a16z Podcast: The Power of Restorative Justice

with Van Jones (@VanJones68), Shaka Senghor (@ShakaSeghnor), and Chris Lyons (@clyons) True redemption can be hard to come by in our justice system today. And yet, we need it more than ever before. In this episode (based on an event hosted by Andree...

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I'm Chris Lyons and I lead the Culture Leadership Fund here at Andreessen Horowitz, a strategic investment vehicle that connects the world's greatest cultural leaders to the best new technology companies. This segment of the A16Z Podcast was based on an event hosted by the CLF in which we featured a special early screening of Van Jones's new series, The Redemption Project, followed by a fireside chat between Van Jones and Shaka Senghor. The Redemption Project is an eight-part series that looks at victims' families in a life-altering crime as they come together to actually meet their offender in hopes of finding personal healing or peace. It's a rare glimpse into the US prison system and also the incredible human potential for redemption through restorative justice.

• 0:42Speaker 00

  In this episode, Jones brought together a police officer who was shot and the man who committed the crime decades earlier when he was only 17 years old. In addition to the conversation between Van and Shaka, you'll also hear two spoken-word performances. Both artists are formerly incarcerated inmates who have contributed to The Beat Within, an organization and publication that serves over 5,000 youth annually through workshops operated across California County juvenile halls and encourages literacy, self-expression, healthy, and supportive relationships with adults from their community. First off, we'll open up with Kevin Gentry performing his piece, "My Heart." And please note, there is some profanity in mature material in this episode.

• 1:24Speaker 01

  For all intents and purposes, this piece, I loosely call it a piece, it's more a letter and the recipients of which are going to become readily apparent as I read this. "Excuse me, I'm sorry. May I please have just a few minutes of your time to say how much I'm sorry for destroying your life?" Strong words that fall so short I can only imagine. "How can I, especially I, even begin to measure the impact of what I've done? The loss, the pain, the emptiness, the sorrow, the guilt, what ifs, if onlys." Is that a good start? Maybe, I don't know.

• 2:05Speaker 01

  For so long, I have dreamt of just how, what to say, the right words, but everything just feels so flat. So now, here I am, resigned to having faith in the process, releasing my heart to you through the words, praying that they will do, sparing even the slightest amount of any additional hurt. In no way did you deserve these years of torment, the anguish, the pain, the emptiness, perhaps even bearing the burden of having to be strong for others when support was the furthest thing from your mind. You didn't deserve such a fate. I'm sorry. Sorry that on that faithful day, I largely treated others like I felt, empty and devoid of any value.

• 2:50Speaker 01

  I saw your loved one as an object, though human, an obstacle to my hopes and dreams, hopes and dreams of belonging and feeling relevant in the eyes of others, relevance so unattainable it seemed for so long, so empty, such a void, I felt barren to the core. My attempts to self-heal, I thought was perfecting. If I get more, I'll be more. Value was in the "more." Irrelevance was in the "not." Ingenious, I believe, back then. Feel bad, feel with stuff, feel good, but not for long. Hmm, try again. Something's wrong.

• 3:32Speaker 01

  The pattern I repeated, a revolving door in my life. Try to feel, feeling full, just temporary. Once again, feeling empty setting in. The right in expectation that a life, his life, our lives, should be unrestrained and unimpeded by the untrue, self-defeating and outwardly destructive thoughts and behavior of someone just as me. To stand in the way with an idea, a belief, and some time. To cowardly step with hollow purpose to fill a void that was never real. Your loved one, so deserving of everything good, unaffected by me. Unfortunately, there wasn't me.

• 4:15Speaker 01

  But thank God, there is also you, through which his life still lives. Through the memories and lessons and love, the affection and joy and promise and hope, and countless other memories, I'm sure, though I cut them way too short. Now illuminated to the precious sanctity of life, the gift of the beauty and purpose that lies within us all. Staying ever mindful that I will never grasp the gravity of the destruction I caused you that day. I stay primed and fueled to walk boldly, purposefully, into any and every venue to answer my call. To carry his memory in my heart to others with a message of life, of promise, even

