Rohadi  0:21  
We are back. What's up everybody Faith in a Fresh Vibe podcast, I'm Rohadi, coming at you from Treaty seven lands in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Or we're going clear across the continent on this one. With my friend Drew heart, Dr. Drew heart. Drew and I met a few years ago, it was a fortuitous connection, I'll talk about it at the very start of this one, two parts in front of you here, friends, and you're going to love the content. It's very apt that these podcasts are coming out in Black History Month in the month of February. Drew's going to share with us some insight about his book, and also some insight about where the church is going tomorrow. That's a really neat conversation we have the book and the conversation about the church will be in part two. Part one is going to introduce drew his work his voice, and we'll learn a little bit more about the political situation. In America, specifically, we're going to talk about activism, and policy development, all these really interesting things. And the awesome layer here for listeners is just the level of wisdom. There's a wealth, a treasure trove of wisdom here from Dr. Hart, find his books, who will be a witnesses, the most recent one. And also trouble I've seen, has come out as a couple years old, and maybe a few years old now. So part one, we get into the nitty gritty of injustice, racialized inequality, ways to fix that. The state of the church. And then part two, we dig into his book. We'll chat a little bit more about a hope for tomorrow. So let's jump in.

Drew and I we met, I was thinking about this was a two or three years ago.

Drew Hart  2:47  
Yeah, was that? I'm not sure if that was was that 2017? Was it? 27? I'm not sure. I'm not sure.

Rohadi  2:56  
whenever it was, yeah. Yeah. That worked out for me. But it, it was good for me. Because when when you go to conferences and things like that, you generally don't get to hang out with Ed Stetzer. Or, you know, whoever the big names are, right? And be like, Hey, would you like to come up for a drink, sir? And Drew and I were like, the two of three people of colour at this conference. Maybe not quite, it was close. So I remember some of your, your your talks pointed to but you're kind of calling out and looking for some familiar faces there. And and they're probably like, three or four black folks. It was a little weird. And I was reminded how white the vineyard was, and as but yeah, and we got to hang out for two, three days, I think. Yep, absolutely. I remember us sitting in a little Irish bar of all bars. In Montreal, and you were going through I thought it was more powerful. After a couple of pints but you were talking about you're using the bar stool and talking about decentering whiteness. And I read it in your book, who will be a witness igniting activism for God's justice, love and deliverance. So welcome to the show. Do you want to intro about your work and who you are and where you are situated right now in the world?

Drew Hart  4:30  
Yeah, so I live on the the stolen lands of the Susquehanna duck which is in central Pennsylvania in the city could now call Harrisburg PA. I teach. I'm an assistant professor of theology at Messiah University and I'm the newly director over a programme called thriving together. Congregations for racial justice and author of two books. Trouble I've seen Changing the way the church views racism, which came out in 2016. And who will be a witness which came out this past spring, September, and married. And I got three little boys. And they're they're rambunctious. And I'm also highly involved in a lot of stuff. I'm a leader in a group called free together, which is here in Harrisburg. It's completely voluntary work that I do. But it brings together an ecumenical group of Christian leaders in our city, working for justice here locally. So I guess that's a good mix of some of the stuff that I do and who I am.

Rohadi  5:40  
What was the new organisation, you're the director of?

Drew Hart  5:45  
That is called thriving together congregations for racial justice, we just got a Lilly grant for $1 million dollars. They called a little league there, Lily, Lily grants. So it's this big Christian foundation that they just have too much money. And so they're always just giving money away for different projects and stuff like that. But we proposed one on race and the church. And we got really, there were actually lots and lots of applicants. So we were grateful that they chose our programme. We'll be working here locally in the community. So it's a regional programme, helping churches understand race and place and how those two fit together in the way that racism has developed racial segregation, racial oppression, exclusion, advantage, disadvantage, all that kind of stuff on a local, regional level, how do we tell our stories locally in more truthful ways? And then how do we engage and so we're going to help churches also not only learn that kind of stuff, but then how to refresh their mission and values and reflect on their own tradition, where they come from, and its own complicity, just a whole bunch of stuff and empower them to get more involved in racial justice work locally. So. So it officially starts in January, but we've already begun, at least, you know, trying to get some administrative work behind the scenes going, and then we'll start launching, getting applicants in this spring and running a cohorts with different folks in our region. And so yeah, we're excited to try to make an impact because you know, the church right now, pretty much certainly throughout the United States, and I imagine just as much in Canada, churches are not being the church. So so we've got to awaken them to the needs and the realities of our time.

