Joy, Memory, and the Practice of Rebuilding with Cornelius Minor | Part II

NINA Collective: want lift up ⁓ the work ⁓ of the Joy Doctrine. And you ⁓ heard a little of that on ⁓ the last podcast, and this idea that we're not talking about just happiness, we're really talking about radical joy that is that is that comes together with with justice, right? That we're not talking about two separate things. And, and, and then, you know, in our space of rebuilding and imagining, like, what's possible and unsustainable? Like, what is the place? that joy has or potentially will have when we're talking about rebuilding? ⁓ it's everything. I ⁓ even think about our everyday, right? It's interesting. I think about joy like scientists think about the sun. And so when you're thinking about Earth and how things happen on Earth, Like we have food to eat because there are plants and there are, and if folks eat animals, there are animals who eat the plants and that nurtures our food source, right? You know, we have oxygen because the plants give it up and they're, you know, the photosynthesis from the sun. like everything, the sun is like the battery, right? When we think about the living ecosystem on this planet, the sun is the battery. And I think for our souls and our spirits and our energies, joy is the battery. All right, and so joy functions in a lot of different ways. So you can't nail, you can't say that the sun only has one function because it has many when we think about the health of the planet. And so we can't say that joy has only one function. It has many in the health of our spirits. ⁓ And so when I'm thinking about, you know, ⁓ anywhere from how do we find the energy to keep going when things are difficult? That's joy, right? How do we find the space? ⁓ to be with one another when our schedules and our calendars are full, that's joy, right? When I think about even ⁓ how do I recreate that wonderful meal that I ate last Tuesday, even that's joy, right? And so the answer to so many of the things that elude us is joy. And like you said, joy doesn't look like empty happiness sometimes. Sometimes joy is, like today, ⁓ I... I wanted to really, really sit in a chair today. was just like, there was this chair outside that I really wanted to sit in and I wanted to just be still for a while. And you could casually look and be like, oh, there's this guy sitting in this chair being still with his headphones on. That doesn't look like the kind of happiness that you see in movies or on Hallmark cards. But for me today, that was my joy, right? There's this thing that happens in the school cafeteria sometimes when I go pick the kids up from lunch, where the kids will play their music and they'll be like dancing in the corner of the cafeteria. ⁓ And so I make it a point sometimes to cut my lunch short. And teacher lunch is already short, but I make it a point sometimes to cut my lunch short just to go down and experience their joy, right? And so sometimes I'm even stressed during a school day and cutting my lunch short doesn't look like joy on the surface. but then being able to witness students in their final six or eight minutes of lunch and watching them dance and listen to music kind of gives me a battery for the second half of my school day. And so people look at me all the time, they're like, oh, you only took lunch for 20 minutes. You went back and you met the students. You should take your full lunch. And I'm like, well, no, taking the six minutes to watch them is, and so really kind of being able to identify what is the thing that fuels me? What is the thing that gives me energy when things are hard? What is the thing? that allows me to make a deeper connection with the folks around me. ⁓ All of those things are joy. Yeah, and Fernando, this idea of small moments, I think one of the things that consumer culture has done is they have attempted to package joy and sell it to us, right? So they say joy is only a cruise if you pay me $2,000, right? Joy is only a vacation if you can afford to come to this exclusive resort, right? But our people been inventing joy since the beginning, right? Like joy was, me take these discarded Civil War instruments and create jazz, right? Joy is like, let me take the worst food that the plantation owner gives me and create cornbread, right? Like joy is all of these like things that we did with very little, right? And so I'm really thinking about how we return to that ethos. Wow. I... I wanted to riff on that and actually bring our ancestors to this space, to this conversation, well, to this space they're already here, but to this conversation. Because about a year ago, ⁓ you and I had a conversation and I remember clearly it was as it was yesterday. This was a time that a lot of my meetings happened in a bathtub, because that was really, I needed to be in the water. I'm a person from the water, I needed to be in the water. to have some hard conversations because my whole work and the work of many other black women that came before me were being just eliminated completely. And I had to tell you that we weren't going to be able to continue our project. I had to be like sad about me, sad about you, sad about us, and just to be quote unquote, you know, professional, were