shop says, “I’ve seen your daughter up at the school and my son and your grandson is goin” and I'm like, “What? It's your son?”
But in any event, his son is like a nephew to me. So, he comes to the shop and I talk to him, he listens to me. He's a mischievous kid but you have to be stern with him. And he respects when you're being stern. He's not playing. I can't push over on him. Saying yes and thank you, his manners.
But I spoke to him the other day. I hadn't seen him in quite some time, because of the pandemic I have not been in a shop in quite some time. I spoke to him on Facetime and to hear this eight-year-old kid articulate the impact of not being in school. I was like, how could I get a camera over to him and share this with the world on his new year? The impact of not being able to have friends, not being able to play with his friends. He's not seeing certain of his friends anymore because we're not in the hallways where I can see them or when we go out for recess to play or in the cafeteria. He says, “Good thing I have a phone because there's a few friends that I can't FaceTime and I haven't seen your grandson. How is he? You know, I hope we can still be friends and get past some of the stuff that we were going through.” And just to hear this kid like this is what our children are navigating now. No. This is childhood.
One, while we had vastly different childhoods in many ways, I also had that neighborhood gang and we had neighborhood night games and we just had freedom to roam - and we just played whatever game it was and the whole pack would go around until about 10 p.m., or at least that’s what it felt like, and then it was dark and it would be time to be inside.
Yeah, or until the street came on, at least in my neighborhood, when the street lights came on, I had to come upstairs, like I had curfew. Yeah, TV went off, literally went off. No programming, but not someone turned the TV on. No, there was no programming on TV anymore. I mean I'm telling my age but yet TV went literally offline, so there wasn't watching TV at two three o'clock in the morning. No, at midnight the TV was done.
But even though the TV was done for me early because we had a bedtime, we had a curfew like, all right, nine o'clock, whatever the eight o'clock program is, that's the eight o'clock program. We go and watch which would be Incredible Hulk. Or then I didn't really realize racist as The Dukes of Hazzard that I used to love and watch and not realize how racist it was generally, come on, the car was named General Lee and had a Confederate flag on them. We would only watch that, you know, that was being a child, and the children today don't have it.
One child is my grandson, the other is my 15-year-old daughter. My grandson is eight, he's in third grade and he is a navigator. He's having a challenging time as a third grader, which is horrible because this is testing time for him and he's online and he's a kinaesthetic kid. My daughter, her first experience in high school was interrupted by COVID. She doesn’t have any friends. There's no engagement with anyone. Always in her room, suffering from depression. Those are the experiences that are happening with these young people in my life that I care about dearly.
When you think about them grown up so in their 30s, in their 40s, out of out of kind of education institutions, living their lives as adults, what do you hope for them then? What's a good life?
I don't know what a good life would be for them because of what their experiences have been as children. We don't know what the long-lasting impacts of this will be. This current situation that we're in. What will they have to reflect on and laugh about and think about as a child? I'm able to do that. I'm able to teach them games and things of that nature that I have experienced or games that they are learning now, I'm able to say the words too because I remember it when I was a child. I imagine a world for them that is not impacted by their experience as a child. Those negative experiences as a child because I also think about my world.
Right when I turned 30 the world for me was rooted in my experience as a child, so I was sitting in someone's prison somewhere.
And if it's not rooted in their childhood experiences, what do you think that gives them? Who can they be or what can they do?
Freedom, and I use the word freedom loosely because I don't think I really even know what freedom is for real. I don't. No, they got no. But if that is a thing.
You know, freedom to…
Freedom to still dream, freedom to still execute their dream. Freedom to always be in a space of possibility. Freedom to be adventurous, freedom to explore. And freedom to love. Freedom to care about human life.
Freedom to understand - and this just from a spiritual place for me - for them to understand that this life is transitional, that you are here temporarily and that you have a choice of how you live it. A freedom to choose how you live it.
Even with the barriers and so forth. I don't know if you're religious, but if you may have come across any religious text about some of the oppressiveness that a lot of righteous individuals endured and even in the midst of oppression, it did not shift who they were. They still loved. They still acknowledged that it was bigger than them in whatever harms may have been happening to them at the time, the experiences still allow them to love. No matter what the experiences were. That their hearts don't become hardened.
When you think about the kind of community or the kind of society that you hope that they live in. How would you describe it?
Equivalent to how I would want for themselves if they are around a loving community.
A community that is understanding, a community that is rooted in togetherness and uplifting culture and legacy building.
That is the community I would want for them. A community that is selfless, a selfless community.
Ideally, in your best world, what is the role school would play in helping connect today's world to the kind of future you hope for your kids?
Excellent question.
