Program Notes
Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speaker: Nikkita Oliver
Nikkita Oliver
If you only listen to one podcast from the Psychedelic Salon, I hope that it is this one. While these podcasts have been focused primarily about preserving talks by our elders and promoting the ideas of our “new elders”, today’s podcast is different. Between the covid-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter demonstrations we have a lot to consider, and we have some serious decisions to make. Of all the people that I know, the young woman whose ideas you will hear in this podcast, Nikkita Oliver, is the one person who I would follow unhesitatingly into our shared future. She is highly intelligent, a great poet, and a leader that I believe we can trust. After you listen to this podcast and hear her Convergence speech from 2019, her TEDx talk in 2016, and her poems, I hope that you will feel the same way.
Nikkita Oliver’s Twitter feed
“Building People Power”:
Nikkita Oliver on Seattle’s Extraordinary Protests and What Comes Next
Seattle People’s Party
Podcast 599
“The Psychedelic Hospice Movement” by Lorenzo
8:46 - Dave Chappelle
Download free copies of Lorenzo’s latest books
Previous Episode
652 - The Rose of Paracelsus – Chapter 2
Next Episode
Similar Episodes
- 292 - Makana the Mighty! - score: 0.65123
- 427 - Stand Up And Be Counted! - score: 0.64631
- 169 - Truth is a Dangerous Thing - score: 0.64424
- 212 - The Genesis Generation - score: 0.60793
- 530 - A Psychedelic Moment In History - score: 0.60346
- 395 - +WaveOfAction - score: 0.60327
- 268 - Leary vs. Liddy – 1990 Debate - score: 0.59797
- 288 - What’s So Great About Mushrooms_ Part 2 - score: 0.59670
- 306 - Terence McKenna & Ram Das in Prague - score: 0.59609
- 496 - Something a Little Different - score: 0.59180
Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:19 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:23 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:30 ►
And I believe that the time has come for you and me to act like the psychedelic people that we are.
00:00:40 ►
And by that, I mean it’s time for us to manifest our minds and ask ourselves why we believe the things that make up our view of the world today.
00:00:45 ►
In my opinion, it’s time to rethink everything about what we believe and the ways in which we live our lives each day. Now, the title of today’s podcast is a quote from a young
00:00:51 ►
woman who I got to know last year and is someone who I believe has an important message for us all.
00:00:58 ►
To begin with, please pay close attention to the exact language of the quote, which is, we cannot have a pacified movement.
00:01:08 ►
Now, before I continue with my comments and introductions to the talks that I’m going
00:01:12 ►
to play, I want to play the first part of this quote in order to put it into better
00:01:16 ►
context.
00:01:18 ►
The Equity Now Coalition is building a plan for what it looks like to begin to set right the things that have been stolen.
00:01:27 ►
Stolen land, stolen peoples, stolen resources over and over again for a very long time.
00:01:35 ►
I feel inspired when I think about the freedom summers where people spent their entire summer in the streets fighting for justice, fighting for equity.
00:01:48 ►
This system is going to try to go back to the way it was before COVID.
00:01:53 ►
It’s going to try to force y’all back into your jobs, back into your rhythm,
00:01:57 ►
and make you forget the reason you got into the streets in the first place.
00:02:03 ►
I need you to remember.
00:02:07 ►
We need you to keep the fire. We need you to stay in the streets in the first place. I need you to remember, we need you to keep the fire.
00:02:13 ►
We need you to stay in the streets. Brother Joaquin laid out the plan. What I want to give you is an encouragement to keep up the fight. This city, this county is going to try to give us
00:02:18 ►
concessions, reforms to pacify our movements. We cannot have a pacified movement.
00:02:29 ►
As Nikita just said, this system is going to try and go back to where it was before COVID.
00:02:36 ►
They are going to try and give us concessions, reforms to pacify our movement. We cannot have
00:02:42 ►
a pacified movement. Now please note that she did not say it wouldn’t be a peaceful movement,
00:02:48 ►
only at this time there is no room for more pacification.
00:02:53 ►
That statement was made during the ongoing demonstrations in Seattle
00:02:57 ►
that have declared a six-block area of their city to be an autonomous zone.
00:03:03 ►
The mayor of Seattle has called it a block party,
00:03:06 ►
but that fearful little creature who is hiding out in the basement of the White House
00:03:10 ►
claims that Seattle has been taken over by anarchists,
00:03:13 ►
and if they aren’t all moved out, he’s going to send in the army.
00:03:18 ►
I don’t have to point out the irony of Bunker Boy in the White House,
00:03:21 ►
surrounded by tall metal fences and defended by heavily armed troops inside the fence,
00:03:27 ►
where this military force is camping on the White House grounds
00:03:30 ►
for the first time since the Civil War.
00:03:32 ►
On top of that, many of these stormtroopers
00:03:35 ►
are not wearing any identifying insignia,
00:03:38 ►
which means that they must be part of a black-shirt secret police force
00:03:42 ►
hiding among us.
00:03:44 ►
So, Bunker Boy can declare an autonomous zone around the White House,
00:03:48 ►
but we the people can’t have a peaceful block party?
00:03:52 ►
Is that what this nation has come to?
00:03:55 ►
Unfortunately, the answer is yes.
00:03:58 ►
Recently, I watched a documentary titled L.A. 92,
00:04:01 ►
which is about the riots that ensued in Los Angeles after the police were
00:04:06 ►
given absolution by the powers that be for beating Rodney King 56 times. 56 times those
00:04:13 ►
heavy police batons beat on him while he was lying helpless on the ground. It’s really amazing that
00:04:19 ►
those savage police officers didn’t kill him, and yet those officers suffered no consequences.