Rohadi  7:35  
I think it's easy to point the finger at denominations, and we rightly should the lack of a prophetic voice in the major denominations, the white centred Euro centred denominations are struggling to figure out what it means to respond to injustice, struggling to come up with contemporary responses to the things that matter in the lives of people today. What does that response look like?

Drew Hart  8:03  
It depends on the denomination but yeah, so if you think if you're thinking of like some of the more mainline denominations, absolutely, they'll have some kind of, you know, office or organisation that's doing some of that kind of work. What you see certainly in our region is what happens at the denominational level has almost nothing to do with what's going on at the congregational level, right. And then the evangelical churches, I mean, they don't even they think it's all you know, you know, they think Marxism is the devil incarnate socialism. Yeah. So yeah.

Rohadi  8:40  
I don't even read Marx before,

Drew Hart  8:42  
right? No, they don't, they haven't read it. And when they throw it out, it's not even. And nothing to do with Marxism is just them using a word that they think will scare and stigmatise folks. Right. And so it's this on it's not entering into conversation, as faithful dialogue partners, but it's just the same old stigmatising that white people have been doing for for a very long time.

Rohadi  9:06  
You're called to teach. I know you value that work. You are in the capital of Pennsylvania, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm just working on the geography here. And you teach at a predominantly white college? Is it an Anabaptist? University,

Drew Hart  9:24  
its roots are in the Anabaptist tradition out of the brethren in Christ, which is a little bit more out of all the denominations, the more evangelical of them. And I would certainly say that compared to some of the other Anabaptist universities, it's more evangelical than probably most are. And so it I would say it, well, it's very, one hand it's way more ecumenical than most evangelical colleges that are right here. Like, you can teach. You can be Eastern. We got we've had Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, we have multiple, many Episcopalian and more liberal professors and stuff like that. But the majority of the student body is Evangelical, conservative evangelical. I mean, that's, that's the bread and butter of who attends Christian colleges, right. And so yeah, so that's some of the reality but so there's an Anabaptist light pneus to it. So we don't have like an American flag waving on our campus and any of that kind of stuff, which always, most students don't recognise that till they hear then they got a problem and think that, you know, we're, we're the devil or something. But um, so there's some features that allow us to be a little bit different. It kind of resist some of the religious nationalism, but it's also deeply embedded in those things, just culturally, because of who what bodies find themselves on this campus.

Rohadi  10:50  
How to use in place your body, in many respects, we were talking off air and you were, you were sharing how you took it as a you want to work with and see transformation and every one of your students as they ventured through and predominantly white evangelical students as they ventured through your classes, including classes on Black Theology? How does it like how do you not and you must, how does that not take a toll on the body?

Drew Hart  11:22  
Oh, it absolutely does, right, there's no way to engage white supremacy manifested, especially in a theological dialogue, right? It's always gonna be there. And so yeah, it does. And I mean, a few things that I've done and chosen is number one, like, I live in Harrisburg, in a predominantly black neighbourhood, because it affects people like why do you want to live in Harrisburg, you know, the school districts are struggling. I'm like, I know how to live in a black community and keep my sanity, right among my people. And for my own kids sake, right. But I said, What I don't know is, if I were to live in your neighbourhoods, and allow it to be among your kids, who you're not teaching how to be anti racist, but that the psychological damage that it would do to my kids, right, I don't know how to undo that. But I do know how to operate in a black community. And so I think, for me, being able to have be rooted in spaces where I can be affirmed because of who I am, where I can give, receive and share love, in honest ways, not just being exploited, or used or sees seen as a resource, right, or any of those kinds of things, that those things are really important for me. Because that I'm not naive by this point, I've been in the game for, you know, at least actively engaging in these kinds of conversations for about 15 years. So I understand the, the way that white supremacist space can eat away at you, and you've got to have practices to renew your soul, you got to have community and be rooted in those things. So when I go do that work, I'll give you a little mini story. When I came back, my one of my colleagues, Emerson Palrwy, excellent black biblical scholar, who's also my department. And he, he said, Welcome to the mission field, right. And, and that's how I kind of think about my work, right? So they it's funny, because, you know, evangelicals have their own very diseased way of thinking about missionaries. Right. That is just about colonisation. Really, that's been its legacy. But, but here I see myself offering good news to folks that really need it. And I say they don't know that Jesus said no. Right. And so I'm trying to share and invite them into something much better, a better way of life a better way of being in the world. And so that's some of the work that I see my my role, not just like some professors, you know, there's think, Oh, I just come into the classroom and I don't care what, how people respond, not man. Because I do realise this is the tricky part, even as I say, we want to live in ways, ways of being that dissenter whiteness, I also need white people to die of their whiteness, right to. And so if I'm going to be in that space, then I'm definitely committed to that kind of, I'll call it evangelical work, right? We'll call it that to be a little troublesome. Not that I use evangelical necessarily as a label for myself, but I do although I hang out quite a bit with evangelicals in a whole variety of ways. Even though I mean, we were talking earlier, the book evangelical theology is Liberation and Justice. Right. When I was invited to participate in a book, Andy Smith, she reached out to me and, and I told you know, I don't really use the label, but I'm like, I have no problem being associated with all of y'all because y'all good folks, right? Really good. Mostly evangelicals of colour. And and I teach at it now evangelical institution are predominately evangelical institution. And so that space that I don't mind doing that. So in that kind of what I understand, evangelical to be, in the truest sense is to preach good news of Jesus in his new reign, his new worlds coming, right. And I'm all about that.

