So welcome back to Success Engineering. I'm your host, Michael Bauman. And I have the privilege of having Andre Henry on the show today. He's an award-winning musician. He's a writer, he's an activist. He's a columnist for religion news service and the host of the podcast, Hope and Hard Pills. And he actually has a new book coming out, "All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep." And that'll be launching March 22nd. So definitely check that out. He's been a student of nonviolent struggle.
And so this is his whole personal journey. He's organized protests in LA and he studied under some international movement leaders through the Harvard Kennedy school. And then this pursuit of racial justice comes up in everything from his music, and he's been featured in New Yorker, the Nation Liturgist podcast. I'm just really excited to hear his insights into this and get his perspective and just the tremendous amount of experience and wealth of knowledge he has. So welcome to the show.
Andre, it's a pleasure to have you.
It's a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me.
Absolutely. So I want to start off and, just give the audience a little bit of, your background. So you grew up in Georgia and can you just talk about that, like intersection of the Confederate stuff on one side and you have, King on the other side. And then, I also talk about Oppression and this is writing in that song in sixth grade and just get open it up for you there.
Oh, wow. You really did do your
I've done my research, man. I got You
You really did do your own work. No one has mentioned my first song
You gotta this is your, like, I mean, this is a launched your career right here.
So, like you mentioned, I grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia, and I've mentioned, do you know that in Stone Mountain, there are two rivers that meet into historical rivers. That means stone mountain basically. And one is stream of the Confederacy, right? Is the, is a very important city in the Confederacy. And this is why this was burned down during the civil war.
And there's this whole, this whole kind of a heroic retelling, or bizarro heroic retelling of how Atlanta was rebuilt after being burned down by general Sherman. Right. and at the same time, there's the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. It's like a capitalist city of the civil rights movement, which makes sense because as Frantz Fanon says, that sites of oppression, determined sites of resistance, right?
It makes sense that, in this city, which was such a stronghold of white supremacy, that you would also have like this original legacy of black resistance there, but growing up in the crosshairs of those histories is a confusing centuries later, because you'd have people who both Revere the Confederacy and Revere Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. In the same geography and growing up in that, growing up in that context, in the home of, Jamaican immigrants who don't have a deep knowledge of either of
those things, right. They know about these things, but they don't have a deep knowledge of those things because the things they have a deep knowledge of his Jamaican history, it's not American history. Right. So, so I didn't have, I didn't have the kind of parents. That could speak in a deep and knowledgeable way about the history of America. Like for them, this is the land of opportunity and it's much easier to live here than it is to live in Jamaica. Hence why they migrated here.
So I say all that to say that it's no secret that America does not want to be very honest or detailed about its racial history, right? Especially not in the south, we're almost immediately after the civil war was fought. There were white supremacists specifically the United Daughters of the Confederacy that were working very hard to reframe what the Confederacy's cause was all about. Right. They want to say it was about state's rights.
They want to frame it as a legitimate uprising against us federal overreach. An uprising against tyranny and not about keeping slaves in the south, right? So that is the legacy I grew up in where you have this entire culture that is steeped in this white supremacy, white supremacist tradition, but is perpetuating a revisionist history about it and wants everyone to agree. So as a child, I could perceive, that black kids and black people were treated differently in my hometown.
But anytime I would try to name that there was this racial gaslighting that would happen from white adults telling me that racism is a serious accusation. As though it rarely happens and I don't play the race card and those kinds of things. Which was difficult because I did have a racial consciousness, as a young person, like I tell this story and I think part of this actually is part of this is not just hearing or overhearing adults talk about their experiences.
But I think also we know a little bit more about epigenetics, so we know that like, what is in your parents' DNA is also in you and my parents were deeply cultural people, deeply conscious people about black liberation and social justice, including my father who was a reggae musician and an activist.
Hm.
He was not an activist when I was born. He's he'd retired by then, but it was still the way that he talked, about the world and about society, about governments, about power, like. So I remember being very young, being nine years old or something and discovering Bob Marley and the whalers album Burning and Lootin' in my parents' vinyl collection and listening to, I shot the sheriff every single day.
And drawing pictures in my room of the American revolution, and significant battles, because the story of these, these people who felt like they were being bullied by their government and stood up to it, it resonated with. And so, yeah, in sixth grade I wrote this, I wrote my first I wrote, my mom says that I was making music or that I was at least humming, like songs before I could talk, I was born a musical per person, apparently because I have no recollection of these things. Right.
But that's what my parents told me. And so I would like make songs out of all kinds of things when I, as early as second grade. But in sixth grade I wrote my first song with this original lyrics and music. It was called Oppression. And it told the story of black people as much as I knew from, being captured and enslaved up, through the civil rights era. Yeah.
Yeah, I love that. Can you dive into it just a little bit more? I mean, a little bit more, right. There's just
Ah
tons there, but around just the history of some of what you talked about, some of the first off define gaslighting for the people that might not know what that is. And then
Yeah. Yeah,
miseducation and how history has shifted...
For sure.
and, just get into that a
absolutely. Absolutely. And I, I still do study. I mean, not as much as I was before I wrote this book, but I snipped studying and I'm still learning just how appropriate and intentional, the gaslighting is. So for those, who've never heard of the term or have heard it, but don't really know what people are talking about or have heard it and not really look that much into it and be like, I think people are maybe being overreacting, Gaslighting.
And I even say in the book, I wish I had a better term for this, but I don't, it's like just a really. It's the best term I think we have for this. Gaslighting is a tactic of abuse where the abuser tries to get the target, to doubt their perception of reality.