00:04:26 ►
officers didn’t kill him. And yet, those officers suffered no consequences. How about Trayvon Martin, Freddie Gray, Laquan McDonald, and over a thousand other people of color who have been
00:04:32 ►
murdered in cold blood by police in this country during the past 10 years? When will enough be
00:04:38 ►
enough? That’s the question that each and every one of us must ask ourselves today.
00:04:44 ►
Now, that blockhead in the White House is calling the defenders of the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone in Seattle anarchists.
00:04:51 ►
Yet they are exactly the opposite because they are there trying to enforce the law and order
00:04:56 ►
that the police department has failed to deliver to all the citizens in the city,
00:05:01 ►
not just to the rich white people.
00:05:03 ►
Now when I saw that vile man’s tweet
00:05:06 ►
about the Seattle protesters, I also noticed that in the same feed someone had posted that one-minute
00:05:11 ►
clip I just played of Nikita Oliver speaking at the Seattle demonstration, and that was when I
00:05:17 ►
knew that I had to speak up here. You see, I got to know Nikita Oliver last year when we were both speaking at the Convergence Conference on Orcas Island.
00:05:28 ►
And I consider her to be one of the most outstanding people that I’ve ever had the honor to meet.
00:05:33 ►
So I thought that you should also know more about one of the leaders of the Seattle demonstrations
00:05:38 ►
and hear what she has to say without the editorializing which the mainstream media tries to label the protesters.
00:05:46 ►
Nikita didn’t just happen to be at the protest and stand up to speak. Nikita Oliver has been
00:05:51 ►
standing up for justice for her entire life, and in fact in 2017 she ran for mayor of Seattle
00:05:58 ►
and only lost her primary race by 1,070 votes. Needless to say, Nikita Oliver is well known in Seattle. However, there is one
00:06:07 ►
more thing you should know about Nikita. Not only is she a powerful leader and a great speaker,
00:06:13 ►
in my opinion, she’s also one of America’s leading poets. Now, I’m going to play three
00:06:18 ►
talks of hers in today’s podcast. One of them is a TED Talk that she gave four years ago,
00:06:23 ►
and one is her poem,
00:06:25 ►
Black Lives Matter. But the first talk I’d like you to listen to with me is the talk that she
00:06:30 ►
gave in March 2019 at the Convergence Conference on Orcas Island. Nikita is just an activist,
00:06:39 ►
an organizer, organizing for the No Youth Jail, which was a movement last year
00:06:45 ►
around a new detention center being built in Seattle.
00:06:49 ►
But I’ll let her speak for herself, yo.
00:06:51 ►
This woman is powerful, and please welcome her to the stage.
00:06:58 ►
Thank you.
00:07:00 ►
I’m going to let you take this.
00:07:01 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:07:03 ►
All right, good morning, y’all. Peace. Are we good? I think we’re good. All right, if y’all would do me a favor. I literally got here last night while y’all were partying and flew in from Ann Arbor, Detroit area.
00:07:22 ►
from Ann Arbor, Detroit area.
00:07:25 ►
And so a moment to ground would be great.
00:07:27 ►
Can you all do that with me?
00:07:27 ►
Yes.
00:07:28 ►
All right.
00:07:30 ►
If you could get in a comfortable position wherever you’re sitting,
00:07:32 ►
ideally being able to feel your feet
00:07:34 ►
or your back on whatever you’re sitting.
00:07:40 ►
And if you feel comfortable closing your eyes,
00:07:43 ►
you would also do that.
00:07:47 ►
I invite you to take a deep breath, as deep as you can for this first round.
00:07:55 ►
And I want to remind us that we’re standing on native land.
00:08:00 ►
And that I live in the Coastal Salish Territories.
00:08:03 ►
and that I live in the coastal Salish territories,
00:08:10 ►
and the city named after Chief Seals on Duwamish, Suquamish land.
00:08:16 ►
And as you release that breath, I want you to thank the land for allowing you to be here,
00:08:20 ►
and I want you to remember the people who are not here, because we are here.
00:08:25 ►
Then I invite you to take a second deep breath.
00:08:28 ►
Farther past the first.
00:08:33 ►
And I want you to connect with your own present and generational history.
00:08:36 ►
The people you come from.
00:08:41 ►
Ancestors that you want to acknowledge.
00:08:45 ►
And maybe ancestors you aren’t ready to acknowledge and invite them to be here
00:08:47 ►
with you in this place as you release your breath.
00:08:52 ►
And then I invite you to take
00:08:53 ►
a third breath.
00:08:56 ►
Farther past the first two.
00:08:59 ►
And I want you to find something
00:09:02 ►
that is joyous
00:09:03 ►
or full of levity. And I want you to find something that is joyous or full of levity.
00:09:07 ►
And I want you to share that breath with the room.
00:09:13 ►
Because air and breathing, like story, are things that we all share whether we want to or not.
00:09:23 ►
And it’s important that we find ways
00:09:25 ►
to give joy to ourselves and each other.
00:09:28 ►
When you are ready,
00:09:30 ►
feel free to open your eyes.
00:09:38 ►
Let’s go down to the river to pray
00:09:41 ►
Studying about those good old days, and who shall wear the golden crown?
00:09:50 ►
Good Lord, show me the way. Oh, family, let’s go down. Let’s go down. Don’t you want to go down? Oh, family, let’s go down, down to the river to pray.
00:10:12 ►
I can hear my auntie in the back of the chapel singing. My Baba leans over to me and she says,
00:10:18 ►
baby, let’s go down to the river to pray. We make our way down the mountainside to the valley below.