Rohadi  15:18  
Yeah, it sounds different in a way, just your posture, engaging with white evangelicalism. Like you're this title of your next book, die of your whiteness. You hang on to that, that yeah, I'll give you that one. You can take that one. Your posture, there isn't so much. Like many POCs and like, almost every, like right now in the world, in the Twitter world was the social media world PLCs especially black folks are once again disappointed by the SP C's, their whatever, seven Presidents of their universities coming out and denouncing critical race theory, right? As if they are surprised by the notion that once again white evangelicals let them down like what do

Drew Hart  16:15  
you expect? I did say actually, so there'll be an episode coming up with like Lisa Sharon Harper and others were actually dialoguing for podcast, okay, so that's gonna be coming, but that's what my whole thing like, look. It's the SPC Southern Baptist like, like, of course, they're the most the traditionally and this is not just this not name calling or anything, but they're the most white supremacist denomination in the United States. Just historically, that's just what they are. It's not a it's not a demonization. It's not stigmatising them. This is just historical fact. And so they've never done so anyway, it's just, of course, that's what they're going to do, right? Because it undermines critical race theory undermines their very being their very way of operating. You can't even make statements like they did if you actually engage critical race theory, because then you'd realise you had excluded all people of colour from the conversation and then expect to control and have everyone fall in line to your terms of debates, your terms of conversation, your your framing of things, right, that's universalizing oneself that's normalising one's own interpretation and experience without engaging in good faith dialogue with others. So, of course, what else do we expect, right? Yeah, I'm sorry.

Rohadi  17:33  
But then you still have within that conversation, the odd person who is I've been, you know, I put in 10 years of my life, and I got chewed up and spat out. And I hear that or see that a lot from PLCs, who have the sense that all things are not right, that they are being demanded to assimilate in some manner within their faith community. But they have this hopefulness, that the more they pour their body and soul into this community, that change is a common. And I feel as though your posture, at least your space a you are fully cognizant of what the space can do for you or will do. But you also don't have a sense of I'm going to save this.

Drew Hart  18:25  
Yeah. Because I mean, at the end of the day, in fact, I'm always i. So one of the challenges I've been thinking about since I came back to teaching because it's just I'm in my fifth year of teaching now is I'm inclined to like I'm activist oriented, right? I'm organising oriented, I'm systems oriented, right. But at the same time, like so I do do some of that stuff while I'm on campus, just because I can't help myself. But I go to the President. So I know, we got to talk about something, you know, I can't help myself, but do that kind of stuff. But at the same time, like I'm always pulling myself back from doing too much there. And I'd rather do way more in my local neighbourhood because at the end of the day, this institution will change when white people want to change, and it will not change. If they don't want to, right, like I'm not going to be their saviour. It doesn't matter how passionate I am about it. And so I'll show up genuine to who I am truthful. But at the same time, like that's some white people's responsibility. That's why I push on how they use students of colour on campus. In terms of scholarships, there's these requirements for, you know, these multicultural scholarships and things that they offer and they and part of it is leadership on campus and all things and, like so. So you want to make student students of colour their responsibility to fix your institution, which they can't do. They don't have the power to anyway, but then, but just the power and the lack of responsibility over whose problem this is and who actually has the power to fix it. I think that we've got to be honest about that. So yeah, so absolutely I'm, I'm very aware of what it is what I can do in that space. And especially I think in terms of in the classroom, that's, that's the space that that I own right? I have some space that control mentorships walking along certain students, those are things that I have a lot of impact and control over. And there's a lot of stuff that I don't, again, I am oriented in some way. So it's not like I'm just hands off, actually, sometimes wish I was a little bit more, because I'm conscious of, you know, how much energy you can get sucked into putting towards an institution that you can't control. And that won't change unless they themselves want to change.