• 5:00Speaker 01

  on the lowest rung, to all. Hope is eternal, believe it. A bright future can spring from even the darkest past. The words that I now utter, I do so to breathe life into those who may feel that they have gasped for last.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  And now we'll hear from Van Jones and Shaka Sinigor. Shaka was most recently the executive director of the Anti-Cidicism Coalition, a New York Times bestselling author for his memoir, Writing My Wrongs: Life, Death, and Redemption in an American Prison, and star of the highly anticipated one-man show. Van Jones is an American news commentator, author, co-founder of several nonprofit organizations including Reform and Yes We Code, host of The Van Jones Show, and co-host of CNN's political debate show Crossfire. Their conversation is all about the redemption project, the American prison system, and how he can normalize rehabilitation and restorative justice in our culture.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  The journey toward redemption is one, I understand, on a very personal level. And you and I, we've been friends for a while, and we've had a chance to talk about, you know, what does redemption look like for people? What is something that you would say really stood out to you? As a lesson that we can all take away to create space for redemption to happen.

• 6:29Speaker 03

  Doing this whole series has changed me in ways I haven't really caught up to yet. You know, now when I'm on TV and we're supposed to be tearing each other up over some tweet or some other nonsense that's going on, which is terrible stuff, but I have a hard time getting as petty and shitty as you have to be to do good television.

• 6:57Speaker 03

  And jeopardizing my career, I have to figure out some way to get petty again.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  I have some answers for you.

• 7:08Speaker 03

  That one was the hardest one for me to do because my dad used to be a cop.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  And my Uncle Milton just retired from Memphis City Police Force a couple of years ago. And so that one was hard work for me. As much as I do criminal justice stuff and as much as I've like, you know, been against police brutality, that's always your fear when you have a family member who's a cop. And you can see me struggling in this episode to be my usual sort of like open self. Like I was really tight, you know, I was really trying, but I wasn't succeeding in this episode. And I told Jason, I said, I don't think this is gonna go well. Tom has admitted that he's got racial bias.

• 7:55Speaker 02

  That was powerful.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Which was a big deal.

• 7:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 7:58Speaker 03

  You know, this is a, this is not gonna go well. This is gonna be a shit show. And I guess one has to go terribly. Like that was basically my view. And so I didn't have any hope in that one. I was just waiting for him to come out and, you know, say some stuff that wasn't gonna work. And as soon as the door opened, just something changed. Both of them became something different than they had been up until the moment they saw each other. Something fell away and, you know, between men, there's almost always some shielding in a patriarchal society.

• 8:38Speaker 03

  Like, you'll tell a woman you just met more than you'll tell your homeboy, you've known for 20 years, about how you actually feel. You know, it's just the trap. And between white and black people, it's always a lot of gulf. And between cops and black people, it's like planetary levels of gulf. And it all just disappeared. And you saw these two guys, who had literally tried to kill each other last time they saw each other, have this conversation that I bet they couldn't have with any other human being. And I haven't processed it. And there's a lot of stuff in this series I haven't processed.

• 9:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I can imagine. I struggled with this episode. You know, I've watched a few episodes. I've actually struggled with all of them. And, you know, for those who may not know my story, I was convicted of second-degree homicide. And while I was in prison, I got into an altercation and I punched an officer in the neck and almost killed him. The family of the man whose life I'm responsible for taking, one of them reached out to me and extended a letter of forgiveness during my incarceration. The officer that I got into the conflict with in prison advocated for me to die in solitary confinement.

• 10:06Speaker 02

  And so as I've done this work over the years, that's one of the areas of my life I haven't been able to reconcile. So watching Jason come out and seeing that through the lens of his 17-year-old self.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  And knowing where he was back then. And knowing that I was him back then. And I'm thinking about this larger conversation that this is presenting to the world. About how do we see what's possible? You know, I've got out of prison, I've been out of prison almost nine years now. I've been highly successful and been able to do a lot of work in this space and prevent acts of violence in communities throughout the country. But the reality is, for many men like Jason, like myself, society just says, wash our hands of them, they're broken, they're beyond repair, throw them away, let them die in prison.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  And one of the things that's really struck me was that restorative justice gives space for people who have been hurt by the Jasons of the world to have their say. And we saw what happens when you create space for that. You know, Tom's a remarkable man, Christie is extraordinary woman. And the courage that they exhibited was honest. You know, she went from, you know, I want them to die in prison because we can't kill them, or because of a particular crime, to forgiveness. And so as we think about this show, how do we amplify that part of the message? How do we get people to understand that people do change in a very real way?