00:10:23 ►
She tells me to see where the water settles
00:10:26 ►
That it puts itself in the place where it’s most needed
00:10:29 ►
That it starts in the sky above, makes its way down the mountainside
00:10:32 ►
Into the valley below, reminds me that my body is made mostly of water
00:10:36 ►
Tells me that I must learn to move like water
00:10:39 ►
Over, around, or through a thing if I have to
00:10:42 ►
She tells me that water, my body, and justice are one and
00:10:47 ►
the same thing. Says justice is just us being just us. Without us, there is no justice. And just in
00:10:54 ►
case I missed it, she says it again. She says justice is just us being just us. Without us,
00:10:59 ►
there is no justice. Without us, there is no resistance. Without us, the system persists in
00:11:04 ►
its defiance, dividing us further from the divinity that is our
00:11:07 ►
unity with Mother Earth. Dividing us further from the divinity that is our
00:11:10 ►
unity with each other. That’s when cash rules everything around me as the man is
00:11:15 ►
steadily auctioning off stock in my body blocking my attempts to break free.
00:11:19 ►
Understand. Understand. There can be no fair trade agreement when black bodies are still sold as stocks and bonds and jail cells are selling out as politicians are building their wealth in these black and brown bodies.
00:11:44 ►
our people from our homelands, the same hands that brought us to someone else’s homelands,
00:11:49 ►
the same hands that ripped those people from their homelands, fed us to the homelands,
00:11:53 ►
and then sell us back our homelands over-processed and over-priced till we become underfed.
00:12:02 ►
But yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, yo, I come from a resilient people, a still-living people,
00:12:06 ►
a still-here people in the land of the slave, the home of the braves.
00:12:13 ►
Shit, I keep getting that wrong. The land of the free, the home of the braves. Did anyone else notice that we erase the braves amongst us? Did anyone else notice that we do not tell their
00:12:19 ►
stories or their history? Did anyone else notice that we do not create space for the braves to speak for themselves? Did anyone else notice that the rivers around us run
00:12:29 ►
red with blood? Did anyone else ask? Nah. We don’t ask so they don’t have to tell the
00:12:35 ►
truth. The truth is these politics, polytics, many tics, blood-sucking politicians with
00:12:42 ►
the only thing redder than their fangs are these blood-stained hands.
00:12:46 ►
Look at them, elbow deep in the
00:12:47 ►
cookie jar. Let’s call it capitalism.
00:12:50 ►
Who pays the toll for this
00:12:52 ►
feudalism? The 10% prosper
00:12:54 ►
on profits while the rest of us
00:12:56 ►
race to the bottom in chains and body bags
00:12:58 ►
to be buried much more than six feet
00:13:00 ►
deep beneath more fair trade agreements
00:13:01 ►
where the only thing fairly traded is our rage
00:13:03 ►
against this machine, a machine that would have us believe you can never have enough.
00:13:08 ►
There is not enough. You are not enough. But see, enough is
00:13:12 ►
enough is enough is enough is enough is enough is enough is enough
00:13:16 ►
when we say it is enough if we’d only share.
00:13:20 ►
My Baba brings me back to center.
00:13:24 ►
Tells me to look at the water,
00:13:26 ►
ask me what I see.
00:13:29 ►
I think it’s a trick question,
00:13:31 ►
but I answer honestly.
00:13:34 ►
I tell her I see my reflection.
00:13:36 ►
I see myself in the water,
00:13:38 ►
and she says, baby, that’s right.
00:13:40 ►
You see yourself in the water.
00:13:43 ►
She says, understand that first you must learn to love the woman in the water
00:13:48 ►
because justice is what love looks like in public,
00:13:51 ►
and if you do not love yourself, you cannot love anyone else.
00:13:56 ►
She brings me back to center,
00:13:59 ►
reminds me that my body is made mostly of water,
00:14:04 ►
that justice is just us being just us.
00:14:06 ►
Without us, there is no justice.
00:14:10 ►
Without love, there is no justice.
00:14:14 ►
And when we love, there is truly more than enough.
00:14:18 ►
Thank you.
00:14:37 ►
I appreciate that.
00:14:39 ►
Thank you for the warm welcome, y’all.
00:14:41 ►
I start with that poem, Justice is Just Us,
00:14:45 ►
when I think about what it means to have more humanistic policies
00:14:51 ►
or really creation-based ways of thinking about governance,
00:14:55 ►
because honestly, governance is not just about us humans.
00:14:59 ►
It’s actually about the whole of creation.
00:15:00 ►
We cannot eat money and we cannot drink oil, right?
00:15:06 ►
whole of creation. We cannot eat money and we cannot drink oil, right? So we have to do things thinking holistically about the ecology of what we live in. And that ecology starts first and
00:15:13 ►
foremost with understanding how love and justice work. I got a few notes because I want to make
00:15:18 ►
sure I said everything I wanted to say in 16 minutes and 33 seconds. The thing about love involves loving our whole selves first.
00:15:31 ►
We cannot achieve a healthier governance structure
00:15:36 ►
if we are not willing to truly grapple with the wholeness of our present
00:15:40 ►
and generational history.
00:15:43 ►
I started our first breath by acknowledging the land.
00:15:47 ►
There was a people here, peoples here,
00:15:51 ►
before we were here.
00:15:53 ►
And whether we want to grapple with it or not,
00:15:57 ►
some of us come and exist here because of colonialism.
00:16:03 ►
I have a complicated history because part of me exists here because of colonialism. I have a complicated history because part of me
00:16:06 ►
exists here because of colonialism and the other part of me exists here because
00:16:11 ►
of a history of enslavement. I can’t choose which ancestors I bring to this
00:16:18 ►
story. They’re already chosen for me, right? And if I want to accept half but don’t want to take the other half,
00:16:26 ►
I’m actually choosing not to accept my whole self.
00:16:30 ►
If I don’t accept my whole self, I cannot love my whole self.
00:16:33 ►
If I cannot love my whole self, I cannot love all of you.
00:16:36 ►
If I cannot love all of you, then I cannot be justice.
00:16:40 ►
I cannot be what love looks like in public.