Even more than that it's when the abuser wants for the target to accept the abuser's version of reality, comes from a play from the 1930s where a man was playing, literally playing around with the gas powered lights in the house and telling his wife that she was imagining that these things were happening so that he could control her.
And so when I talk about racial gaslighting, I'm saying that white America or America rather has done that to its people, right by by trying to tell its history in a way that is in fact. And intentionally doing so we're placing the actual story of how America was founded, which is through land theft and genocide and enslavement of African people. And completely erasing that, pushing those details of the story into the margins to replace it with things like Manifest Destiny, right?
Like when I was in, when I was in school, I didn't learn anything about native indigenous people being massacred, by the colony colonists and pilgrims and things like that. I mean, we were tracing our hands and drawing Thanksgiving turkeys and making Pilgrim hats out of black construction paper, of course, like you don't want to tell a nine year old or, an eight year old, like about these massacres. But I mean, somewhere along the line, we could have been taught those things but we weren't.
Right. And so. I talk about this in the book on different levels. There is the systemic gas lighting. So I don't know how I forgot this, but this is the perfect example. As I write about this in chapter two, that I grew up in Stone Mountain and on the rock that we call Stone Mountain is the largest Confederate monument in America. It is a picture, sorry, a carbon also side note. It is the largest. Bass relief carving in the world.
Also, I feel like that is also significant to say the largest best relief carving in the world is a Confederate monument. And in that bass for the carving Confederate generals, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson and Confederate president Jefferson Davis are on horseback majestically, riding their horses into, I guess, their perceived futures right now. The idea for this monument came from a Klan sympathizer whose name escapes me. But it was a white woman and she was a Klan sympathizer.
And the original idea was to have this carving, just be of general Lee, leading a procession of Klansmen in their robes. But the sculptor said, oh, that would be beneath me to carve not it's morally really wrong. It's just a, that would be like, that would be like asking me to paint, stick figures on this rock is basically his response. He wanted to do something with more pizzazz and so he decided that he would do the two Confederate generals and the Confederate president.
Now I went to Stone Mountain many times as a child. They never talked about how the KU Klux Klan or Klan sympathizers came up with this idea. And also stone mountain is the actual site where the KU Klux Klan was reborn. Never mentioned, never talked about it. When we talk about gaslighting, some of the tactics of gaslighting include, hiding information, covering up the truth, all these kinds of things. And so when I talk about gaslighting on a systemic level, that's what I'm talking about.
It is this hiding of this information that people don't want to talk about for whatever reason, and when I mentioned that, I continue to study, I'm reading more and more about fascism, which I talk about in the book. And this is actually, I believe that this actually goes very well with the work of Jason Stanley who wrote a book called How Fascism Works. And one of the key points that he talks about in Fascist politics policy. Is that they appeal to a mythic past. Right.
And the thing is that the fascist know that the past, the story that they're telling about the past is a myth. There's like a quote from Benito Mussolini he says we have invented our myth. So it's a very intentional thing.
So anyway, that is the kind of thing when I'm talking about, when I try to name as a child, the things that I'm seeing about how black people are treated differently, and there are white individuals telling me not to play the race card and it's a serious accusation and we just shouldn't use that word and those kind of stuff.
That is a form of gaslighting on the individual level and on a systemic level, it has to do with these revisionist histories, these revisionist curriculums, our history curriculums that were placed in our schools. And now what we see with the book burning and the demonization of critical race theory in America, These are all forms of racial gaps.
Yeah. And so, you had that growing up and then you moved to move to New York. You're trying to make it as a singer songwriter at that point. can you talk about what started to change started to help you change your perspective and realize like, something is not right here.
well, for sure. So I, the difference between New York and stone mountain or the south, I should say, because I also experienced, things in college. Like I was accused of stealing my own bike when I was in college, because the security guard claimed I didn't quote, unquote, look like a student and there again, I would try to say that seems pretty racist. And then people would say, don't play the race card, like, but in New York, When something like that would happen.
Like when I I was applying for an apartment, the guy on the phone, it's like, oh my gosh, I don't meet many decent people here in this historically black neighborhood of Harlem. And offers to be my friend and he's so excited. But then when he sees me in person, I see his face melt with disappointment and he refused to rent the apartment to me. When I named that experience with people in New York, most people said, oh yeah, that's totally racist. That's racist.
And so there was this kind of affirmation and confirmation of what I was seeing. But beyond that, there was this one event at my church in New York. And as much as I am, as much as I am shy to talk about my involvement in church and things like that. My previous involvement in church, I have to admit it was three black women at the church that I was working at in New York city who decided after the murder of Eric Garner that we needed to have. A conversation at the church about whiteness.
It was a Saturday morning conversation. I mean, obviously optional and a bunch of people came and they facilitated this conversation about racial justice and they were talking about race in a way that I've never heard anyone talk about race. First off, in all racial justice conversations, I had it to that point. Usually we would talk about the pain that black people are experiencing. And it was always like this mystery. Why are black people not doing it that well?
And then oftentimes someone and sometimes, and oftentimes these people would be black. Would blame the pain of black people in America on black people and say, oh well it's because these young black people keep walking around with their pants sagging or it's because they keep listening to that damn gangster rap music, or, something like that. Right. But at this conversation, These women said something that is forbidden, right?
They talked about black people being in pain because some people believe that they are white. And that the fact that some people believe that they are white is consequential to black people. And that idea sticks with me to the day to this very day, because I understand it in a much deeper way than I ever could in that moment, when I first heard it. Because we know that race is not a biological category. We know one is, there's no such thing as a white DNA.