Rohadi  20:45  
Is this your role right now? Is that kind of the it's a good space now, but is that the dream that you have in a predominantly white evangelical space? When it comes to your work?

Drew Hart  20:58  
So it's certainly not my dream, right? It's not like if I were to go to bed and dream up my perfect scenario, that that's what I would come to, that said, like, there's, like, I also am not like, I didn't do a national search for jobs. I was looking at jobs and Philadelphia in Harrisburg, because those are two cities that I have deep roots in, you know, I got community there, I got medicine. And so when I think about just options and what's available, certainly in Harrisburg, I, there's very few other options that are realistic for me. In terms of living here, maybe in Philly as a better job could come up that could entice me, who knows. And so I'm big about community just as much about what job I'm working in. Given that there are some things that are nice about my position, in terms of my actual department itself is top notch, put our biblical and Religious Studies Department up against anybody. It's awesome. And I get to teach what I want, right? I get to teach Black Theology, I get to teach Anabaptist. I teach it, I teach a course called mobilising congregations for justice, right? I mean, like, I can be fully myself in the classroom in that kind of way in terms of coursework, and know that I have department support and even the President's support, right. And so those things I don't take for granted. Even though it's not ideal in many other ways, in terms of just the over, it's not even that I don't mind engaging, even conservative evangelicals. Why? Because, but I do wish that representative, it was a little more ecumenical in terms of the spread and distribution of students, right. But when they make up, I'm gonna make up a number, I'll say, 75% of the student body, that that's going to shape the culture of the institution significantly as well.

Rohadi  22:55  
I really value your, your take and around roots. I just feel that maybe that's the world of academics. But for many of us, we lack a sense of roots in our neighbourhood, around our people around our place. Our churches are like that as well. Some churches, I should say, many, many are operating, especially in the inner city who have been there since the beginning, really understand roots. Yeah, without those roots. And without the stories of the people who have been there, I don't know how you succeed in moving forward towards restoration and reconciliation, even when you started off. And I usually start off the podcast with with just at least acknowledging the land, which is a call back to the stories that that that the land has, like the land doesn't forget the stories that have come before you. That's a powerful narrative, to hang on to. So a failure when you're drawing into both the opportunity that you have to be yourself and also the roots that you have in the two places, they matter and they matter deeply. More of us should come alongside this notion of of of people in place, I think the church would do well to adopt you know, less churches out in the farmer's field and industrial area because that's the cheapest place you could find a build a big box and and more revitalising those those broken down inner city churches. Going back to the conversation there on on what POCs are doing in predominantly white spaces, and I'm just sort of thinking of the typical listener of this podcast. You think it's a lack of an awareness of what's going on around them, of where power structures might be hidden? Or is it something else that So that's giving them this sense of, of unbridled hope in many ways that things could change.