00:16:47 ►
justice. I cannot be what love looks like in public. That’s what a healthier, humanistic,
00:16:54 ►
creation-based governance system looks like. It has to start with us having love. And to have love,
00:16:59 ►
we have to have whole stories. When we were talking about the breath or thinking about the breath or being in our breath, stories are like breath. They’re like breathing. They’re like air.
00:17:01 ►
or being in our breath.
00:17:03 ►
Stories are like breath.
00:17:04 ►
They’re like breathing.
00:17:04 ►
They’re like air.
00:17:07 ►
Whether you want them around you or not,
00:17:08 ►
we’re all playing a role.
00:17:10 ►
Some of those roles we’ve chosen.
00:17:13 ►
Some of those roles were given to us.
00:17:15 ►
But a role can be taken off.
00:17:17 ►
You can only take it off if you know you’re wearing it, though.
00:17:22 ►
Similar to what our elder before us, Donna, was talking about,
00:17:25 ►
when it comes to how we invest our money,
00:17:30 ►
when it comes to the systems that we live in, if we don’t acknowledge them or understand them, we can’t do something different. So I’m going to do another poem. Is that okay?
00:17:40 ►
When I tell people I’m a boxer, they almost always ask me the same three questions.
00:17:45 ►
One, do you get hit?
00:17:48 ►
Two, but does it hurt?
00:17:51 ►
Three, do you ever bleed?
00:17:54 ►
And I’m thinking, duh, it’s boxing.
00:17:58 ►
But my mother raised me right, so I say, yes, I get hit.
00:18:01 ►
Sometimes it hurts, and every now and again I bleed.
00:18:04 ►
And they go, oh!
00:18:05 ►
You see, most people are afraid of blood.
00:18:07 ►
Most people are afraid of seeing blood.
00:18:09 ►
Most people are most afraid of seeing their own blood.
00:18:11 ►
So I tell them this is not the first time I’ve held my own blood in my hands.
00:18:15 ►
Watch the red droplets pool after a string of fighting words
00:18:17 ►
are smashed hard against my face.
00:18:19 ►
I’m learning boxing and life are really not that much different.
00:18:22 ►
My coach keeps telling me, Nikita, you gotta learn to keep your eyes up.
00:18:25 ►
But truth is, I still haven’t figured out how to keep
00:18:28 ►
my head up. So as coach cleans me up,
00:18:30 ►
I stare into the carnage.
00:18:32 ►
Settled into the folds of my flesh, the looking
00:18:33 ►
glass in my family tree, and I think,
00:18:35 ►
dang.
00:18:38 ►
Is this all that I’m made of?
00:18:40 ►
Now see, Muhammad Ali said,
00:18:42 ►
they can make
00:18:44 ►
penicillin out of moldy bread, then they sure can’t make something out of me.
00:18:47 ►
So tell me my blood, my body, what I’m made of so I may know exactly what I could be made into.
00:18:53 ►
Spare me no record of wrongs that I might not become a broken record repeating my family’s history time and time again.
00:18:58 ►
Let me open every closet in this house, because I am sure there are more closets in this house for me to hide my own skeletons.
00:19:04 ►
Tell me about my
00:19:05 ►
mother’s father, how he liked white
00:19:08 ►
sheets in the dark of night, his cross
00:19:10 ►
set ablaze and burning in the eyes of little girls
00:19:12 ►
that looked no different than me, how he liked his
00:19:13 ►
bottle empty and his woman silent
00:19:15 ►
tell me how my
00:19:17 ►
mother’s mother filled up all of the empty
00:19:20 ►
and the silence, how she built herself
00:19:21 ►
up a broken home for my mama
00:19:24 ►
show me my mama, little girl huddled on a tear-drenched floor beneath a roof too
00:19:28 ►
holy to shelter her from the downpour of belts and hands. Tell me a
00:19:32 ►
sharecropper’s story, a back-breaking work and empty stomachs filled to the brim
00:19:36 ►
with Negro spirituals. Let me hear my baba sing our spirituals. She’d be like,
00:19:41 ►
Wait in the water, just
00:19:44 ►
wait in the water, just wait in the water, children.
00:19:48 ►
Can you hear her singing?
00:19:50 ►
How she raised her children up high above corn and cotton
00:19:53 ►
and taught them to flee the fields of Louisiana
00:19:55 ►
for the rubber factories of Indiana before they could be plucked.
00:19:58 ►
Let me see the glint of promise on their brows
00:20:01 ►
as their hearts beat hard against dreams.
00:20:03 ►
Flex like rubber, melted down to once again feel how cotton, plastic feel no different in your palms when your bootstraps still
00:20:09 ►
refuse to fit this so-called American dream. Please show me one dream. How black and white have been
00:20:14 ►
the makings of a classic movie. Show me the stars in my parents’ eyes when they found out they were
00:20:19 ►
gonna have this sweet but sick little baby and my mother once again finds herself in a corner,
00:20:24 ►
but this time on a cot
00:20:25 ►
in a hospital alone and my father so used to fleeing danger he cannot figure out how to stay
00:20:30 ►
firmly put teach me how to stay firmly put remind me I’m a fighter I’m a boxer that there is no rot
00:20:37 ►
or rust or mold that I cannot transform that rots and rust and mold have been made into medicine. Remind me I am my own medicine. I am my own medicine.
00:20:46 ►
I am my own medicine.
00:20:48 ►
And you who also
00:20:50 ►
have rot and rust
00:20:52 ►
and mold,
00:20:54 ►
you too are your own
00:20:56 ►
medicine and together we are
00:20:58 ►
the greatest medicine we could ever
00:21:00 ►
need.
00:21:04 ►
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. need. I wish I could just take y’all with me everywhere. So the end of that poem is
00:21:22 ►
we are our own medicine. It’s my story.
00:21:25 ►
At least it’s my story how I understood it when I wrote that piece.