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Well, look, I mean, part of the, um, part of what's crazy about this show is that it exists at all. You know, CNN has put this at nine o'clock on Sundays, which is prime time, and that's Anthony Bourdain's slot.

• 12:02Speaker 02

  Against Game of Thrones now.

• 12:04Speaker 03

  I bet.

• 12:10Speaker 03

  So they either really like it, or they really don't.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Man, bro.

• 12:18Speaker 03

  Our idea was we wanted to do media that would be healing, that would be positive, that would be transformative. And, you know, living in Hollywood and all that, you know, you get a lot of side-eye looks at you when you talk that way, as you know. And until you actually can produce something that makes the point, you're just one of those people talking in a cafe that everybody like rolls their eyes at, which is about half the population of LA. Luckily, Jana's best friend from college, Antonia, is married to a guy named Jason Cohen. Jason Cohen is the guy that did Facing Fear, that Oscar-nominated film about a former US neo-Nazi who reconciled with his victim of violence.

• 13:02Speaker 03

  So, Jason, having done that film, I said, "Hey, let's do this. Let's do this kind of a series." So, we just went totally renegade. You know, CNN, I'm not allowed to do anything without their permission on camera, but we just went totally renegade, shot something. It wasn't a good idea.

• 13:21Speaker 02

  Let me stop you there, Ryan. So, you, basically what you're saying is that you were willing to compromise your career.

• 13:29Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:30Speaker 02

  You're standing on something you've worked long and hard for. Most people would, you know, who talk a lot, especially people on social media, they would love to be on CNN, sharing their opinions and views and thoughts.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  And you were willing to sacrifice or compromise that because you felt so strongly about the importance of this mission.

• 13:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, but, yeah. Because who gives a shit? If we're gonna just be up here, I mean, you're the same way. I mean, you could, people in this room are the same way. Look.

• 14:03Speaker 02

  I might not quit my job.

• 14:07Speaker 03

  And you're about to.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  I got a seven-year-old. I shouldn't do nothing.

• 14:11Speaker 03

  But honestly, like, that's how we got the messy truth on the air. I think it's a very important point is that we have to take chances. I mean, for me, I felt like this is the moment. I feel like criminal justice reform is finally becoming a mainstream conversation. The problem that we have right now is that there's a level that people won't go to. So we can have the conversation about innocence, right? And that's an important conversation because that begins to chip away at people's confidence in the system that innocent people are being put away in prison. So that was, used to be risky to say that people, that our system, our American system is putting people to death who are innocent. That was radical, but we've been able to establish that. Then we went to the nonviolent drug offenders.

• 14:55Speaker 03

  They're guilty, but they're guilty of stuff that you did in college, so why are they in prison? Or maybe you did this weekend. So, don't raise your hand. And so now that's been established. But then the way, the danger is that then, well, okay, but if you're not innocent and if you're not nonviolent, well, then we really don't have to care about you at all. And we have all these funerals in the community and we have all this harm and we can't talk about it. And I said, this true crime genre has to be hacked and used for something positive because true crime, on the left wing, it's about exoneration, like, who done it? Well, we gotta exonerate the person because they're actually innocent. Or, on the right wing, it's, you know, catch a killer.

• 15:40Speaker 03

  But true crime as a who-done-it genre doesn't get to the truth because a lot of times we know who did it. And we already know who did it. It's about the truth long after the crime, which is that growth is possible for people who have done harm and healing is sometimes impossible for people who've been harmed because of separation, because we don't let people actually eventually come back together. And so I say it was worth the risk. And so we did it. It was a little bit nuts. We showed it to CNN. Look, that day, when we did the first one, I literally, I cried so hard when it was over that my nose started bleeding, like, because my blood pressure was so high. It was just such an intense thing to see a man who had killed someone's mother sit

• 16:22Speaker 03

  down with the daughter 20 years later and try to explain. And we showed that to CNN. And at that point, you know, we had no other... People to go talk to. It wasn't like there's thousands of people for us to go talk to. But CNN said if you can find more, shoot it. So we shot it. Why am I saying all this? I'm saying this to say that, from my point of view, we're at a point where those of us who have privilege, earned or otherwise, those of us who have positions of power, those of us who have positions where, you know, people have to listen to what we say, we have to push. Phaedra Ellis Lampkins is here.