The role school will play is the role of assisting authentic historical foundation in purpose - supporting the development of a spiritual foundation and purpose. The role of school will mirror what is happening in the community, the role of the school will mirror.
Like, something different is happening in school or you're learning something different in school versus what you're learning at home. There are some things that you may learn differently home based on your parents or, you know, one on one conversations or experiences you may have with your dad or mom - but it will go hand in hand in building the community. It will go hand in hand in building in the assistance of building humanity up. That's what the role of school would play. It wouldn't be about subjects like Math, reading, science and social studies. And not that those things aren't important, like those things will exist but that is not necessarily the foundation because I imagine more than half of the education you have received you do not even use it in real life at all.
I think about high school students who take a financial literacy, they take financial lit and they have to eventually take financial lit. They take a test, all of that for financial literacy and not one component at all has talked to these young people in financial literacy about taxes. Students who are actually working, who have jobs, never mention how to file your taxes, never talk to them about a W-9, never talked at all - not one piece of information. So, what the hell are you talking to them about in financial literacy?
Where do you see schools playing the role you'd like them to for the children you're talking about, for your daughter and grandson and where is it not?
So where are the bright spots of school and where are the things you think are going terribly wrong in your already commenting on them? Somewhat, but I'm curious to hear the two.
Side by side. I honestly don't have a side by side.
There isn't a bright spot about the school system here in. So, specifically for people of color, it's not good for anyone.
It's just the bright spot just isn't there. I don't have a bright spot. I mean, my daughter gets to play volleyball. I mean, that's what she does.
And yet they are missing it you said earlier. There must be something bright if they are missing it, even if they’re just missing seeing their friends or being there.
Yeah, I don't have bright spots about education right now for our children. I never did. That was one of the reasons why I don't want to say I got what The Future Project, but one of the reasons why I moved the way I moved in the schools or like anybody that was a part of, like our New York team or me and Divine, we moved the way we move to our schools because we were doing this before we came to The Future Project. So, we were clear on what we was going to do when we got there, because we understood that school sucks. And so I don't have any bright spots about it at all, really.
What were the things you focused on changing for young people in your work as a dream director, but also you were more work long before you became a dream director?
So, the ability for young people to dream. Acknowledging that students are whole people, they're not subjects, they're not math or reading. They come in there with their whole selves. They come in there with life happening for them. And that they're there in that space more than they are at home.
They are there for a good chunk of their life, a good chunk of their day, and it's for learning but they're not learning about life at all. It's about subjects. And about history, it does not look like them and the brainwashing... You know, again, like history - whenever I flip the page, anyone that was brilliant does not look like me. Anyone who has discovered something does not look like me. You know, but then when I am shown, I'm shown in a space of servitude consistently. I'm consistently shown as apologetic or I don't see myself in math, I don't see myself in science when I do see myself in history, I pop up on the scene as a slave. I don't have any other context of who the hell I've been, who my people have been, other than that - as if our existence started then.
And then all of the other structural policies and things that exist that disproportionately affect young people of color in terms of discipline in the narrative and that 90 percent of the teachers don't look like me. They don't have a context of my culture in the context of me. If I'm acting out, I have ADHD, I'm diagnosed, I need medication, I'm too much. You know, the white student over there, he acts up and, you know, it's called something else. So, and that has structurally been what I've experienced in school and what I've consistently still see as a thing in school, you know, in the school system as it pertains to us.
How much do you feel like people share your view on the schooling system or don't?
To what extent do you feel that other people see the problem in the same way as you or see the issues to be solved? I know this is an enormous question, so feel free to take it where you want to go with it.
I don't know. I really don't.
If I had to base it on protests and uprisings then nobody cares because there is nobody uprising and protesting about the schools. But you got to take into consideration those who are directly impacted by it. They're educated to not know and acknowledge that this is even happening because many of us are impacted by things we don't know that we're impacted by, at all, so we don't know to ask that question, we don't know and see.
What is water, right? Like if you're swimming, you're a fish in water. You can't see the water.
Yeah, so it depends on other people who may have stepped out of the Matrix and can see it or those don't look like they are impacted by it, or whatever because some people benefit from it. Communities and people benefit from it being this way. There is just an intention for it - it is intended for it to remain this way, for us not to be educated. For us to be educated in the manner in which they see that we should be educated.
Whenever any colonizers, anyone who has colonized anywhere on the planet, the first thing they go for is your education. They take your language and then they take education, they teach you that you are inferior and that someone came and saved you and we are the people who saved you.
Look, because if it wasn't for us, you would be savages.... And then you have the images of us naked with bones in our noses and cannibalism in. Flies and big bellies, and they say, “this is what you would have been left with if we didn't bring you here”.
It's an interesting segue because the next question is, what do you think the purpose of school is? Is for society, like, why do we have schooling?