00:21:29 ►
Our stories, when we take them in whole, when we accept them in whole,
00:21:35 ►
the good and the bad parts become the thing that cures our ailments.
00:21:42 ►
I believe the same is true of society. Our unwillingness to grapple with our
00:21:47 ►
whole history makes it very hard for us to build governance structures that actually honor whole
00:21:54 ►
people because we don’t see whole people. And what are politics for but for people? What is a city
00:22:00 ►
for but for people? What is governance for but for people?
00:22:07 ►
And if we’re not treating people as whole,
00:22:10 ►
we’re never going to build holistic, healthy structures.
00:22:13 ►
Now, I want to give you, because we’re in nature,
00:22:15 ►
an example of something we can dig through.
00:22:17 ►
The dandelion.
00:22:18 ►
I love dandelions.
00:22:21 ►
I love them so much, my landlord hates them.
00:22:24 ►
I want them to know dandelions are great because you pull up a
00:22:28 ►
dandelion and inevitably it comes back. It does not come back as one. It usually does not come
00:22:34 ►
back as two. It might come back as three or more. Dandelions come back in mass. As people, we can
00:22:41 ►
learn from dandelions. There is a system that’s been constructed based on our story and our history
00:22:48 ►
that wants to pull us up.
00:22:51 ►
Sometimes we give in to that system.
00:22:54 ►
How can we learn to come back in mass?
00:22:57 ►
The second lesson I take from the dandelion is it’s been told it is a weed.
00:23:04 ►
Why can’t it be a flower?
00:23:07 ►
We could call it something different.
00:23:10 ►
We could see it for what it is.
00:23:13 ►
It is beautiful.
00:23:15 ►
Dandelions are actually quite beautiful.
00:23:17 ►
This is why children love dandelions.
00:23:19 ►
You can blow them all over the place.
00:23:22 ►
Right?
00:23:23 ►
So realizing that sometimes we are calling something a thing
00:23:28 ►
that it’s not, words have power. I believe that words are spells. If you cast a spell
00:23:34 ►
on a thing that it’s not, you might make it into that thing. But if you start to speak
00:23:39 ►
something different over it, you can create something different. Octavia Butler told us we can use our
00:23:45 ►
writing and our words to manifest the world we want to see, or we can use our
00:23:49 ►
writing and our words to manifest the world we don’t want to see. What is law but a
00:23:54 ►
bunch of words? The laws that we use to create our governing structure are words.
00:24:00 ►
In theory, the one I just gave you, a spell. And we’re casting the wrong one.
00:24:08 ►
Lastly, the thing about dandelions is dandelions are medicinal.
00:24:14 ►
They offer a lot to our bodies, that if you know how to treat them right,
00:24:20 ►
if you know what to do with their roots, if you understand how they work, they can
00:24:25 ►
actually become very healing. So this thing that we’ve been taught to view as negative
00:24:31 ►
actually has a lot of power in it. When I talk about who I am, my identity, as a black
00:24:39 ►
queer mixed woman, that identity in our current structure is one that’s marginalized.
00:24:48 ►
That is what it’s been given in terms of what’s been casted over it.
00:24:53 ►
How do I reclaim the medicine of who I am?
00:24:57 ►
How do I use it to then treat our social structure?
00:25:00 ►
In the Seattle People’s Party, it is our belief that when we pull from the margins of society
00:25:04 ►
and we live from the bottom because of the way the society is currently structured,
00:25:08 ►
we actually make the whole of society healthier.
00:25:12 ►
My resilience, my identity, my knowledge and understanding of the worst impacts of this system,
00:25:20 ►
while I wish I hadn’t had to go through that to get that,
00:25:23 ►
actually becomes medicinal for how we change and restructure our society.
00:25:28 ►
That means some people got to get out the way.
00:25:32 ►
I don’t want to push or force no one out the way.
00:25:35 ►
That’s not how I want to use this medicine.
00:25:39 ►
So there has to be a request made.
00:25:42 ►
This is why knowing your story is important.
00:25:45 ►
Being able to identify your own medicine.
00:25:47 ►
Your medicine might mean moving where you’re at, readjusting your role, renaming the story
00:25:54 ►
that you know.
00:25:58 ►
And lastly, we want to get to a place of health.
00:26:01 ►
What are the first four letters of the word health? Heal. We cannot have a healthy
00:26:08 ►
governance structure until we learn how to heal as individuals, as communities, as neighborhoods,
00:26:16 ►
as cities, as counties. And that means going back to the very beginning of knowing our whole story,
00:26:23 ►
to the very beginning of knowing our whole story,
00:26:25 ►
telling it in all of its beauty,
00:26:29 ►
in all of its ugly, in all of its pain.
00:26:33 ►
So you can’t heal someone or something if you cannot accurately identify what’s wrong with it.
00:26:37 ►
So first we have to be truthful.
00:26:41 ►
We also make the mistake oftentimes
00:26:43 ►
of thinking that healing means that it will not healing means that it will come without pain.
00:26:50 ►
Y’all, healing is painful.
00:26:52 ►
If you break a leg, you get a cut.
00:26:55 ►
If that cut gets infected, the first thing that has to happen is the removal of that infection.
00:27:01 ►
Removing an infection from a wound is a painful process. And if we look at the state
00:27:09 ►
of things right now, we’ve been living in the midst of a wound that has been festering for a
00:27:14 ►
very long time. There’s a lot of infection to pull from it. And as that infection is removed
00:27:21 ►
and that wound heals, we want feeling to return to it.
00:27:26 ►
That means nerves are restored.
00:27:31 ►
And when a nerve is restored to a place that has been wounded, it hurts.
00:27:37 ►
But sometimes pain is a sign that we’re doing the right thing.
00:27:40 ►
How do I know this?
00:27:47 ►
MLK said that darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that. When you wake up in the morning and you turn on the lights
00:27:52 ►
for the first time, you’ve been in darkness for however many hours you slept, how does it feel?