• 17:02Speaker 03

  And she's an African-American entrepreneur in the tech space, female. You know, they say that's like a plaid unicorn or something like, you know, that's not even supposed to exist in Fantasyland. And yet, she's building a company called Promise, pushing technology to solve some of these problems in the community and winning. Right? You know, she doesn't have to do that. She could have taken an easy job and not tried, or put together a company to like, you know, make, you know, I don't know, pictures or something, I don't know. But she's doing the hard thing the hard way for the right reasons. So, all I'm saying is this. The culture, this is not a show about criminal justice, first of all.

• 17:47Speaker 03

  We have to market it that way and promote it that way, but it's not about that. It's about humanity. All of us have done something that we profoundly regret and don't have any way to apologize for. All of us have had something done to us that's hard to get past. And the stakes are higher in our show. But this is humanity. This is the human condition. And yet, in our culture, empathy is no longer trendy. Compassion is no longer trendy. It's about the cancel culture, the call-out culture. And it's poison. This is the human condition. We have to be able to listen to each other, to forgive each other, to hold each other, to help each other. But that's not fashionable. And so, we want to put some medicine back in the culture.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  This show is our attempt to put some medicine back in the culture. And a little bit of medicine can go a long way. And so, you know, that's what we're trying to do.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  I really want to push the envelope a little bit. It's eight episodes.

• 18:47Speaker 03

  Yes, sir.

• 18:48Speaker 02

  Reconciliation, restorative justice happening, right? In small pockets throughout the country, some prisons are a lot more progressive with creating space for that. But the reality is, it doesn't happen for everybody. So a lot of men, I work with men and women every day that come home from prison. As Executive Director of Anti-Racism Coalition, our staff is comprised, 54% of system impacted men that come out of prison. A lot of them have armed robberies, homicides, attempted murder. I have scores of friends who are coming home after the War on Drugs campaign. Thousands of men and women come home every day who have served 15, 20, 30 years in prison.

• 19:33Speaker 02

  They haven't gone through a restorative justice process. Because for years, our prison system was designed for nothing more than punishment. And as somebody who was deeply immersed in that environment, and I know the type of works it takes to get there, right? I know what it takes to transform a life. I can honestly say I was super blessed and fortunate, because I was actually literate when I went to prison. And so I was able to read books that inspired me. I was able to read Malcolm and read Mandela and read books about personal transformation and these things, right? And then I put the work in. That's not the norm in prison. This is not the norm in prisons throughout the country.

• 20:12Speaker 02

  And so one of the things that I'm always thoughtful about is like, how do we normalize restorative justice? How do we normalize redemption? You know, when you watch somebody in their worst moment, it's one of the things that I love that, you know, Sheriff Tom spoke about is that he met him in his worst moment. He met Jason in his worst moment, right? But he was also in his worst moment. And now we have many men and women coming home and I deal with them all the time and they're broken and they haven't been able to make peace, you know, as we think about the victim and them working through their trauma. But there's also work that those of us who perpetrated a violent crime have to do on our own.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  And, and when I say on our own, oftentimes on our own because in most cases, we're scary. People are afraid, like you, you've killed another human being. I don't know if I can trust when you're upset or when you're angry or when you, um, things aren't going your way that you won't react in that manner again. So how do we create a space where there's more honesty about what's really not working? We know about the policies and things like that, right? Uh, but once the policies work, there's real human beings coming home with deep, deep trauma. You know, my first 10 years in prison, you know, I was in solitary my second year and I ended up in solitary my seventh year that extended to my 11th year.

• 21:38Speaker 02

  So I did a total of seven years in, in hell and it was fortunate to have that breakthrough. But what about the men and women who don't have space to reconcile their past? And what do we, what is, what is our responsibility? Ultimately, I guess the question is, what is our societal responsibility when it comes to welcoming those men and women home in a healthy way?

• 22:01Speaker 03

  You know, I think this is the key question for American society. I don't have an answer, but it's, it's the key question. You know, we have people, it's become almost numb to throw out the numbers, but we have the biggest incarceration industry in the world here in the United States, trafficking in human flesh, trafficking in human bodies. On the stock exchange, you have private prison companies that get more money the more people who are locked up. And there's no business model in de-incarceration. The business model is in incarceration. But I mean, what I do know is this, this is a political problem, kind of. It's a policy problem, kind of. It's an economic problem, kind of.