Like, Willie Jennings says there's no such thing as a white biology. There's no such thing as a black biology. Christina Cleveland pointed out years ago and I never forgot. She said, humans share most of our DNA with bananas. Like we, there is no such thing as a racial DNA. Race is a social invention.
It is a political category that was invented by certain people to justify the violence that they were exacting on indigenous people as they stole land in the new world and still people from Africa to work those lands. Right. So anyway, that got very deep about the point they were making about that. Some people believe that they are white and because they believe that they are white, they believe that they're superior to other people.
And that belief can be so insidious that people don't even know that they hold it. And I remember talking to a friend of mine in Orlando a couple of years ago that illustrates this when we were talking about police violence. And she said, well, if they just dress normally, like maybe that wouldn't happen to them. Or if they look normal and I asked her, and this is my friend, my dear friend, I didn't get upset. I just, I was like, I'm going to challenge my friend.
What does a normal person look like to you? Right. And they're explaining, and then I kept pushing them on it. And then eventually they realized this, they said, well, I guess I imagined they look like me. And she gasped when she said it. Because she didn't realize that she understood herself as a standard human being, a default human being and everyone else is a variant. Right.
And that somehow them not being like her justified the bond that they experienced, that is the essence of white supremacy. It lives in our common sense in a way that we're not always able to detect. So anyway, that was the part that was the conversation we were having in church at that time. And I'm point, no one has ever talked about it this way before, but it's making sense of so many of my experiences.
And in that conversation, these terms were thrown around like systemic and accommodation and assimilation and code switching and all these things. And like, all this language is perfect for like things that I've experienced, but I've never heard it before. And I sat with that for awhile.
I sat with that for awhile because I was like, that makes sense, but it's, so it feels like I'm barely grasping it, but a couple of years later, when I watched Philando Castiel bleed to death on Facebook live in front of his girlfriend and their four year old daughter, I knew that there was a pattern to this. Like I knew that kind of thing could happen to me. I knew it in my bone that's right, because I was really young, but I was alive when Rodney king was assaulted by the police.
And I remember hearing about Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown and Sandra bland and Tamir rice, and all these others. And I had my own experiences, the Jena six, when I was in college, all these different things, I knew that kinda happened to me. And so I said, I know that there's a pattern to that. I need to really look into what what people mean when they say systemic racism.
And I need to understand how that system works and that put me on a journey to learn everything that I can about the criminal justice system at first and about nonviolent struggle. And that's when things really started to shift. So it was there's this gradual braking of the fog of the gas lighting effect, over years. But 2016 was like the watershed moment. I would say.
Right. you have a, just a phenomenal article. I'll put a link to it. And it's "How to tell if it's time to drag an insanely heavy Boulder around LA." Can you talk about that? Because it does such an incredible job of visually and even somatically for you, obviously,
yeah,
what daily, the daily life is under that oppression.
Yeah. Three weeks after I, or I think it was three weeks, it was about 20 days or so after I watched Fernando Castillo, die on Facebook live, I had a vision, which I always feel so weird about saying, because like I grew up in charismatic evangelicalism and it's like, everyone is like talking to angels and all this kind of stuff, in church. So they say. And like by then, I didn't know what I believe about God or spirituality anymore. I'm just like, I don't know.
All I know is that I want to stop feeling unsafe in the world and I have this crazy, like spiritual experience where, you know, for weeks I had felt so distraught and so burdened, by seeing these scenes like this, like out in Sterling from little Castiel's dead, and also seeing how people that I love white people in my life that I loved were so detached, from these realities. Right. And so expressing so much doubt and so much gaslighting behavior, honestly.
So I'm sitting over this plate of leftovers in my living room cause I'm a very good cook. And I had like made my favorite dish chicken carbonara, and I had some leftovers every time I make it there's leftovers. So I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm about to get to these leftovers. And Next thing, I'm like in this daydream but I'm conscious. Sometimes your daydream, you don't know that your daydream into you're done, but I'm in the state dream. And I'm just as lucid and aware as I am right now.
And in this daydream, I'm in old Pasadena there's this park down there. And I'm walking by the park, in this daydream. And from the park, I hear a street preacher I don't like street preachers. I've not liked street preachers of it for a long time, but I'm always curious about them because whenever I see a street, preacher, I'm like, first off people still do that. Like they go out on the street and they yell at people about Jesus Christ and hell, and I was kind of stuff.
And so I always tend to like stop and just listen. And I'm always tempting. The reason why I keep stopping is not just because I'm curious about what they had to say, but I'm like tempted to like, hi, maybe I could say something that's actually good news, right? Like something positive where maybe I could stump them in some way. But so anyway, in the daydream, I hear the street preacher from coming from the park and I'm like, I'm going to go in there and see what this guy's talking about.
And I walk into the park and I get close enough to see who the street preacher is. And I look in the street, preacher is me, I'm in the daydream, looking at myself, preaching in this park. And next to me is this large white Boulder. And on that, Boulder is written all of these, racial injustices, like mass incarceration and police brutality and the names of victims of police violence. And I'm standing there and I am.
Reciting like whole passages from like these prophetic poems from the Bible about like, a world where this stuff doesn't exist anymore. And the next thing, I come back to my set. I come back to myself and I'm sitting in my living room over that plate of leftovers. And I just start crying because I feel like I'm supposed to do this thing.