00:28:02 ►
For most of us, it doesn’t feel great, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with the light.
00:28:09 ►
When I think about real love, true love, that is willing to acknowledge a full identity,
00:28:17 ►
that is willing to mend wounds, that process, while great, does not always come without pain.
00:28:28 ►
And I really think we’re in a place of pain,
00:28:32 ►
but we’re in the kind of trauma right now as peoples, as creation, honestly,
00:28:38 ►
where we’re still not even willing to acknowledge that this hurts.
00:28:42 ►
And we’re not even willing to acknowledge what’s causing the hurt.
00:28:46 ►
And for some of us,
00:28:48 ►
or most of us, it is us.
00:28:51 ►
And if justice
00:28:52 ►
is just us being just us,
00:28:54 ►
we have a choice.
00:28:57 ►
We can choose to heal
00:28:59 ►
and become healthy,
00:29:01 ►
or we can continue to live
00:29:03 ►
in a festering wound. Healing happens when
00:29:09 ►
we choose to be honest and really be able to identify what’s causing the wound, what
00:29:16 ►
is the wound, and what is the healthy course of action. And that does take all of us. And
00:29:24 ►
we don’t all play the same role and we don’t all play the same role
00:29:25 ►
because we haven’t all played the same role
00:29:27 ►
in creating the system we live in now.
00:29:32 ►
So I’ll leave you again with,
00:29:33 ►
justice is just us being just us.
00:29:42 ►
Thank you.
00:29:59 ►
As you just heard, when Nikita finished her presentation,
00:30:02 ►
we were all on our feet giving her a standing ovation.
00:30:08 ►
And even though the audience had already heard from Dr. Grobe, Bruce Dahmer, and Paul Stamets,
00:30:14 ►
there was no doubt in anyone’s mind but what we had just heard the definitive talk of the conference.
00:30:18 ►
And as I was standing there, clapping and cheering,
00:30:20 ►
a little voice in the back of my mind suddenly said,
00:30:22 ►
Fuck me, I’m the next speaker!
00:30:27 ►
Needless to say, Nikita Oliver should always be the last speaker on a conference program because, well, it’s next to impossible to follow her.
00:30:33 ►
And if you wonder what I said, you can listen to my talk in podcast number 599,
00:30:38 ►
The Psychedelic Hospice Movement, which in light of the COVID pandemic, well, I guess it still has some relevance in the world today.
00:30:47 ►
Now, to give you an even better insight into Nikita’s thinking,
00:30:51 ►
here’s the TED Talk that she gave four years ago.
00:30:54 ►
As you listen with me, I suspect that you will quickly understand
00:30:57 ►
how insane the bunker boy in Washington is when he calls her an anarchist.
00:31:02 ►
A picture is worth a thousand words.
00:31:07 ►
At least that’s what I’ve been told.
00:31:09 ►
What I’ve learned when it comes to the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth
00:31:15 ►
so help me, goddess, is that the word count is less important than the frame we use to
00:31:21 ►
hold the picture.
00:31:23 ►
A picture worth words tells a story.
00:31:26 ►
The frame determines which part of the story we tell.
00:31:29 ►
This is the part of the story we see.
00:31:32 ►
How we see becomes how we think.
00:31:35 ►
How we think, how we act, how we act makes history.
00:31:39 ►
And history teaches us that the truth is hard to kill,
00:31:44 ►
but a lie well told can last forever, can make whole peoples disappear, can change the sight of a generation, can give an entire country amnesia, make us forget where we come from so we cannot remember where we should be going.
00:32:00 ►
History is not was.
00:32:02 ►
History is not was.
00:32:05 ►
History is.
00:32:08 ►
1968, the Mexico City Olympics.
00:32:12 ►
The air, thick and wet, dangles round their necks.
00:32:17 ►
Protests build condensation on their brows, hot and heavy. Tommy Smith, USA gold.
00:32:20 ►
Peter Norman, Australia silver.
00:32:22 ►
John Carlos, USA Bronze,
00:32:25 ►
two black-gloved fists boldly pierce the air and one white face hangs low.
00:32:32 ►
His story is not the history we relish.
00:32:35 ►
We retell these men in opposition to each other.
00:32:38 ►
We cannot see their strength, so we cannot grow stronger together.
00:32:42 ►
With all of our words, we miss the point in the picture.
00:32:45 ►
We do not understand the frame, new frame.
00:32:49 ►
History is not was.
00:32:51 ►
It is 1968, the Mexico City Olympics.
00:32:55 ►
The air, thick and wet, dangles round their necks.
00:32:59 ►
Protests build condensation on their brows, hot and heavy.
00:33:04 ►
Tommy Smith, USA gold. Peter
00:33:07 ►
Norman, Australia silver. John Carlos, USA bronze. Statuesque on platform, they stand.
00:33:17 ►
They do not speak, but their protest is heard loud and unapologetic round the world. Two black glove fists boldly pierce the air.
00:33:28 ►
One white face looks down, his chest brandishing a badge. Olympics for human rights, an organization
00:33:35 ►
opposing racism in sports. He knows their fight is not the same, yet they stand up against a common
00:33:41 ►
enemy. He does not throw up black power fists, rather relinquishes the right.
00:33:46 ►
And his white gaze hangs his head, owning the weight of white privilege.
00:33:51 ►
These men stood together.
00:33:53 ►
Their posture to struggle different, though entangled.
00:33:57 ►
Their solidarity, an incredible act of resistance erased from our frame.
00:34:04 ►
Tommy Smith and John Carlos return to the United States,
00:34:08 ►
banned from the Olympics for life, yet heroes in their own right. And Peter Norman returns to
00:34:14 ►
Australia, his protests forgotten everywhere but home. He never runs again. He dies alone.