• 22:45Speaker 03

  It's a spiritual problem. For sure. Absolutely. It's a spiritual problem. And separation is the enemy. That's the problem. And unfortunately, you have now both political parties preaching separation and superiority. Those red state people, those bigots, those idiots, those Trump voters, they are terrible. You know, it's almost like, you know, we in the blue, you know, we are good, they're bad. And it's almost like a colonial thing. Like, the people in the red state, these unwashed heathens, you know, that need to be conquered and converted to the NPR religion, you know?

• 23:25Speaker 03

  And, you know, and force-fed some kale, you know, until they can, you know, rise up to our level of civilization. I mean, like, this is how people talk. Separation and superiority, and then, of course, you know how the other side does. And so, for me, it's a spiritual problem. Separation is the enemy. And so, I have discovered all these diamonds behind those prison walls. Absolutely. No pressure, no diamonds. There are diamonds behind those walls, there are people behind those walls that are much wiser, much braver, much stronger, much more creative than 99.99% of people who are on the outside.

• 24:05Speaker 03

  When I worked in the Obama White House, on a Friday, I was at San Quentin doing my work, and then on Monday, I was in the Obama White House reporting for work. So, I went from the jailhouse to the White House in 72 hours. And even under the Obama administration, the smartest people in the Obama administration were no smarter than the smartest people at San Quentin. But the wisest people at San Quentin were wiser than anybody in Washington, DC. All I know is that I have to tell the truth as I see it. Absolutely. And part of it is, you know, telling people, "Look, I went to Yale Law School. I saw more kids doing drugs at Yale than I ever saw doing drugs in Housing Project."

• 24:50Speaker 03

  Period. And none of those kids even saw a police officer. If they got in trouble, they went to rehab or France.

• 25:00Speaker 03

  They sure didn't go to prison. And yet, four or five blocks away, those kids, you know, doing fewer drugs because they had less money and selling fewer drugs because they were dealing with a different clientele. They almost all, at least, got arrested if they didn't go to prison. And yet, now, we sit here and say, "Well, I can't, my god, I can't hire you. You're a drug felon."

• 25:23Speaker 03

  You know what I mean? So, the hypocrisy of a society where almost everybody's addicted to something and nobody can survive. Think about this, these phones we carry around. If I told you right now that for the past three months, we have been audiotaping and videotaping everything you've been doing, and we're now about to show it on this screen, you would run out of here. Because none of us are as good all the time as we're supposed to be.

• 25:52Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 25:52Speaker 03

  And nobody wants to be defined by their worst moment or their worst mistake, as you've said many times. And so, for me, I don't know. But I do know that everybody in here has a lot of power in the matter. And everybody in here has a lot of ability to turn it. And I think it's trying to happen. I think the fact that this many people are here, the fact that CNN put this up, I think it's trying to happen. You know, your voice, Pika Sam's voice, Louis Reed's voice, the voice of people who are, you know, directly impacted, people who are coming out of prison. You're right, everybody doesn't come out of prison as whole as you. Everybody doesn't come out of prison and have Oprah as their best friend.

• 26:36Speaker 03

  In fact, most people who haven't gone to prison don't have those things.

• 26:39Speaker 02

  So, art as a tool to shift culture, how important is art and technology towards shifting this larger idea culturally?

• 26:53Speaker 03

  You know, the opposite of humanization is criminalization.

• 26:57Speaker 03

  If you can criminalize a whole population of people, everybody in the neighborhood is bad. All the people from that racial group are bad. If you can criminalize a whole population, then you dehumanize them and then anything can be done. And people won't respond to it as if it's my child. Nobody says, "Oh, my God, my child's on drugs? Give him 17 years in prison." Nobody says that. People say, "My child needs help." And so, what I would say is that the opposite of criminalization, though, is humanization. And so, art and technology, which helps us to humanize and spread these stories, is really critical.

• 27:34Speaker 02

  Thank you. Hey, salute y'all. We love y'all.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  All right. One more round of applause for Shaka Van.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  Now, we'll enjoy a performance by Missy Hart, who will share an amazingly powerful piece called "Bloom," a trilogy. And the titles of the three different poems are "Just Us," "The Dream," and "What's Your Seed."