I don't know. I don't know why we have schooling. I don't know.
I mean, I know why we have it in the manner that we do, I mean,
there's some form of education that needs to exist so that society can function in some kind of way. But there's also education that exists for a society to not function but still function - you got that, you know what I mean?
Yeah, I think I do.
Yeah.
And this is, I think, a little bit of a jump, but not totally, you've worked in education a lot and now you work specifically to transform our criminal justice system.
How do you relate the work you're doing now in criminal justice with your work as an educator?
And then I'd love to give you an opportunity to just talk a little bit about the work you're doing now. It's incredibly important.
Yeah, there's a disconnect and miseducation that is happening in this work too. A co-worker of mine was saying that we really need to revamp and revisit a civics education in this country, there's a large portion in the population of people who are miseducated or not educated at all about civics, their role, the role of government, the role of local government, the importance of voting, understanding what it actually does, the roles of the individuals who are supposed to be representing you. Individuals are disconnected from that and it's very much intentional.
I was listening to 2 Chainz. I was working out the other day and I was listening to Chainz’ album and it was a line he said in his album that,
“some people's current circumstances don’t allow them to focus on voting”.
That's because people are taught to believe, like I need to get this immediate relief, there's an immediate relief that people need. If voting is going to deal with my immediate relief, then people would be all over it but voting doesn't deal with my immediate, my right now, I have an eviction notice at my doorstep me and my children and my family are going to be on the street. Can voting fix that? Right now? I don't have no food in the house can voting fix that right now?
There's a miseducation around it, right, for people to understand that many, if not all, of the circumstances and disparities that exist is rooted in a policy somewhere or lack thereof but the community doesn't know it because they are taught to “in microwave” - cook it quick - right now, my pressing issue is right now.
And I got it, and I totally understand it. I know first-hand from the miseducation or not knowing myself, I wasn't into this stuff, this is my first presidential election as an adult. I am forty-nine years old. It is the first time I have voted for a president in my life.
I was disconnected from this stuff, period.
Sometimes purposefully.
Definitely. It’s not even sometimes. I was definitely purposely disconnect from it, but then I purposely disconnected myself from it - where it felt like I was taking back some kind of power, by saying, “What? You are going to disconnect me or disenfranchise me? Guess what? I am not even messing with your system at all. That I vote for what?” Not understanding. Once I understood and got clear on what the power was, I understood that as long as I remained in that thinking and belief. That these institutions now, without question, got the ability to continue to disenfranchise me. Why? because my voice is not even present and I'm not even in the game. So, we can do what we want because we don't even have you in here.
So at least I got a fighting chance if I'm in, you know, if I at least get up in the ring and put the gloves on. I got a chance to win something. Or get a hit or two off, but if I'm totally not in the game - automatic loser.
And so, as I look at the work that I'm currently doing in terms of policy. Specifically, again, in the work of Criminal Justice Reform, removing the barriers, looking to remove the barriers of stigma of a criminal record by doing record expungement. It is sort of the work that I'm working on now, because just as the Jim Crow laws existed to disproportionately to legally discriminate, and so does collateral consequences or perpetual punishment for those who have criminal records. It disproportionately affects people of color to legally discriminate. If that answers the question, I don't know if I answered it,
You absolutely answered it, for a couple of things that came up for me. One is how you talked about earlier your desire for schools to be a practice of the kind of community that was outside, too, was the way is that what you wanted for your children?
You care about, two of the children you care about, but the ones we're talking about today that they that they didn't have their basically, childhood experiences influencing their potential for freedom as adults and how the work that you do is to try and ensure that that's true for others.
Yeah. That’s powerful.
I would love to hear a little more from you on all of this, but in particular because I just want to put it out there, the film that you're working on now.
How are you thinking about your work moving forward, and how can people support you in that work?
Yes, I'm doing a film, I'm stepping into the Film World officially. So, I'm going to do a film in regards to this journey around expungement and exposing the barriers that exist for a formerly incarcerated individuals to successfully reintegrate back into society.
And so the film will highlight some of those disparities, and my personal experience coming across this particular legal terminology that was pretty much hidden from me - that I never even heard of before. I’ll be speaking to the experts - the historians and the scholars and the legal analysts and those individuals who can speak to a lot of the those legal terminologies or the historical facts or the racist historical facts around Jim Crow, such as, you know, what Michelle Alexander speaks about in her book. And, it will also talk about and bring up the fear mongering that has been, that always seemed to follow whenever there seems to be any type of progress that is made for black folk, that some sort of a bogeyman or some violent predator is coming to get you. If you let these Negroes free from under our watch, they're going to get you.