Drew Hart  25:07  
We, it could be some of it could be power analysis, right? I think that we sometimes have unsophisticated ways of analysing and thinking about power and institutional power, right. So we just see who's at the top. That's why, and it's not that who got the top doesn't matter, right? I mean, so we'll use Donald Trump as an example, right? It matters when you have someone like Donald Trump in the past. I mean, he had enormous rhetorical power, and the hegemonic influences that he had, will not be going away anytime soon, right. And that's actually the precisely what we got to keep track of is that the power isn't just in the office, the office has power. But there's also other kinds of effects. That kind of hegemonic lording over others kind of power is only given by the people. Like, people don't give him power, Donald Trump has no power. And so we've got to understand more complex ways, the pillars, that's what I talked about, and who will be a witness are the pillars of power that bolster people. And so if we don't understand what those pillars are, that are upholding any given, let's say, tyrant, right, then you're going to be just aiming at them and not knocking down the pillars that actually sustain, you know, that person is influenced to begin with none less than to talk about things like invisible power and informal power, right? I mean, you get into churches, I always say, you know, yeah, pastor has some power. But oftentimes, there's somebody sitting in that second pew, who would that certain last name, or they, you know, write the big check, or whatever it is, right, or the squeaky wheel, whatever, that they're operating and wielding ignored and in an inordinate amount of power, in that space, and in that community that people don't necessarily realise. Right? And so you people just looking at, oh, this is the polity structure, you got to church board. That's, that's not how communities work. That's how organisms work. And you gotta have a more sophisticated way of understanding how power works. And churches of all places are so naive when it comes to power, and don't like talking about it, having an honest frank conversations about how power is being wielded in spaces. And so same thing, you do take that to institutions. And we have an oversimplified understanding of what the challenges are before us, and what it's going to actually take to change. Now, it's not actually that things can't change, like I'm a, I'm a social change kind of guy, right. And actually believe there's actually things that we can learn from others in terms of what that could look like to actually bring about real true social change, whether it be in the neighbourhood or in an institution, there are things that work that we can try to draw from right, it doesn't guarantee anything, but that are effective practices in general that we can learn from and so but most people are not doing their homework, we're not learning from those who came before us. And so someone gets awakened. And then we just rely only on our own analysis and our own eyes, I'm not drawing from others. And I think that that is unfortunate when we don't stand on the shoulders of those who have come before us.

Rohadi  28:17  
And we don't even have to pull that far back. I think it's easy to just look at the generation or not even behind you, or sometimes beside you of those who have said, Don't do it. You are going to go in and get your ass whipped every day thinking that things can change.

Drew Hart  28:38  
Right? You're gonna be the super Negro that's in the black community, right? You know, there's always that one, they get propped up. But they, you know, anytime there's expectations on a position to change an institution, you're already in trouble. Now, it doesn't mean that you can have a position if there's other things in place, but they've got to do the work. It's not up to the individual to do the work. It's just it just doesn't work that way. It will never work that way.

Rohadi  29:07  
My take on the power structures as you were, were sharing churches, white churches, perhaps any church but white churches, specifically, I don't hold out a tonne of hope that they have the capacity or willingness to bring forward systemic change where these both white churches but rooted in white denominations and the systems of power that have maintained them can switch into a space of becoming diverse. That is different than becoming a more justice oriented or even perhaps becoming anti racist as a congregation. But I don't think they can make that shift into that being safe and diverse spaces because those power structures are so deep. You know, maybe I I'm being too harsh, but

Drew Hart  30:03  
there's some that can become more diverse. But they but then you added the safe word, right? So there are institutions that know how to bring people in and then eat them alive. But they all do. Right. Right, but not diverse and anti racist simultaneously. Very few are doing that. Right. I think about so on Evangelical Church side, there's only one denomination that at least seems to be struggling with this in any kind of meaningful way. And that's the evangelical Covenant Church, right? That's the only one that I see struggling with it at all. And so they are a I think they're a majority white denomination, but they're, but they have a large racial minority, you know, demographic in that denomination and many powerful leaders of colour across certainly the United States in that denomination. And they have, you know, so dominant Juilliard, who wrote rethinking incarcerate incarceration, right. He's the director of racial righteousness and stuff like that. And so they do have something. And so that's the only denomination I even see struggling in genuine ways with some of these things. They're not a perfect denomination, anybody that if you talk to them, they'll they'll tell you, they've got all kinds of challenges and issues that they're dealing with themselves as well. But outside of that, I can't even think of any other white evangelical denomination that even cares, nonetheless, oh, you know, please. I mean, they just don't care about it. And so and then if you go on the mainline side, yeah, I think that they're more likely to have justice stuff in place. But they're not willing to die to their whiteness enough to become something else, right. They're too committed to how they go about being, you know, whether be Lutheran or Episcopalian, or Presbyterian and calling out names. Now. They're, they love their own ways of being more than they love joining in and becoming something else and belonging with their brothers and sisters in Christ.