• 28:02Speaker 04

  Before I share these pieces, I want to share a little, well, share a big part of myself. And I feel it's really important to really paint a picture of the power of healing and redemption and creative art therapies. I'm from North Elkswood City, California. It's not too far from here. My beautiful struggle began when my father committed suicide before I was two. So, I was raised by my strong, single mother, who had to work multiple jobs. She came up out the gang culture as well. And not just working jobs, but taking care of my grandmother, who was mentally ill. But most of the time, it was me and my brother taking care of her. So, I had to grow up really fast. And during that time, you know, growing up in the streets and, you know, trying to find my identity. You know, we all go through those times, trying to find our identity. And being biracial and a lesbian, growing up in the late 90s, early 2000s, I tried to find my place, you know, and I found my place in the streets.

• 28:46Speaker 04

  And I started gangbanging when I was 10. And being a girl smaller than everyone else, I had to go hard, you know. In the streets, you either go, you were all in or you're not. You're just, you're not going to survive. So, you know, I was fully committed, went all in, caught my first case when I was 11, when they just passed POP 21. And then I went to the system. When I was 13, I started writing for the Bee. And the Bee really gave, gave me a voice, gave me a way to... Express my truths in my way. Because going through the system, you know, you're constantly like trying to get, go through all these therapies and stuff, but you don't even have language growing up and not being, you know, showing what you're feeling, or you just learn to speak with the language of violence and aggression. And that's, you know, that's what I, I learned to speak. So over the next few years, you know, I was in and out of the system. I became a ward of the corps, so I was in group homes, you know, being locked up and

• 29:30Speaker 04

  then being on the run and then just in this constant cycle. And it wasn't until, um, I got released two months before my 18th birthday and I was, my mom's boy didn't want me at the house, so I was homeless, you know, serving crack on Army Block, I don't know if y'all from the city, but out on the blade on, on 2-6, you know, and then I started, you know, changing my life and then when I, I caught a attempted murder charge the day before my 18th birthday, I fought that whole case in, uh, in solitary. But by the grace of God, I was taken and arrested when I, when I did because where I lived at back home, my boy ended up stabbing this dude to death not even an hour later. So if I didn't get arrested when I did, I would be in there for, for murder. He's doing 25 with an L right now. And I just really, you know, just started to see that my chances were running out. And I got out and you don't change overnight, it's a process, you know, and putting that work in, but it's, it's, it's so important.

• 30:15Speaker 04

  And I got out, you know, in and out of county, but then, you know, I started to change my life and really see that education was the way to liberate myself. So I went back to adult school, got my high school diploma, and then I went to community college. When Jason was saying, like, you know, just having someone believe in you, that is so powerful. It may seem so little, but just even in times when you don't believe in yourself and you're just raised to be taught in a system like broken down, your identity to nothing, you know, and the beat really gave us our voice and the beat really planted that seed for me because now I'm doing like all these amazing things I can't even imagine back then. So I went to community college, ended up winning a full ride to UC Santa Cruz where I attend now, I'm studying psychology and the history of consciousness. Thank you. Right on.

• 30:58Speaker 04

  And, um, and I also just won a national scholarship to go study abroad this, this fall where I'm gonna study psychology, neuroscience, come back, go to DC, do internship, come back, and then, um, I'm planning to get my PhD in positive psychology, my end goal. Right on, thank you.

• 31:15Speaker 04

  Thank you, thank you. My end goal is to open a group home with an art therapy program because art, creative art therapy is like, it's so powerful, I can't stress it enough. Like, there's no words that I can even put, express, to explain how powerful it is. So, um, yeah, without further ado, I'm just gonna spread my pieces then. So, thank you, and I just wanna say, you know, thank you, because this is a privilege of me being on the stage. There's a lot of my loved ones and people I don't even know, you know, we lost to the streets and the system, they don't get the same opportunity. And I'm just thankful, and I don't, and I don't just do this for myself, but I do this for my people and everyone still behind those walls and who are lost, you know, and I'm just, I got this motto, it's called "Be the Change, Lead the Way." Alright, so, this is Bloom, so this first one's called "Just Us," a little spin of justice. "Is it just us who see no justice and no peace, struggling to achieve the American dream?