still getting to know each other. And you really, you really brought me to tears and also brought and reminded me, right? And I think that some of this work is the remembering of what our ancestors have given to us and carved for us. And how do I connect my own practice on ancestral alignment to be ready for this moment. Can you talk to us a little bit about us? Like what is the, we got this from both an individual collective present perspective, but also the ancestral power that we got this has or has a path to have. Yeah, you know, so that's what I named my book. You know, like, you know, but before it even was what I wanted to name my book, was ⁓ what my, have ⁓ one of my favorite aunts is my mom's younger sister. My mom's youngest sister is just a few years older than me. So she's almost like a sister to me, even though she is my aunt. And I remember she would only come to visit on special occasions, know, family holidays and things like that. And there was some time she came to visit. I don't remember which holiday we were celebrating. But I was going through a hard time at school and she's the kind of aunt where when something bad is happening, I could tell her, I couldn't always tell my mother, but I could tell my aunt. we thank the creator for those aunts in the world. And so I told my aunt, was like, you know, I'm going through, and I can't remember, it was some teenage hardship I was going through, you know, but I'm going through this severe teenage hardship and I'm certain my life is over. ⁓ because of it. And she just looked at me and she said, do you think you're the first one of us to ever endure something difficult? ⁓ She's like, you come from a long line of grandmothers and great grandmothers who have made art of difficult things. ⁓ And that just re-centered me. And then she talked about like my own grandmother. She's like, did you know that your own grandmother has done this thing before? And did you know that her grandmother before her has done this thing before. And so this thing that you're struggling with, it's in your bones, like it's in your DNA, like you know how to do it. ⁓ You just have to work on remembering how to do it. And you have to position yourself around people who can help you remember how to do it. But this thing that you're doing, this hard thing that you can't face, that you believe will kill you, ⁓ has been done before and has been done artfully before. And so as we... look around in this moment where people are losing their jobs or opportunities are closing and income is shrinking, ⁓ I try to keep reminding myself that there are matriarchs and other people in my family who have done this before. ⁓ Now, don't always remember how. And so the how is then sitting with members of the Neenah Collective and remembering, okay, how do we build? How do we listen to each other? How do we hold each other accountable, right? That's the remembering. The remembering happens when we all get together and do it. the truth is that all of us sitting here have people who have done the hard things before. Like all of us sitting here have people who have navigated and been traumatized and then had to heal the trauma. So all of us have healing wisdom in our bones. It's just really figuring out like, how do we sit together and take the time to remember and then to apply what we remember? ⁓ Even like I remember we came in on the Zoom and Jaclyn just kind of like acknowledged that I was on the floor and even that is healing energy, right? So she affirmed me like, look, I'm where I gotta be, because this is where I gotta be. And then having a sister be able to affirm me. Like that's the remembering, right? That she's like, it's okay, young man, that you're on the floor because that's what you need right now. And so being in community where we can do that with and for one another is really important. Yeah. Now this is so beautiful. I think we've said that word 15 times already, but in the hearts going up across the screen are also like echoing that beauty and that. resonating in the chat is live and I do love the chat. ⁓ I'm over here thinking to myself, how often are youth are you mentioned them dancing and I just saw it like visually in my my mind. And then I thought about you, you know, leaving the teachers lounge and like watching them. And so how often joy as practice is is individually cultivated in spaces that aren't shaping it. And I'm curious, as we think about joy as the infrastructure for justice or as the emotional infrastructure, if we wanted to build that practice that you named that individuals and small groups into like organizational culture or practice, where would you invite organizations to begin? I would, and I'm making a distinction here, but I would invite organizations to begin at a point of lightness. And so would probably ask members of that organization, when is the moment in space or time where your organization feels the lightest? Is it in the morning when everybody's coming to work and everybody is saying hello? Is it the moment where everybody laughs at a shared memory at lunch? Is it the moment when you've just completed a difficult project and people are hugging? Like, when is it that your organization feels the lightest? Because that's the moment