Rohadi  32:03  
They love to be progressive, but they're not too interested in ultimately breaking down the power systems within their own spaces. And an evangelical Same thing here. Same thing here, it's probably because they're all rooted in their, their dad's religion from America. But evangelicals have barely touched the surface around indigenous relationships. Oh, yeah. And and mainline are certainly far further ahead. And all these aspects, but again, the power systems, they're never going to shift beyond their whiteness, they would they would sooner die, which is fine, then then shift it, which is why all of them. But evangelicals in particular, when may 2020, rolled around, and congregations at least, and it might have been generational, but congregations are starting to press for some type of response to the calls towards justice, racialized justice calls against anti blackness. They had no response. And they just had nothing in there. You're kind of looking behind them and realising what what what do we what do we do? This is not a conversation that they had had. And in many ways, and this will sound very crass, but COVID gave them a cover to let this thing blow by and not respond. Yeah, that's to crass

Drew Hart  33:37  
And and I would say there were some churches, there were some leaders that were trying to speak up for the very first time, but it was clear that they had never thought about it before. I don't if you remember the whole white blessings scandal of I don't know, it was just over the summer, whatever. And if you missed that one or not, no,

Rohadi  33:54  
yeah, yeah. That one whoosh.

Drew Hart  33:56  
Okay, thank you. Better for for not knowing. But I'll give you the breakdown. There's this. There's a some famous people having an online conversation on race, people that should not be leading conversations on race, because they had never done the work. And one, what's your one pastor? He's talking about slavery. And he didn't want to use the word white privilege, right? So he says that white people have gains white blessings from slavery, because he was trying to he was trying to Christianize it. That was the interesting part. Right? He wanted to Christianize the language. And so he called it white blessings instead of white privilege. And of course, there was all kinds of blowback on him. But what I actually felt was more interesting, I said, you missing actually, what's really more fascinating in this whole conversation is he actually use white blessings in the very way that most Christians use blessings. He's actually he's actually just exposing the logics, right? That the way he uses blessings is that it's material, it's the gains and everything. So Have you you have wealth, you have the big house, you have all these things, you're blessed by God. Right? I mean that he's consistent. He's not using it wrong. He's actually using in the evangelical sense the right way. He's exposing the problematic way in that, that the logics of divine blessing in white evangelical mindset. And white Christianity probably, in general, has been co opted up in a colonised imagination, that can't see the the death dealing ways that that resources and wealth have been exploited and have been stolen from others, right. And so, so for me, that's more that's more the more interesting story, aside from his slip, oops, right, I let it out the bag is that he's actually exposing that his understanding of blessings is actually contrary to the way of Jesus where the poor are blessed. Right, the hungry are blessed. It's actually an inverse of all those things. So that's, that's the real powerful story that I think that most people miss, because they're just upset that he, he used the coded light language at the wrong time, right. It's a blessings during slavery, you're just supposed to talk about when you get the bigger house, right?

Rohadi  36:13  
That's he is merely matching the gaze, the expectation of the white male gaze, in our world, that those those things at the very top, you're supposed to find something that matches, you talk about that in your book on reimagination of what's not a reimagination a recall to a new set of economics. Yeah, I remember econ 101, my first degrees in economics and the base of the of our existence in capitalism, at least, the base is supply and demand, and a race to the bottom to produce scarce resources. So all resources are scarce. First day, if you don't understand all resources are scarce. And we're racing to the bottom to produce as fast as we can to make profit, then the rest of the system falls apart. And everyone's utility is based on that production model. That's why so many people are so tired and COVID in this pandemic world, because we're wondering, A, we're wondering, Am I supposed to be doing more right now? And be some people are merely trying to produce enough utility to survive within the system? What a messed up world, man, this it is.

Now, I remember the white blessing now. Thanks for reminding me.

Drew Hart  37:59  
Yeah, we got to sit with that, I think. But yeah, I mean, I think it changes it distorts a whole value system. I mean, that's what Dr. King was saying, we needed to undergo a radical revolution of values, to move from a profit oriented society to a people oriented society. No, I think oriented society to a people oriented society. But it is in our capitalist system, we value profits over people, right. And we'll exploit them and use them and squeeze them out for all the labour meanwhile, not, you know, giving fair livable wages to people who are doing all the work. So people are struggling people are trying to squeak by and and if you're still being exploited by the system, but also believing in the system itself, then it's just also perpetuating it. And so sometimes even our own communities that are impacted, most sometimes don't even realise that the system is rigged against us. It was never designed for us to succeed.