• 32:00Speaker 04

  A dream just to have an opportunity to succeed, but somehow we're so far out of reach. The system that's designed to keep us at war, at war with each other. A storm is brewing right outside of your door. Is it our choice to endure? Or is there a power much greater than the plans of the hate-filled hearts? Waging a war on the people and the power within, a power capable of manifesting revolutionary change? A change that ripples through generations in time, seated in this message trying to reach your mind through a rhyme? Because you see the powers in the people and the passion that's in our hearts. But change only starts when you shine the light on the dark, beginning within ourselves and branching out to the people, educating each other to fight for our rights to be equal. No one who walks upon this earth is illegal. All this misguided hate and bigotry is spiritually lethal. Empowerment for each other starts with the peaceful, not the deceitful. Don't let the con steer you wrong. The power you hold within remains strong.

• 32:45Speaker 04

  You've just gotta believe in the power of your seed to plant amongst the weeds of the world's evil deeds, to grow strong like a tree to feed the minds of the future. But first you must take your time to find your design that creates change in people's lives, one day at a time. Then you will see it begins within thee. So may the life you lead be the life others seek. Be the change, lead the way, and ask yourself, what can I do today?"

• 33:13Speaker 04

  Thank you, thank you. So this next one's called "The Dream." "Many underestimate the power of the mind. But what really lies inside the complexity of the emotional pathways that lead us to act in a certain way? What drives us to manifest positive change? Is it love? Is it pain? Maybe it's the dream that we all dare to scheme, this dream to be free and all live in peace, but it seems just to be that, but a dream. A dream that seems impossible to conceive, or is it? We create our limitations gate. It's the power of your mind that can grow with time or deplete with lies, depending on what vibe you choose to feed inside. It begins with the light that burns deep and bright, the young activist that just wants to raise their fists to fight for the people in and out of sight, because you see, it's not just about you or me, but we. Together, we can be the dream that we dream.

• 33:55Speaker 04

  But in order to achieve this dream, we all need to see that I am you and you are me. That beating in your chest is your first clue. Purpose. You feel that? That's what we need to remember when faced with a choice to endeavor. It's the power of your mind that leads you to believe that you can achieve all that you seek. It just leaves one question. What's your seed?" Thank you. And you know, to like, kind of answer the question, like, if you don't got no purpose when you get out, you going to right back in, because you got nothing that's going to bring you up out of that. So I just want to say that, because that's what, everyone has a seed. Everyone has a seed to plant. You gotta believe in that seed, believe in yourself. So this last one's called "What's Your Seed." I actually wrote this one when I started changing my life, when I went to community college. I wrote it before the other two.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  So it means a lot to me, so. "Like a scientist gone mad, creativity flows out of me. Like knowledge to history, like wise words to a revolutionary. Like the power in the people, but nobody is listening, while the fall of clock of life just keeps on ticking. Life hitting you with trials and tribulations, and man, y'all still don't get it. Y'all need to wake the fuck up and get on with it. If not, when judgment day comes, don't look at me to save you, because I wasn't the one. But while you're gonnin' with your funds, steady stacking your funds. You failed the biggest test, kid, you had to prove you was worthy of the sun. Instead of bringing peace to the world, they brought hate and guns. Put 'em in the kids' heads, said have some fun, then proved to the world cops are just out of killing the dumb, while we're all blinded by the government's thumb. And you all fail to see, we're all kids of the sun. I'm on this road of righteousness, steady fighting the wicked. Seems like growth, love, and spirituality is extremely restricted. Kids caught in the cycle that to the shelter world is explicit."

• 35:24Speaker 04

  On your worst enemy's you wouldn't wish it. I know because I lived it. But this life is not a burden. Nah, cuz I'm that seed planted in the garden of grief. They try to drown me statistically. Put me through some shit you wouldn't even believe. But instead of dying, I rose from the depths of despair to breathe truth for share. Soon I found myself the heir to the knowledge's lair. Now it's up to me to train my mind to learn how to share. Many stop and stare, but not many opt to care. They'd rather shop and hate than bring these kids up and congratulate. Designing our future's fate and it doesn't look pretty. So before the last grain of sand falls in God's land, what will you build to grow on with sand? Thank you.

• 35:57Speaker 00

  Thanks again for listening to this episode of the A16Z Podcast. And if you want to learn more about the Culture Leadership Fund, please visit A16Z.com.