that we work on observing and replicating, right? And so then we have to dissect that moment. Okay, what's happening in this moment? Okay, every time we finish a big project together, everybody hugs and we celebrate. Let's think about what that looks like. Let's think about how that goes. Let's think about the one hour before that. Let's think about the one hour after that. Let's think about who was there. who we invited, who we excluded, know, like, let's think about all of those things. And then we really work on architecting more of those moments. You know, I'll give you a concrete example. ⁓ The best moment always ⁓ in my classroom ⁓ is the moment where the kids are coming in and they're getting their materials. ⁓ And I make it a point to go and just kind of like, even if I cannot verbally check in, to check in with my eyes. So I walk around the room and I make eye contact with everyone. And so before I start my lesson, I've made eye contact with 28 people. And that moment often feels the lightest. No one is arguing, no one's yelling. That moment often feels the lightest. So I think about, OK, how then do I take this moment, this 90 seconds that happens once per period? And how do I expand this across the duration of a class period or across the school day? And so I had to sit with some friends, just like we're sitting together now, and I had to say, here's this moment that feels really beautiful for me in the classroom, and I want more of this feeling, right? And so I sat with my friends and they're like, wait, so you walk around the room and you make sure that you make eye contact with everybody before you start teaching. I'm like, yeah. And so one of my friends said, well, right there, you're ensuring that everybody is singing. So within 90 seconds of them entering the room, every human is seen. And so we have to think about how we might replicate that. And then they're like, and so you're walking around the room. Oh, and they're like, oh, and then you're bodily present, right? And so you're bodily present. So every young person feels your presence as you move around the room. And so I had to change my pedagogy. So my friends had to help me understand, oh, OK, if this 90 seconds goes great for you and you want more of this feeling, you have to be more bodily present in the classroom. So I got rid of my desk. So I no longer sit at the desk as a teacher. ⁓ I put the desk and I had the janitors take it away. And so now I move around the classroom because my organization, my classroom feels best when the kids feel my presence, right? And so, and then ⁓ I had to think about, okay, eye contact. When kids feel literally seen, they feel better in a classroom. And so, ⁓ So one of the things that I do is right before I teach the lesson, I invite anyone who feels too far away to move to the front of the room. And I have nice pillows and cushions in the front of the room that they can use to sit on. So if you're feeling too far away, you're sitting in the back and you want to move to the front and sit on a comfortable pillow. so overwhelmingly people elect to sit on the comfortable pillows and they're closer to me. I can see them, right? They're seen. And so this idea that I had to say, okay, Here's 90 seconds that goes really great. The rest of the day, not so good. And how do I amplify this 90 seconds? By sitting with people and really studying this 90 seconds. And so with organizations, I would do the same thing. What is the time in our organization that feels the most powerful, where people are most connected? Let us study this time. Let's think about who's there, how we got there, how we create this time, and then how we... use those things that we learn from studying this specific time to form organizational rituals and patterns that govern how we spend our entire days. Yeah. That is so beautiful and intentional too, and how you are, you know, let me just go back to ⁓ the frame around being scientists, right? Like you're speaking to even the science of being in community with students, right? Like there's a science around that and making visible all the pieces that otherwise you would not be noticed. And one of the things that you have brought to my life and to my practice is the persistence on the counterculture, right? Even in the example you're using, the language you're using, like, I'm sure it was not easy to get your desk out of the room because people have questions. You you're doing something different. Why are you doing that? And, you know, as an educator for folks that are not educators, I'm sure it's a very relatable example because educators are the first sort of power of authority that we have, like, as a young person. So there is a there is sort of the space between young people and educators that we as educators are taught to instill and remind young people that that actually is the thing that we want to do. And you're saying, no, no, no, that's not what we're gonna do. We're gonna actually remove all those barriers and practice something different and be able to see young people in their full selves. ⁓ What else would you say about this practice of culture, culture, counterculture and this practice of disruption of what we know and are familiar with. You know, when we