And I also feel like that would look, I would look like a crazy person if I do that, but I did, I went through with it, by the end of that night, I had a hundred pound Boulder in my possession I'm sitting outside my home studio where I record all my music, painting this Boulder white, and I've got this wagon because the thing is too heavy for me to like carry around at the time. I did get stronger as I was carrying. So like, carrying it got easier, picking it up, got easier.
But, and so for about six months, I took that Boulder. For about four months, I took it everywhere with me. And then for two months I just took it to church, cause I still played music at many churches. I played the piano in many churches and I did it, to me it represented like the mental burden, that racism puts on the black psyche.
And I wanted for people to see like when I walk into the room, cause I thought this is what, this is, what was expected of me is that like I'm supposed to just compartmentalize go about life. Like I'm not like seeing these things doesn't have an effect on my mental health and my wellbeing, but how could it not?
So I'm lad, I'm lugging this Boulder around with all these things written on it so that people can see when I come into this job interview, when I get to this classroom, when I walk into the, when I walk into the room for dinner with you, when I go on, when I show up for this date or whatever, like I am lugging all this stuff. with me
Yeah. And, you just have a phenomenal quote basically at the end of that, that just you ask a question, like, how do I know when it's time to drag it out again? And you said when the unaffected are comfortable while the effected grief, I think that's, what's so poignant about that. Like you mentioned, you're carrying this everywhere, but visually you can't normally see it,
Yes.
want to show you that I carry this everywhere and it affects every area of my life, or even the death associated with racism, like actually shortening the lifespan and compromising immune systems. And, the research around that is, is crazy. So, Can you talk about, I mean, you have done tons of dive into history. You've looked at, the systems around racism and then also just the principles of nonviolent civil resistance.
So can you talk about the different systems inside of the racism that you've explored
Well, yeah,
here we go, three hours later,
sir. Sorry, sir.
it over to you and you get, you can talk about what
But I want to hear, I want to hear your question, but yeah. I want to get your question.
in terms of systems what that actually looks like for the research and stuff that you've done. And then, That you've studied of nonviolent resistance and what that looks like as
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we are not trained in America to think systemically first off that's like the first thing I think that we have to understand is that it's a very individualistic society. And I think that is intentional. I think that as long as we think individually in that way, then it becomes more difficult for us to see the context that we're living in. Right.
And so, and if we can't see the context that we're living in, then we can't if we can't see the problem, we can't fight the problem. Right. Basically that's what it is. Right. And so really understanding. The systemic part is not so hard to see if we just think about like how America was founded, right? Like a nation needs all these different kinds of systems. Right. We need a system of government. We need law, we need we need some way to enforce the law apparently. Right.
We need hospitals and we need transportation and, we need all of these things, right? So obviously there is a system we can start there. Right? We can agree that there is a system and every nation needs several different types of systems in order for there to be a society that functions well. Right. I think we can all agree on that. Now the nature of that system, of those systems right now, that's a different question. Are they neutral? Are they moral? Are they immoral?
Or they just, are they unjust? And you have to be just straight up in denial to say that, America's founding like the founding of the society, the foundations of it, the way that it was built, the way that it was structured is either neutral or inherently good for everyone. Right. Because for instance let's just go there. let's just go there.
it. Let's do it.
Let's go there. There are third Reich Nazis in the 1930s, writing about legal theory. Right. And they, what they write about the law is they say that the law should serve the race. They say that the law should serve the race.
And you see that in, they're creating the Nuremberg laws that, are making these distinctions between themselves and between Jewish people so that they can say that the ways that they're going to exclude Jewish people from, mainstream society from and from the privileges of mainstream society is going to be legally justified.
Right now, one of those writers writes about America and they say that the greatest advancement in the struggle for world domination of the Aryan race of the white races was the founding of the United States of America. And the reason why they write this is because they were looking at Jim Crow in America and seeing the same principle that the law should serve the race in America. And we could see this just by thinking about the things that used to be legal and illegal in America, right?
It used to be illegal for a black person to marry a white person in America. Is that based on some moral principle of the universe? No. It used to be illegal for black people to congregate. It used to be illegal for black people to own businesses or to own land, a Supreme court decision determined that the Negro, this is a quote has no rights that white people are bound to respect. That's a quote from the Supreme court. So what, right now I'm talking about the legal system, right?
That is racism. And it's baked in to the legal system. Those laws were put into place. to ensure that white people were more privileged and dominant in society. Right? And so when we look at those kinds of, when we look at any system in America, pretty much, you can look at transportation, you can look at housing, you can see the ways that decisions were made ensure an unequal society. I'll just use one more example. Like when I was looking for an apartment until that story and the book.
I didn't know that, there are statistics and I can't remember them off the top of my head. I didn't know that statistically, like when black people go to look for homes, they are shown less properties than their white counterparts. When you talk about police brutality, I didn't know that, a person is three times more likely to die in a police encounter than their white counterparts, these are all things you can look into history.
So anyway, when you look into the system, you find racism in all of these systems because America was founded that way. The founding document of America, I think we would say is probably the declaration of independence. Right? And in that document, it says that we hold these truths to be self evident that all men are created equal. They are endowed by their creator with inalienable rights and blah-blah-blah yada yada.
Okay. However, they owned slaves at the time and they did not free enslaved people. With the writing of that document, in fact, in the declaration of independence, it seems like they blame Britain for slave uprisings. And so not only do they not free the enslaved, do they acknowledge that there are enslaved people there? And they say, the reason why we have so much problems keeping our captives in line is because of you guys. Right.