00:34:22 ►
We do not tell the whole story. We cannot be made better by the history. We do not tell the whole story.
00:34:28 ►
We cannot be made better by the history.
00:34:29 ►
We do not know.
00:34:33 ►
Truth is, every Black History Month, for as long as I can remember,
00:34:36 ►
I was taught Rosa Parks sat on a bus.
00:34:41 ►
As if her sitting was just mere coincidence, just tired feet, just this one time pushed too far over the edge of white supremacy a split second
00:34:46 ►
decision impulsive not planned out at all just something you might want to do after a long day
00:34:52 ►
of work in the south just tired once again our frame her body in, limited to a seat, and we missed the point, so new frame.
00:35:06 ►
It is 1946.
00:35:12 ►
The United States Supreme Court determines in Irene Morgan v. The Commonwealth of Virginia that segregation in interstate busing is unconstitutional.
00:35:16 ►
March 2, 1955, nine months before Mrs. Rosa Parks is arrested for her resisting segregation on buses,
00:35:26 ►
Mrs. Rosa Parks is arrested for her resisting segregation on buses. There’s Claudette Colvin,
00:35:33 ►
NAACP youth member, 15 years old, refuses to leave her seat, is arrested, a case is filed,
00:35:40 ►
yet she is forgotten in impropriety. A 16-year-old unwedded mother in the 1950s makes you unfit to lead a movement, makes your act of resistance less palatable, less deserving, less likely to
00:35:45 ►
make change. Yet she is not the only bus resistor we have forgotten. Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise
00:35:52 ►
Smith, and Susie McDonald all sat on the bus before Mrs. Rosa Parks. December 1st, 1955,
00:36:01 ►
Mrs. Parks is arrested for resisting bus segregation in Montgomery, Alabama.
00:36:05 ►
What we are not told is that prior to her resistance on bus number 2857 is that she raised defense funds for Claudette Colvin,
00:36:13 ►
serves as the secretary of the local NAACP chapter, is brutalized repeatedly by James Blake,
00:36:20 ►
the same bus driver who later forces her to move from her seat for a white man she,
00:36:25 ►
not sitting in the whites-only section she, sitting in the front row of the colored section,
00:36:31 ►
refuses to give up her seat.
00:36:33 ►
Not a servant to tired feet, rather a 42-year-old dignified black woman,
00:36:38 ►
tired of giving in, tired of giving up much more than her seat to white supremacy.
00:36:42 ►
She’s jailed not once but twice for her role in
00:36:45 ►
the Montgomery bus boycott. She’s terrorized, forced to leave her home after being fired from
00:36:51 ►
her job, moves to Detroit, Michigan, where she lives the rest of her life. And I learned some
00:36:56 ►
things are easier said than done, and some things are said easier than the action required to achieve them, so we do not try to achieve them again.
00:37:09 ►
20 years before Colin Kaepernick,
00:37:12 ►
there’s Mahmoud Abdul Raouf.
00:37:16 ►
He is 24 years old.
00:37:19 ►
Born Chris Jackson in Gulfport, Mississippi. It is 1993.
00:37:23 ►
He is entering the climax of his NBA career, the pinnacle of a spiritual revelation,
00:37:28 ►
the impetus, reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. He converts to Islam, finds peace in the thing
00:37:34 ►
that America fears most while simultaneously becoming one of the best and one of America’s
00:37:40 ►
favorite pastimes. Each season he improves. Each day his faith grows deeper. He questions how ritual
00:37:49 ►
and nation take precedence over people and peace. Islam derived from the root word salam means peace.
00:37:57 ►
When Mahmoud Abdul-Raouf refuses to stand for the national anthem, the NBA tells the Nuggets, handle it discreetly.
00:38:06 ►
It is not until the trial of Timothy McVeigh,
00:38:09 ►
the 1995 Oklahoma City bomber,
00:38:12 ►
that American basketball fans begin to notice
00:38:14 ►
the peacefully sitting Mahmoud Abdul-Raouf,
00:38:17 ►
not as a basketball player, not as a practicing Muslim,
00:38:20 ►
but rather as a terrorist, as a threat to American patriotism.
00:38:24 ►
And once again, our sitting
00:38:26 ►
becomes explosion. The posturing of black bodies constantly called into question, moved around for
00:38:33 ►
America’s comfort, patriotism, a cover-up for a nation at war with itself. Before Colin Kaepernick,
00:38:41 ►
Abdulraouf sits in a press conference, calls out the symbol of tyranny and
00:38:46 ►
oppression, and once again refuses to stand for the national anthem hours later. The NBA suspends
00:38:52 ►
him indefinitely without pay, citing a rule that requires players, coaches, and trainers to stand
00:38:59 ►
in a dignified posture lined up for the U.S. and Canadian national anthem in a country where administrative leave
00:39:07 ►
is standard practice when police officers shoot to kill unarmed black bodies sitting, and an
00:39:12 ►
unarmed black Muslim body will kill your career, burn down your house, make your family a firing
00:39:18 ►
range. Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf is a part of our story, a part of history that we do not tell so we relive it over and over and over and over again.
00:39:33 ►
History is not was.
00:39:35 ►
It is 2016 looking a lot like 1968 and I can’t help but notice how our bodies carry the same stories as our elders.
00:39:44 ►
How we only know justice in part,
00:39:46 ►
so our peace is barely parceled together. We, a puzzled picture with missing pieces, make icons
00:39:51 ►
of moments we barely understand and say, this is the frame for the movement, this is the way it
00:39:56 ►
should be. Yet the picture is always greater than we know, or greater than we’ve been told. Who lives,
00:40:03 ►
greater than we know or greater than we’ve been told.
00:40:08 ►
Who lives? Who dies? Who tells our story?
00:40:16 ►
Shapes the past, shapes the present, transforms our future sight and ability to do and be better.