think about counterculture and disruption, what really, and I think our best weapon, and I'm going to continue speaking like a scientist, is data, right? The data that we collect, right? That lots of times folks like us get together and we engage in counterculture movements because it's what we know, it's in our DNA. ⁓ but we also live in the West, right? And so I often think, how do I communicate with the structures that have historically excluded or oppressed me? And so I think data is a really important way to communicate. And so for example, even in the classroom, ⁓ a lot of children with me choose to sit on the floor because they're closer to me, they feel seen. There's a nice comfortable couch that I've provided for them, a nice cushion. And so I'll say, if you feel far away from this lesson and you really cannot invest and you wanna be closer so that you can invest more, ⁓ come sit on this cushion. And so sometimes a school leader will come and say, wait, you've got four kids sitting on a cushion on the floor. How is this school? Why aren't they in their desk? Or you've got three kids leaning on a pillow when they should be sitting up in the chair, right? How is this learning? And so one of the things that I had to get used to doing was I had to get used to collecting my data. And so every time the kids did a project, I would keep extra copies of the project. Every time they were working on something, I would videotape their conversations. And so when people started to say, are they really learning in that room? I have lots of evidence to show, yes, we are learning. ⁓ And so when we are seeking to reimagine organizations, we reimagine them and we execute, but then we also collect data. So to say, all right, we were this productive before. we have instituted these three new practices, now look at how much more productive we are. Or we were this communicative before, we've instituted these new practices, look at how much more communication is happening. So being able to show people as a result of this new thing that I have introduced to the classroom ecosystem, here is how much more productive kids are. As a result of this new thing that we are practicing in our organization, here's how much more people are communicating. So being able to... know, because I think the hardest part of being in countercultural movements or systems is then remembering that we still have to communicate with power, right? ⁓ And so I think being able to ⁓ be involved and fully invested in countercultural movements, but still being able to maintain the ability to communicate with power ⁓ is really important. So the ability to collect and to keep data ⁓ in many ways has kept me safe in organizations and institutions that are not safe. Yeah. Thank you so much. You brought us to the space of speaking to power. When people say to you, we're not going to recover from whatever, it's like, what is our data? What is the evidence? that we're not going to be able to. And what I heard you say to me last year and what I'm hearing again today is that we have enough evidence to say we have been here. And as a humankind, as a society, we have been at the edge of destruction and dehumanization, and we can go through this again. being able to understand that this is a cyclical moment and that cycle is just gonna continue to cycle. And I think what you're saying there is really, really important. And I wanna kind of make sure that this gets said clearly ⁓ is that destruction is not an event, it is part of a process, right? Even the earth itself destroys things every winter and then every spring, those things are recreated, right? And so, When communities, when organizations, when whole peoples find themselves ⁓ at this point of destruction, I always want to remind people this point of destruction is a moment in a much larger process. That my favorite celebration is right now in the spring, like literally watching the earth come back to life after a winter where things were destroyed. when I think socially, we're in this moment where so many things have been destroyed. Even like yesterday, I was talking to my two children and we were talking all about this political moment and they were like, how does it feel to be in this moment? I was like, I think it's important practice for us to be in historical moments like this one. Like we have to practice what it feels like to be in this moment and to work through these moments so that when these moments come again, we have tools. ⁓ I absolutely mourn the evaporation of rights and I absolutely mourn the loss of life. And I recognize how serious historical moments like this can be. ⁓ And I also recognize how serious ⁓ our preparation ⁓ for resistance must be. And part of that preparation is recognizing that these moments of utter and really heartbreaking destruction are points in a process. that these moments don't last forever and they don't last forever because we learn from them. ⁓ Now, if we suffer through these moments and we don't learn from them, then they can last forever, right? But we suffer through these moments and we learn from them. We take notes, we hold our people tight and that's how we move forward. The great ancestor, Toni Morrison, talked about the role of literature