So America's founded on racial inequality, which means that this society that is built on that foundation, it's also going to be racially unequal. And we've seen that like America was founded on this principle of inequality. It is a state that maintains that inequality, and it only experiences freedom movements from time to time that push it to make certain, adjustments, toward racial justice.
And then oftentimes though, whatever progress we make is, rolled back, pretty quickly and it's not just an American problem, this, something that I write about in the book as well, that we forget that the folks who were here before they began calling themselves, Americans were just British colonists, and the British empire is one of the, biggest empires in the history of the world that really set the standard for these kinds of unequal politics, and many other European nations were doing this in
the Caribbean, like France and in Africa also gonna name France there. Basically bunch of European nations, practicing these unequal colonization, stealing land, oppressing people, segregating people, making laws to enforce that segregation and enrich their nations. So big problem. Later on in history, we just call that fascism. Fascism. Imperialism. They're related in that way.
So anyway, what I learned about fighting against these systems, came into play because when I thought about like, well, how do, what do we do in this situation in America? I thought about Dr. Martin Luther king Jr. That's the first name that came to mind because we know that in America, it used to be, I think you can say it was worse, right? The whites only signs on water fountains in restaurants and the constant lynchings and bombings and all these other kinds of things.
And were a bunch of ordinary black people that organized to fight against these things. And they at least change the common sense in America to a degree, right? Like people don't just walk around calling us the N word anymore in America. there's so much that needs to be changed, so much us also changed at the same time. So I went on a journey to try to understand why did the civil rights movement work? How did they do that without weapons?
Because at the time when this was happening, there were a lot of folks, that I was friends with that were saying the only way that we're going to be able to change this is if we take up arms and, and fight for our freedom in that way. not going to say that revolutionary armed struggle never works because otherwise America wouldn't exist,
Right.
That's how America was founded, but doesn't seem like a viable option, in our case. Even if it were, I have asked the question many times and maybe some people might have a problem with this, but I've asked many times, who would we become in the process? We don't have to get into a nuanced discussion about, the uses of, armed struggle and the legitimacy of it. I do feel like people have the right to do that. It just didn't seem like it was a viable option for me.
And didn't really sit with my value. So I went on a deep intellectual quest, serious intellectual questions. Dr. King calls it himself when he starts studying non-violence to understand nonviolent struggle. And that took me through the work of Thoreau and Gandhi, Tolstoy King Gene Sharps, or to Popovich, Erica Chenowith, just down the line, this genealogy of non-violence struggle.
And I've learned so much about the principles of nonviolent struggle, what it is and why it works different types of non-violence struggle. Most people don't realize that it's not just one version of non-violence struggle that exists. I came out hopeful first off, which was not what I was necessarily looking for, but so glad that I did come out feeling hopeful because I learned the story. Ordinary organized outraged unarmed people fighting against Nazis and winning.
Like, if there's any, if there's any example in the history that people are like, no, you have to use force, to win it's Nazis. And there's this story from 1945 in Berlin called the Rolson Straussen protest, where these women, these non-Jewish women had their husbands abducted by Nazis and they went and confronted these Nazis that stole their husbands and they won their husbands back, through protest.
And that story, I mean, I remember like my jaw just being on the floor, reading this story, that the Nazis just let their husbands go because. A couple of hundred women stood up to them. And one of the tragedies I think is that there weren't more uprisings like that, because I've asked the question, what if the whole country would have behaved that way?
And I'm still asking that question as we look at problems and situations of oppression all over the world, what if the whole country knew, that nonviolent struggle has been proven to be twice as effective as armed struggle, by a massive study of 323 conflict situations by Erica Chenowith, and Maria J Stephan what if they knew that in that same study that no oppressive regime had been able to withstand the sustained and active non-violent resistance of just three and a half percent of the
population. What if they knew these things? And so it became my mission to just tell everybody the same way I used to be a preacher. I used to be a pastor. I used to be a worship leader and I grew up in evangelicalism. They told us like our mission in life was to go tell people the good news of Jesus Christ. Well, I'm here to tell people the good news of nonviolent struggle, that a few organized ordinary outrage people can really make a difference.
Yeah. you talk about that? Cause I mean, you have a good quote from, Dr. King basically says like, he's absolutely convinced that nonviolence massively organized, powerfully executed militantly developed, is still the most potent weapon available to the black man
Yeah.
So talk about that. Like, what does it take to get it, to be massively
Oh yeah,
is the strategic aspect of it? Like what does that look like to actually get, like you said, three, three and a half What does that look like?
I mean, there's, so there's so much that could be said about this. So the first thing that I say is that everyone who's interested in this stuff, and I hope everyone is interested in this stuff because I do believe that it's such a misunderstood weapon in such a powerful tool that we have that they should probably read the radical king, which is a collection of Dr. King's speeches.
And his philosophy of non-violence struggle is in there and also Blueprint for Revolution by Srdja Popovich, because it's very readable. It's very short and it's. In a way kind of exhaustive, like it's almost comprehensive, but in a very fun way. Srdja founded the movement that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic in Serbia in the late nineties.
And he and his comrades coined a phrase around the way that they organize called "laughtivism" so they used humor to overthrow this dictatorship and that's a core value of his. So his book is very entertaining is what I'm saying. His book is very entertaining at the same time as it is educational, What non-violence practitioners call a nonviolent struggle war without weapons.
And I have found that framework to be helpful in certain ways, because when we think of how people prepare for battle, they understand that people don't go into battle without a plan. Right. And that plan needs to be based on a deep knowledge of what some call the conflict situation. And I hope that doesn't sound too jargony. I hope that's self-explanatory but the competency is basically, Hey, the mess that we're in, right.