Which is slavery talk, the same sudden slavery talk that existed during the time of Jim Crow, during the time of the abolishing of slavery, that “they will turn against you and come and get you”. And so just doing a film in regards to that, to highlight that, to gain support specifically in the state of New York around record expungement.
We have served our time. There's no other debt that we owe.
There's no reason that individuals who have served their time or who have completed whatever sentence or supervision is consistently being punished for the rest of their lives in the very things that you say will make us a productive citizen. A productive citizen by having a job, raising your family, having a home, you know, a house somewhere to live.But then you deny these things in the same breath. You deny access to these things in the same breath.
And so, the ways in which folks can support is, first, without question, reach out to your local elected official assemblyman or woman, or senator.
And let them know that you're in support of expungement and the removing of the barriers for formerly incarcerated individuals to allow them to actually move on with their lives. They are individuals who are being punished for stuff that happened twenty-five years ago, like, a person, let's say was addicted to drugs and who have rehabilitated and is totally far past that stage in their life and move forward. And that person is still being held accountable.
A friend of mine was just telling me about a friend of her mother’s, they put her mother's friend out of his apartment because they found that he had a criminal record, he is 60 years old. This issue was 30 plus years ago. You put the man out of his apartment?
I know what you're talking about Zaki, but maybe can you say a few of the things that our laws allow for legal discrimination against people with a criminal record?
Yeah, you're allowed to legally be denied access to employment. You're legally denied access to housing. They can do a background check and say you got a criminal record. No, you can't live here. You've got a criminal record, no, you can't work here. You've got a criminal record, no, you can't educate yourself. You have a criminal record, no, you can't get an occupational license. You have a criminal record, no, you can't get life insurance. You have a criminal record, no, you cannot administer your mother's estate, even though she specifically put you in the will as the person to administer her estate, you can't administer that because you have a criminal record. But I can become a lawyer, I can become a lawyer with a criminal record. How about that?
Is there somewhere that people can donate financially?
Yes, so one of the projects that I've been doing is the Perpetual Punishment Arts Campaign. And so, you can find that on the next one, the www.next100.org, you will click on my name's Zaki Smith, and it will take you to the perpetual punishment arts campaign. You can donate there. So, what I have been doing around the arts campaign is that I have been curating Jim Crow like art or Jim Crow art, repurposing the art to reflect the similarities between Jim Crow and the current state of how formerly incarcerated individuals are treated.
So, the laws that are abolished under Jim Crow now become legal against a person who has a criminal record. And so, I've been doing art around the city. So far, I've only put up two murals. Both of them are in Brooklyn one is on Atlantic Avenue between Knowshon in Bedford and the other one is in Canarsie on 104 in Glenwood in Canarsie, Brooklyn. The next mural that I'm working on is in Albany, looking to put a piece there in Albany and the other four boroughs of New York City because eighty five percent of the prison population in the state of New York, came from seven neighbourhoods in New York. And those seven neighborhoods are Bester, east New York, Brownsville, South and Central Jamaica Queens, South Bronx, Harlem and the Lower East Side of Manhattan. All communities of color.
And the other 15 percent came from Rochester, Buffalo, Albany, and I want to say Schenectady or Syracuse, but all the rest of those, of course, are all communities of color as well. So, yeah, that's the word that's how you can support as well.
Well, what we can do is you can send me all the links to that and we'll just include it in the write up.
I'll do that. I'll send you the links.
And not “only two murals” - you've done two murals so far!
Yeah. I'm like supercritical sometimes about how I envisioned it versus where I am currently, and sometimes I’m not acknowledging you have to start at one before you get to 10. So, yeah, “so far”, thank you so much for bringing that to my attention - so far it’s two murals.
I really hear that and it resonates a lot. I do the same to myself. I think all of us that are pushing for some kind of change and are impatient with the status quo know that.
How can all 10 of them be up at once, like, could we just put ten at one time, right, instead of this, incremental steps? Which I understand it, sometimes that it is necessary, but still.
It's a good metaphor in there, I think, in the work of pushing for change.
But, Zaki, as usual, my heart is full and you speak so powerfully and beautifully about these visions in your work. So, thank you for taking this time.
Thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm honored that you even considered to talk with me, that you found me interesting enough to ask me questions about things in the world. I appreciate it, really. Yeah, I really appreciate it. And however, this could assist you in what you're trying to do and what you're putting and creating in the world. I hope that this moment contributes to whatever shift that you're looking to have happen in the world happens. I hope this contributes to it.
Thank you.
It already has. I think of these conversations as the first step. Just reflecting on these questions, just talking together about these worlds we want to create, about the kids that we care about, about the things that are going wrong in between. Getting to reflect on all of that in a real way and then think about ways of moving forward. I think that's the first step of the work. So thank you.
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