Rohadi  38:56  
Hmm. And not rigged in and you might process that and say in what single manner it's not one manner. The system is rigged. There are multiple different rigging spaces in places. Yeah, it's one big racket, right? Of Yeah, yeah. The the transfer of, of social costs, or rather costs for underpaying your workers is is what's so clever. The way that corporations are, that system will transfer the cost into the social purse. Right? That's a vicious never ending cycle. Yeah. I wonder then, to what manner the church can really come on board here and make a difference. So let's take a jump then into parts of your book. There is a role in a place where activism comes into play that the church can now embody features of activism to elicit change in their midst, but then there's also where I tend to fall And I wonder if it's cultural, but I'm still processing this in the policy development, or policy shifting. Now that they do have a connection at some point, in what manner does activism lead into systemic changes? I think we can do large, so big, huge systemic shifts and also say smaller neighbourhood ones seems easier to do small. But

Drew Hart  40:29  
yeah, so number one, I would say not all activism was created equally, right. So not all activism leads to change, right? I mean, and so I would say, beware of activism. And this goes back to not being rooted in anything, right? Because so if you just wake up, you just realise the problem, you're like, Alright, so I'm gonna be an activist, and I'm gonna get on Facebook, and I'm gonna get people together, we're gonna have a rally, you know, the next day. Alright, so we have a rally, all right, everyone, everyone's gets to say their thing. And then everyone goes to home separate ways. And maybe we're still riled up. So we do that way, two more times and stuff. And then that's it. Right? And nothing has really changed. Maybe people a little bit more passionate, I don't know. But but but it's not there's nothing strategic about what was being done. It's just activism because we know we should be active. But we don't know how we should be active. But I think that there are, there's there is activism that is deeply committed to social change, right, to changing policies and institutions and practices and the ways that we the narratives and stuff like that, that shape our lives. That end of it is always thinking about its end goal, what are we working towards? What's this new world that we're working towards? And how do we get there? What kind of policies and what's the narrative and all that kind of stuff? That's work that has to be done on the ground? And I would say, and maybe this so being coming from, you know, the African American community here in the United States, like, we, you know, for the for the majority of our history, we didn't have access to even voting, right? I mean, you go back 1850, it's not a matter of, oh, we're going to vote in what we want to try to get there. That's just not even an option. But black people are not sitting around twiddling their thumbs because of that, right. They're organising their act, the pamphlets, abolitionist that. So they're doing all the work still, right? After slavery is done, you know, for another 100 years, right? We don't have the majority of African Americans are still disenfranchised, don't have access and resources to engage in the kind of standard channels of social change through the electoral politics and things like that. But they're not sitting around, right? They're actually on the ground, doing all the work, creating organisations and stuff to make social change happen. And do so in fact, what often remind black folk today is what we forget is we now put so much weight on just the electoral system. Not all black folks. But there's a large percentage that do today. And forget the very thing, the means that actually got us the votes. Right. That's, that's really the more interesting thing is that we forget the very grassroots strategies that actually got us the vote. And we and we kind of watered down and domesticate our memory of how we got so we just think, oh, yeah, Dr. King, and there were some marches. Right. And so that's why today, I think that's why we have such superficial activism today. It's because just think about, oh, yeah, we just gotta have a rally in a march. No, there's organising it's strict strategy, its planning, its re strategizing is, you know, it's actually you got to put in some work, you got to be creative, right? You got to resist. So my ideal would be is that those things can converge. It's not that we actually need some folks engaging at the policy level, or at least at the very minimum, people in good faith that will respond to the people, right. So it doesn't work under a Trump, right? You don't have a good faith person that's going to respond. So let's say like, I don't have high opinions of of Joe Biden, but I do think that he can be pushed into better positions than he is. Right. That's, that's his potential, right? Not that he comes with with good policy. That's the maybe that's the maybe but I do think organisations that are on the ground in grassroots work can push him to better positions. And so I think that that's where some of that organising work can be really powerful in particular moments. But anyway, there's a whole bunch of different strategies and ways that people do that work. So it has to be policy oriented, right? We have to be thinking about the ways that we structure our society, the ways that it how we organise our society and how it impacts people's lived experiences every day. That has to be, you can't lose sight of that. Just rallying just for the sake of rallying is not going to get the work done that we want.