A part of understanding the conflict situation is understanding what type of government or what kind of powers are holding this oppressive thing in place. What is the structure of that system? What are the pillars of support? We often talk about this by like imagining the system as like, an ancient Greek temple with these pillars that hold up the roof.
And each of these pillars represent the institutions that uphold that thing, like the educational system the police and military, the media organized religion, all this kind of stuff, and really analyzing which pillars are, they're upholding that situation of oppression and how are they doing it? And what we understand is that in each institution, there are people, right? At the basis of this idea is a theory of power. Right?
And it is sometimes called the social view of power, which we're just going to go with. Cause I can't remember the other names for it and that's a fine piece of jargon for people to hold onto. Basically it goes like this, society is like a game of Simon says, and I actually do this when I'm teaching and speaking, it's like a game of Simon says, and I always tell people, okay, Simon says, put your hand on your ear and they'll do it.
And I say, okay, Simon says, say your first name and they'll do it. And I said, all right, Simon says, pull your pants down. And nobody does it. Like, no one's ever taken me up on that one. Because everyone knows like, no, like we're not going to do that. There's a higher, there's a higher rule or convention in society that says, like, we don't just, we don't just disrobe in public. Right. And so then I point out, well, who has the power in this game?
Like we all said that the game works this way. Simon has the power Simon says to do something and you do it. But Simon gave a command and no one followed the order. Now the game is breaking down because the power really resides in the collective of the people. So in society you have all of these people who are providing services for that oppressive regime more for the dictator or whatever. And they do it through these institutions.
So the media is reciting press releases from the police about someone they shot an unarmed person that they shot in the back, that's a way that they're participating, right. There are these churches that refuse to say anything about the atrocities happening around them or or even worse, repeating, Donald Trump's talking points, on Sunday morning or something like that. That's a way that they're participating. That's what we did.
They were playing the game right there, going along with what Simon says. Well, if you can convince people to stop giving their consent to that oppressive system situation then that's oppressive situation can't stand anymore. And a part of that is doing that in an organized way. So let's use the Montgomery bus boycott as an example, I should have just gone there. First. This was such a roundabout way to get here.
that was perfect. I love it.
The Montgomery bus boycott is an example of this because you have a situation in Montgomery where the powers that be the white power structure is saying you black people are second class citizens, and you have to sit in the back of the bus and you have to submit to mistreatment. In fact, some of the things that precipitated the Montgomery bus boycott there's a story. We know the story of Rosa parks and how, they insisted that she moved to the back of the bus and she refused.
that was part of what set things off. But there was another story. Excuse me. There was another story about a man who I can't remember his name, but Dr. King writes about it and it's in that book, the Radical King, but this man he got on the bus, he'd paid the bus fare and they told him. They insisted that he sit in the back and he said that he would rather just take his money back and leave, but they wouldn't give him his money back.
And so now they're going back and forth because he wants his bus fare back because he's not going to ride the bus and they refused. They called the police on this man, the police show up and they kill him. So that's the kind of thing that was happening in Montgomery.
Yeah.
Well, when they call the bus boycott that is their way of saying we are not going to consent to being ruled this way. We're not going to consent to being second class citizens in this city. We're not going to ride the bus. And it wasn't just like individuals just refusing. They had these mass meetings in these churches where they talked about what they were going to do and how it was going to go. Right.
Even Rosa parks participation in this movement, so Rosa parks was not just some individual who, decided spontaneously one day that she wasn't gonna follow this order. Actually there were several civil rights leaders in Montgomery who wanted to stage a protest, and they were very particular about who, who should be the face of this particular resistance. There was another woman in Claudette Colvin who actually had refused to give up her seat on the bus before Rosa parks did.
And the reason why the movement didn't choose Claudette Colvin as the face of the movement was because they didn't feel like she would be as sympathetic. So there was a very organized and strategic effort to choose Rosa parks as the face of that movement. And they didn't just say, okay, well, every individual is just going to choose. Obviously individuals choose for themselves, but it's not like a, just throw it out there.
And, you boycott the bus and whatever you do is up to you, they actually organized a car pool so that people could still commute to work and to school that kind of set up and they organized a way to replace people's shoes. If they wore out from walking so much. And so in this example, you see a level of organization that makes it powerful and makes it sustainable. Right? It's a great example.
I think of an organization and that's the kind of thing that we need to be doing around the country around the world is looking at, how the system is structured. Which pillars of that system are vulnerable to people power because they have a lot of people participating in that pillar so we can pull them out of there. Right. And then that pillar becomes weak, and figuring out like how we can organize resistance and also organize alternative systems that make that resistance possible.
Yeah, you talk about all of this in your book. "All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep" again is launching March 22nd. I'd highly recommend it out. Just it's difficult that it's, a short period of time to cover all of this stuff, but I really appreciate
Oh yeah. Yeah.
To shift just a slightly, are you doing right now? I mean, you're heavily involved in music and you're also
Yeah.
Your music as a platform for these kinds of things. So talk about that and what's next for you and what's moving forward.
yeah. I've been writing protest music for a for awhile now, I shouldn't say a long time, but a while now, like this whole journey that I write about in the book is, you could, there's so many ways to look at like, what is the narrative arc here? Right. And one of those narrative arcs is, I'm an R and B singer. I'm writing songs about love and all this kind of stuff. And then, this awakening begins to happen.