00:40:21 ►
We behold the past with a telescope, the present with a microscope.
00:40:27 ►
See stars and germs, everything else a blind spot.
00:40:33 ►
But what would those stars be without the dark matter around them and those germs without the organisms who carry them?
00:40:38 ►
History, like space, is far more vast than we can ever know,
00:40:44 ►
like space is far more vast than we can ever know,
00:40:52 ►
like germs unseen and ever-present in, on, and around us.
00:41:00 ►
They change us, transform us for better or for worse.
00:41:03 ►
Yes, a picture is worth a thousand words,
00:41:08 ►
but it is the frame that makes all of the difference.
00:41:23 ►
Although I only had a few conversations with Nikita over several shared meetings during the Orcas Conference,
00:41:26 ►
my memory of her is far from the impassioned speeches that we’ve heard.
00:41:31 ►
When I think of Nikita, the first things that I remember are her eyes and her smile.
00:41:36 ►
And if you ever have an opportunity to meet her, my guess is that you won’t forget those smiling eyes that are so filled with love for us all.
00:41:44 ►
Above all else, it is my
00:41:46 ►
belief that Nikita Oliver is a peaceful, gentle person, and as such, she is one of the best
00:41:51 ►
possible leaders that we can find for these times that we are now trying to live through.
00:41:57 ►
So I’m going to close today’s podcast with Nikita reading her poem, Black Lives Matter. Do you see the boy in the corner?
00:42:06 ►
Yeah.
00:42:07 ►
The one with the prettiest blue eyes.
00:42:11 ►
Do you see how he carries well-intentioned honesty like a badge?
00:42:15 ►
How entitlement wears his shoulders like a mantle?
00:42:17 ►
And privilege, well, privilege holds his hands.
00:42:20 ►
Do you see how he speaks to the class like royalty?
00:42:22 ►
Looks at me like target practice.
00:42:24 ►
Fires off Nikita?
00:42:25 ►
I’m just being honest.
00:42:27 ►
But when you say black lives matter, I feel like you’re calling me racist.
00:42:31 ►
I feel like he trails off with hesitation.
00:42:34 ►
The room cannot hear him, but I can feel his words.
00:42:37 ►
They are a pulse on the nation’s vein.
00:42:39 ►
He’s not the only one who thinks like this.
00:42:41 ►
He continues, you make me feel guilty for being white, but I
00:42:45 ►
didn’t shoot the boy in the streets. I don’t want his blood on my hand. This is not my weight to
00:42:50 ►
carry. See, all of a sudden his words hit me. I am shell-shocked rebel, heavy with the prayers of
00:42:55 ►
ancestors and uttered sounds that I need to understand. I am slave ship, chattel and parcel
00:42:59 ►
thrown overboard when my flesh cannot complete the journey. I am stolen. Mouth that would tell you my story,
00:43:05 ►
but history is not mine when I am still auction block property.
00:43:08 ►
Runaway slave.
00:43:09 ►
I am sharecropped land stolen by genocide and broken treaty.
00:43:13 ►
I am prisoner of war.
00:43:15 ►
I am black boy blood on pavement.
00:43:17 ►
Black girl face down in dirt.
00:43:18 ►
Black trans woman skirt shirt torn.
00:43:20 ►
I am exposed.
00:43:22 ►
I am hands up.
00:43:23 ►
Please do not shoot us while we are carrying our children
00:43:25 ►
through underground railroads. I am fist throw power, black beauty and Selma’s son. Heat me down
00:43:30 ►
on pain so we can march again and again and again. Each time it’s still the same. They say
00:43:35 ►
give it time and time. Things will change but I cannot control this riot and my skin when waiting
00:43:40 ►
burns like pepper spray, like blunt object, like police baton shoved in my face as a tired beast of a mask doing you just how much I need to
00:43:47 ►
be free of this boy in the corner still waiting for me to wash his hands but I
00:43:54 ►
cannot let him open this can of worms go fishing for answers and skin that he
00:43:59 ►
will never swim see these waters are too rough this boat has never been safe I
00:44:03 ►
don’t want to be another throwaway, another castaway,
00:44:06 ►
another mad diary of a black woman alone in a room
00:44:08 ►
with no one who understands why the streets are wailing,
00:44:12 ►
why the air tastes of iron,
00:44:14 ►
why the humidity and Ferguson drips like blood on New York concrete
00:44:17 ►
with roses caught in the cracks.
00:44:19 ►
They say, I cannot breathe.
00:44:21 ►
They cannot breathe.
00:44:23 ►
We cannot breathe.
00:44:24 ►
So I become fire and burn,
00:44:26 ►
billowing tower of smoke and civil disobedience. I become revolution. Was this country not built
00:44:31 ►
on revolution, on gunfire, on protests, on the backs of black bodies ripped from black wombs?
00:44:36 ►
They say, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, black girl, but the ones I was given were not fit,
00:44:40 ►
so I made my own. I call them black lives matter is not your indictment.
00:44:45 ►
This is not your prosecution. Please do not make my skin your conviction. I have not needed
00:44:51 ►
nor have I ever wanted a white guilty plea. When I say black lives matter I’m not trying to take
00:44:59 ►
anything from you. I’m simply trying to dig deep below the muck and the mire and the bodies and the streets
00:45:06 ►
to find the seed of hope that still persists to remind myself that my life matters too.
00:45:17 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a
00:45:22 ►
time. So if you are now ready to stand up and be counted yourself,
00:45:28 ►
maybe a good start would be to share this podcast with a few of your white friends.
00:45:33 ►
Our black friends and neighbors are already well aware of what Nikita Oliver is saying.
00:45:38 ►
So now it’s time for the rest of us to get on board as we begin to rebuild our world.
00:45:44 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off
00:45:46 ►
from Cyberdelic Space. Namaste, my friends.