and of storytelling. And she's like, this is how civilizations grow. This is how we heal from harm. right, that we learn from these moments and we document these moments. And so I think that especially in our role as people who exist in learning spaces, the role of the documentarian is critical, right? You know, when we think about, you know, empires, right? Empires have always kind of crushed the will of humanity. And when we think about, you know, some of the largest empires, so the Roman Empire, right? Like, what is the first thing they burn? They burn libraries. You know, like they take away ancestral knowledge, right? And so I think it's really important in moments like this where we think about how are we learning ⁓ and then applying that learning. You know, it's no coincidence that the first thing this regime has done is take away people's power to share books with children, right? Again, because what do they want to take away from us? The ability to learn and apply learning that like I've always believed, and that's why I'm an educator, that learning is the antidote to empire. ⁓ Ananda knew about you, we didn't know about you. And Ananda told us about you, but we didn't understand. And we're all being, think, collectively blown away right now. ⁓ And I think sometimes organizations or individuals or parents even might encounter you and say, wow, he's just a great teacher. it. And so I'm... I'm curious, as all of us in this space are, you're preaching to the choir, we're all practitioners trying to move this work forward. How do we continue to build our toolbox, our muscle in becoming so that we can show up and say, ⁓ I noticed Aliyah uses her hands. how do ⁓ we cultivate these practices so that we can implement the change we're all trying transform? ⁓ And I'm going to say something a little bit risky here, but I think we have to be willing to make public mistakes and learn from those mistakes in public. I think as much as I have succeeded in life, I have failed spectacularly. And because I work with young people, much of my failure happens with an audience of 28. And I think in the last 10 years, it can sometimes feel like those who are invested in resistance are almost in this like wokeness competition. And I've had to remind myself that this is not a competition. This is not a race. I will make profound mistakes. I will be ashamed of myself. People in my community will be ashamed for me and with me. ⁓ And I have to recover and learn and grow. ⁓ I think if I never allow myself time and space for mistakes, I don't grow, right? And so I think it can sometimes feel like there is no room for mistakes. Like we have to be perfect. I remember, you know, I came up in the South, right? And so I remember people saying to me, you know, because you're a black boy, you have to go to school and be perfect. You can't make any mistakes because those people are expecting you to fail. ⁓ And so I built this paradigm for myself. where I was trapped, where I was so afraid to make any mistakes, let somebody think less of me. But when you don't make any mistakes, you don't learn, right? And so I think the most, I think the best gift that I've given myself as a human is permission to make mistakes and permission to learn in public. And this goes against every shred of my upbringing, because my upbringing is black, Southern, don't make no mistakes in front of them people. And I've really had to say, but if I don't make any mistakes and I am really robbing myself of the ability to learn and to grow. Yeah. And to be human. So thank you so much for bringing this full expression of your humanity. Thank you so much for also humanizing this beautiful experience virtually. And thank you so much for sharing your practice of human centered approach. Any last words as are wrapping our time? I think I just to extend gratitude to all of you. You all are really doing it. ⁓ At times, this ⁓ work can feel incredibly lonely. ⁓ We are all deeply invested community spaces. ⁓ And it's hard to be a leader in the streets and then you go home to your apartment by yourself. Or it's hard to lead whole groups or organizations and then you get back to your dinner table and you're microwaving your pasta by yourself. Like those things are really difficult. So to have spaces like this where people can come together and study and say, hey, ⁓ we are all working in our corners of the globe, but we are not doing this work alone. I'm just so thankful for all of your energies and for all of your efforts. so just like thank you all for being torchbearers. Yeah. Thank you so much Cornelius. Check out the book, We Got This. Thank you all for joining us for the choir conversation of the Nina Collective. If this resonated, we invite you to stay connected with us and continue the practice that help us rebuild together. And I will echo that. Please stay connected. Please, please, please. We always have these meetings and people are like, yo, we're gonna be friends. We're gonna connect, we're gonna call you. And then y'all get back to life and things get busy and y'all don't call. ⁓ So please, please, ⁓ know that ⁓ all of this works because we are in this together, we cousins. So. Yeah, thank you so much. All right, goodbye everybody. Thank you.