And I decide like now my music really needs to focus on, helping me tell the story in the same way that the Boulder is there to help me tell my story and bring attention to these things. But right now, I've really, I really feel like my focus is shifting a bit because what I've learned from being on the streets so much and trying to organize. I've seen a lot of good social justice work implode because people are not doing well inside.
There's something in our mental health, there's something, I guess you could say it's spiritual. Like if, if you want to use that language, our souls need care. We need healing and I've seen so much, I've seen so much good social justice work that has potential, implode because we're not getting the healing that we need. And that happened to me. I was diagnosed with PTSD last year, largely because of what I experienced in the movement.
And so what I've been trying to do is shift from just saying, difficult things to people who don't want to hear them. I was posting hard pill memes about anti-racism for several years and moving into trying to make pain medicine with my music for, especially for black people, because I need it, honestly, I know so many people that need it. And so that's what I've been doing is writing songs and also realizing like what I told you, that story about the Boulder.
I kept saying this Boulder represents the. Burden that racism places on the black psyche. And I'm realizing again, like Kierkegaard says like you, that life has to be lived forward, but can only be understood backwards. Right. So I look back over it and go, wow. Like I was always talking about mental health. Right? Well, on the other side of the story that I tell in the book I've returned to, okay, I got into this work talking about the effect that this has on me, right?
Talking about the burden that I'm carrying and talking about mental health. And I'm coming back to that in my music of trying to address it more directly. So I have this song that I'm going to release hopefully later this year. And it's called All I See is Love. And I wrote, All I See is Love, after my first mushroom trip actually after my first mushroom trip, because on that trip, that was the message that I got.
I felt like I I went to the center of my being and I felt connected to everything in the universe. And I said to my friend who was sober and like overseeing this experience for me, that it's just dark here. And all I see is the universe smiling back at me. And I wrote this song called all I see is love because that's what I felt like I saw.
And I feel like things like this are important because, for instance in the summer of 2020, I was a part of a group, an activist group that tried to do an occupation of a city hall and the police showed up with their batons and their shields and this truck tank thing. And scared us off the property. And we spent the night on the floor of a church across the street, and I remember the fear, I remember like how stressful that summer was. Right.
And I keep saying to people, can you imagine how that might have been different, or how that might've felt different in our bodies still stressful, but how that might've felt different in our bodies if we had spent every day, six months before that in meditation for 30 minutes a day, If we knew if we made sure like, as a training as a training mandate, that people knew how to do walking meditation and how to connect to their breath.
Yeah. In the moment in daily life, when you're dealing with the mental stress of living under untreated trauma and the mental stress of living under racial capitalism, and then you're face to face with the enforcers of racial capitalism and their weapons, right.
It's compounding trauma, and so like I'm writing these songs as a way of, again, expressing that the weight of that trauma in my own life, but also to confront it and to deal with it and to invite other people who are experiencing it to give voice to it as well. And to say, you're not alone, like, I'll, I want to be here and embrace you with this music and say like, the world may tell you that you are a suspect. You are a criminal, you are someone to be feared or whatever.
But when you look inside of yourself, I'm telling you, there's only the universe smiling back at you. Right. And so I'm hoping to create like these spaces for those who know what the stress is like to have spaces of healing and joy, for us, because I'm realizing that, in order for us to fight the power, we have to feel powerful.
Yeah. I've yeah, I've never really heard it. Talked about like that in relationship to mental health, like you're talking about it's like a training, right? Like if you're looking at it, from the perspective as strategic perspective, like you have a training for it and you know that these, attacks like emotionally, physically even are coming, how can you actually train for that in advance and have a reserve of mental health and stuff stored up? So, what can I do to process this,
Oh, yeah, for sure. So part of social movements, there's a theory called resource mobilization theory, right? No one needs to remember that term, for now, like it'll help to frame this because what we're doing very much is using what we have right. To try to get what we want. That's the essence of strategy is how do you use what you have to get, what you want. Right. Okay. Well, all right. So the white power structure wants to maintain power and they have billions of dollars.
They have helicopters, they got this, they got bombs, they got guns, they got personnel, not just to hold and use the weapons, but also to process people. And they'd got prison secured and they are highly resourced. Right. We don't have all those resources. I, and what I saw in my time on the streets is people who with so little resources, just getting burned out and used and our mental health is one of those resources.
Obviously we want to have good mental health just because like we're human beings and that's our birthright, right? We deserve to live, without being stressed out by all of these oppressive systems. Right. And at the same time, having ourselves feel a bit more grounded and having a level of healing or being on a journey or process of healing from these systems, as we fight them is only going to make our movement stronger. Right.
And I see this as an Achilles heel of our movement is that of our movements is that we're imploding from the inside because of many of us don't have the spiritual resources or the mental health resources or the soul care. However you want to talk about it. We don't have it and we need it. And so I really want to contribute to that. I really want to invest in that.
And that's what I'm trying to do, with the music, because again, okay, we have this big, truck tank hybrid things standing in front of us at city hall. Right. And here we are trying to stand up to it. And we're literally sputtering, we're sputtering hacking gas, and we combust in front of it. It's just not likely to work.
Yeah, I think, you know what you're talking about. I mean, when you look at that, the system and you're looking at the pillars that hold it up and stuff, and it's people and the biggest power that you have to demolish that system is people. And then you have these people getting burned out. Like I said, it's like that Achilles heel where it's like, if we need to resource, like the people are our biggest resource and they're getting burnt out that our resources depleted,
there we go.
actually put life back into that?