Rohadi  44:56  
There seems to be two critical features here. At least in In this in our conversation surrounding activism and policymaking, ultimately to elicit some form of systemic change, or some manner of of change. The first one around activism is is you use the word strategic. That requires, however, in some senses is ironic, but it requires a level of centralization of movements, movements being very decentralised grassroots, but it requires some sense. Yeah, both structure but particularly around a centralization of messaging. What are you calling for? And what is the dream and hope that you're striving towards? Absolutely. Or you'll get a an Occupy? You know, that's why occupy failed? What did it stand for? I still don't know,

Drew Hart  45:52  
though I do argue that occupy was a little bit more than what it because I do think if you think about Occupy, I do think it failed, because it needed more structure, right? I think it would have been stronger. But I will say this, like, even even a short lived, but long enough sustained movement helped to change some narrative discourse so that in the United States, probably not as much in Canada and United States. I mean, we're just, I mean, there was just no conversation around poverty. It was all about the people talking about the wealthy owners and stuff like that. And they're talking about the middle classes. That's what Paulo that's what politicians did, right, the middle class. And it was for the very first time that a broader mainstream conversation actually happened where we could say, the top 1% No one was naming that the top or the bottom 40% have the same wealth as the top one, you know, like, these are things that are would introduce new to the mainstream rhetoric that actually created I'd say, the possibility for like Bernie Sanders to run right, or things like that. So I do so even movements that could have been organised better, right. I do think that movements can do more in terms of the cultural moment shifting, and taking advantage of a cultural moment in ways that same thing, I would say, Me too, right. I mean, they there were some many legal things and stuff that was going on. But it was more of a cultural movement that has shaped new conversations and discourses. So I don't completely even though I'd want to see more organisation and some of that kind of stuff, more structure, more aligned goals and more focus. But but even there's a place for protest movements to even when they're short lived, and there weren't, they're not well organised, right, so long as they're more than just three rallies, right. But if there's something else that they're tapping into, because sometimes it's not even about it, sometimes it's just the inertia of the moment, there's a cultural moment and an opportunity that's there. And at the very minimum, we need to at least stand up and be present for that moment. And that can sometimes create something more than any of us are even imagining. Yeah.

Rohadi  48:10  
Now that you bring that up, the narrative absolutely did shift, I would be curious to know, because that's what we remember the 1% versus the 99%. Right, where that will originated from. And what whether or not all the fragmented groups had They latched on to some semblance of messaging would have sustained themselves into into something else. I wonder then, if the current and now we have social media picking up in May now largely accomplished the same thing when it came to at least shifting narratives surrounding systemic racism, like who said anti or even used anti racism before other than activists. And now suddenly, there's been a massive shift at least in for for white folks.

Drew Hart  49:04  
I mean, that's the whole Southern Baptists. They don't care about critical race theory, but also in that word, and it's seen a threat that's strong enough of a momentum and a narrative shift that they see it now as a threat to themselves. Right? Well, just, you know, go six months before that. They're not worried about critical race theory. President Trump isn't worried about critical race theory before that, right. And so there's actually something powerful about that. We've got people on their heels. I mean, that's really what it is. Some folks are on their heels. Because so I do think in fact, this is my one critique of Kendi's work, right? How to be anti racist stuff like that is and some anti racist is stopping it seeing the policy level as the highest level. Yeah. But is that culture in the narrative is actually the highest then policy, right? That's what I would say some of the work that we have to do is shift the narrative And the cultural narrative, that American exceptionalism, right, that's the, it's about cultural narrative, you shift that all of it's easy to put other things in place if you can shift that narrative, right? And so that it's powerful. These things shape people's sense of identity and meaning in the world and everything. I mean, grounds them, it gives them an interpretation of everything that they understand and make sense of. And so we can't only think about policy change, we've got to hit that narrative level. Yeah.

Rohadi  50:30  
The aspects of Kendi's work, don't challenge the systems that can that operate behind that that dude in the second pew? Yeah, it's not calling or it's not even. I'm sure he does later on or another work calling out and naming the systems that are placed underneath that are propping up and pushing policy development and makers to act in the manners that they do. Which, as if we were to connect activism and policymaking, as you were sharing the story on voting and voting rights, there is an aspect of we simply have so many white folks in it as policymakers that too, we still have to wait another generation or two before we have more voices. This could be different in the States than it is in Canada right now. But you see in the slow shift have more black and brown faces in places of power. But that's still not a guarantee of whether or not they will upset a system. They could very much still uphold power systems, and the alert of the overarching narratives of whatever might be exceptionalism. Right? Black and brown people can do that too. Slowly. Absolutely.