Yeah. So it's a big need. It's really, it's a huge need. And another part of that is I'm also learning more and more the power of doing this work for social justice out of a deep sense of joy. Or at least being connected to our pursuit of joy. And desire. Politics has always been about desire, right? It's always at the heart at heart of that.
And I'm learning that a lot from listening more to black, radical feminists and black queer feminists and things like that, because that's something that I didn't learn from Dr. King and Malcolm X and Kwame like these militant, masculine, iconic figures in black liberation history, which I'm grateful for them. And I'm not going to abandon the things that they taught me, but there's this whole other world of black resistance that is deeply connected to black wellness.
And so what I'm learning is that black freedom has to be black wellness. What else could it possibly be like the end goal. And part of this is confusing the means for the end, right? Like the movement can become so much about the movement that people just think the struggle is for the struggle sake.
When the movement is a means to an end, like the movement is the means so that we can get to that place where we're just able to enjoy our lives, without having to worry about anyone thinking that we're up to something, and punishing us for it or thinking that we're unworthy and punishing us for it. So that's what we're after.
Like we're aiming through the target, as you learn in TaeKwonDo, you trying to break a board or something like that, maybe through the target and then also not assuming that you can't have any of that along the way. And I'm really appreciating that. So that's where I'm leaning is connecting, black freedom, black liberation to black wellness and really trying to elevate that conversation
yeah, you have a, just a phenomenal quote the Instagram that I saw that talks about this. And you said so many conflate anti-racism with the production and consumption of black pain. The world be transformed if anti-racism described the active support of black joy?
Yes. Yes. I mean, I exactly, because, we feel like we're doing racial justice work by, watching more or sharing more videos of black people being harmed or reading these books and people do need that awareness. I'm not saying that it should always be avoided. Like people do need that awareness that people are in real pain. But for me, like I'm a musician.
That's what I look to do, and I feel like I don't know how everybody else feels in their vocation, but I know like this is what I was made to do. And I feel like I'm supposed to, as a musician, I'm supposed to make music the same way that a bird wakes up and sings every day. They do that cause that's what that they're wired to do that, and I'm wired to do that. I'm wired to sit down at the piano every day or to sing or to write. That's just what I'm going to do.
And like Toni Morrison says racism is this huge distraction, cause I just want to sing, but I also got to figure out what am I going to do about white supremacy today? What am I going to do about anti-blackness and racial violence today? Whether I'm an activist or not, whether I'm organizing against it or not. I still got to figure out how I'm going to navigate this.
Yeah.
Some people, I don't think that they see supporting my ability to just sing as racial justice work, and it's not just me, there are all these people who just want to live their lives. And so it's like, yeah, fine, watch the documentary that helps you understand like watch 13th, please do it. Because it'll help you understand the disproportionate effect of the prison, industrial complex on black people in black communities.
But also understand like one of my mentors that I write about in my book really what we're talking about when we talk about ending racism is getting out of the way of black joy That's it. How do you get out of the way of black joy? You find yourself working on a bunch of problems that affect everybody, because the fact of the matter is the way that these systems and structures have been built to annihilate black joy, they shouldn't happen to anybody. Those things should not happen to anybody.
Right? So if you make sure that those things that had been done to harm black people are undone. You end up helping everyone who is a part of the collateral damage of that policy.
Yeah. So, so I mean, just absolutely beautiful. I really appreciate your time. And all the experience and things that you've gone through to be at this point, where, can people go to connect up with you? Where can people go like you talked about what can they do to help promote the healing or support in any way? What does that look like?
yeah. To keep in touch with me and if people want to, be a part of the stuff that I'm making the best place to find me is at my websites, andrehenry.co I have a, I have an email list there. We send out once a month with, some practical insight about anti-racism and social change some links about that stuff. And, whatever projects I'm working on, we send out updates about that, My social media is there and I'm always promoting other people that are doing good work.
Like that's what my podcast is about. My podcast came about cause I was just like, I want to talk to every anti-racist on the internet. If you are doing anti-racism work, I want to have you on the show. So there's just a wealth of, other freedom fighters on that show, and it's completely free so they're giving out such great insight and you can hear about their work. So
That's called hope and hard pills so
that's yeah.
there as well. So I'll put the links to all that in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you so much your story. It's really important. It's really necessary. And I just
Thanks for having me.
yeah, you're doing
Yeah.
incredible work! Wow, what a powerful episode, just incredible. The things that Andre's been through. And so many other people, the lived experience, of, black folks in America and the history behind it. Well, one of the things that really stood out to me, I mean the whole thing was phenomenal, but one of the things that really stood out to me was what if anti-racism was really about the pursuit of black joy and black wellness? What if we could actually do that?
And again, he goes into so much more depth about all of these things, the history, the structure of systemic racism, the pillars that hold it up, the principles behind nonviolent protest in his book, "All the White Friends I Couldn't Keep, which is actually probably by the time you listen to this, it will actually have launched. So launches March 22nd. Definitely check that out, support the work he's doing the effort of love that he's poured into making the book and his music.
You can check it out on Spotify and, you know, wherever you get your music as well, Andre, Henry. And then if you're looking for more resources around anti-racism the books he mentioned were Radical King, which is a collection of, Martin Luther King Jr.'s speeches and then Blueprint for Revolution, which is Srdja Popovich and that's about the "laughtivism" using humor. And basically a manual framework of how nonviolent protest is actually more effective.
And then check out his, website, www.andrehenry.co, and you can get his monthly newsletter, like he mentioned, or his podcast Hope and Hard Pills and just support the incredible work he's doing. Amazing conversation. I felt really privileged to be a part of it.