Ep. 394 Jason Green - Building Community in a Divided World

Jason Green was serving in the Obama White House when a phone call from his mother sent him home to sit with his grandmother in the hospital — and into a story he never knew was his. In this conversation, we talk about the hidden history of Quince Orchard, a Black community founded after emancipation, and three segregated churches that chose to merge in 1968 after Dr. King’s assassination. We explore remembrance before reconciliation, the communal strength of the Black church, breaking cycles of harm, and what it actually costs to build resilient, integrated community in a divided time. If you’re asking where we go from here — chaos or community — this episode is for you.

Jason G. Green is a Maryland-born community organizer, attorney, entrepreneur, and storyteller whose work sits at the intersection of economic opportunity, community trust-building, and democratic renewal. He is the author of the forthcoming book Too Precious to Lose (One World | Penguin Random House, 2026), an intimate narrative that blends a personal, community history with a broader call to repair the connections that bind us together.

Green served as Special Assistant to the President and Associate White House Counsel to President Obama, advising on domestic and economic policy during the recovery from the Great Recession. He later co-founded SkillSmart, a pioneering workforce and economic-impact software company that has helped quantify more than $100 billion in economic development activity and supported a talent pipeline of more than 50,000 skilled workers across the United States.
He is the President and CEO of EverGreen Labs, a strategy studio that helps organizations deepen stakeholder alignment, improve market positioning, and drive measurable business outcomes. Green previously served as Executive-in-Residence at Zeal Capital Partners, supporting early-stage companies focused on the future of work, financial technology, and health equity.

A civic leader deeply committed to history, memory, and reconciliation, Green is a trustee of the Pleasant View Historic Association and a founding commissioner and former chair of the Montgomery County Commission on Remembrance and Reconciliation. His award-winning PBS documentary, Finding Fellowship, explores the intertwined Black and white history of Quince Orchard and the community-led fight to preserve its legacy

Green has served several corporate and nonprofit boards, including Daivergent, Flare, Clear Impact, Per Scholas, the Arena, the Washington University Alumni Board of Governors and Regional Cabinet, and the Yale Law School Executive Committee and is a non-resident fellow at the Urban Institute. He holds a J.D. from Yale Law School and a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis.
His work—spanning technology, public service, storytelling, and community leadership—is rooted in a belief that our shared future depends on our capacity to connect and build together. Green currently lives in Dallas, Texas, with his wife Ritu and their son Aidan.

Jason's Book:

Too Precious to Lose

Jason's Recommendation:

Great Expectations

Connect with Joshua: jjohnson@shiftingculturepodcast.com

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Transcript

Jason Green: 0:00

Some of that chaos that people are feeling often feels like it's happening to us, but we have an opportunity, particularly in our communities, particularly in our churches, in our in our institutions of community, to push back, to build something that's resilient, to see needs and take action that give us certainty and also will give some light to others that are maybe sitting in the darkness, that can give them a little bit of clarity on which direction to go.

Joshua Johnson: 0:40

Hello and welcome to the shifting culture podcast in which we have conversations about the culture we create and the impact we can make. We long to see the body of Christ look like Jesus. I'm your host. Joshua Johnson in 2009 Jason Green was 27 years old and working in the White House. He advised on constitutional questions executive privilege and the machinery of American power. He had helped elect the first black president. He was, by any measure, on the ascent. Then his mother, called his grandmother, was in the hospital. It didn't look good, so green left Washington and drove the 35 miles home. What he expected was a goodbye. What he found instead was a history, a history of his family, a history of his place. It was a history of a black community founded just after emancipation, about a church built by his ancestors, about three segregated congregations that chose to merge in 1968 days after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr, the place had a name, Quince orchard by the time Greene grew up there, the name had mostly disappeared in today's political climate, where the language of division often feels inevitable, Greene's story lands differently. It asks what happens when power gives way to proximity, when ambition makes room for memory, when reconciliation begins not with slogans, but with remembrance. This conversation is about more than nostalgia. It's about integration and democracy and the long discipline of community. It's about what it costs to choose each other, and it's about whether stories like this still have the power to shape who we become. So join us to find out. Here is my conversation with Jason green, Jason, welcome to shifting culture. So excited to have you on thanks for joining me. Oh, thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here. You know you start your book out too precious to lose with the Obama campaign, and then the first year or so of the Obama presidency, take me into that moment. For you, what was your role, but what were you thinking about during that time? What was coming alive in you during that time?

Jason Green: 2:50

I love that question and the distinction right, like, what were you doing and how did you actually perceive yourself in the world and in that time, my title, when I first was appointed into the administration, was deputy associate White House counsel, and over time, I became Special Assistant to the President and Associate White House Counsel. The White House Counsel's Office is the General Counsel to the President, to the Vice President, to the Executive Office of the President. And so my range of duties could go from the most sophisticated advising the President and the administration on like constitutional executive privilege questions. I remember advising on whether or not he should use the recess appointment, you know, really refined constitutional questions. Or, you know, there could be a slip and fall out at the front steps of the White House, and, you know, we got to figure out how to handle it. So it really is a wide range of experiences. In the General Counsel's Office, I sort of found myself predominantly in the policy realm. So I supported the National Economic Council, the Domestic Policy Council, as we were thinking about different pieces of legislation or different means of executive action to really be supportive to the American people. And in that time period, you know, I started in 2009 a lot of our actions were in response to the Great Recession, and so really thinking about how we could stimulate the economy, thinking about jobs. So that was kind of what I was doing, what I was thinking. I mean, you know this from reading the book I got on the Obama campaign. You know, I was thinking about it all the way back in 2004 where I first heard him speak at the Democratic National Convention. And as a as a staffer, sitting up in the stands, I hear him start delivering this sermon like speech. And I'm connected to my dad, you know, thinking about being a kid listening to him intonate, you know, on a Saturday night as he prepared to give his sermon on Sunday morning. And so I felt connected to Barack Obama, to then State Senator Obama, then Senator Obama, and then the Kim. Pain, and so I on the campaign, I felt it was my duty to help get him elected. I never thought that I had the opportunity to serve in the administration, and so it was just deeply rewarding to, one, to get to serve his historic presidency. And two, as I say in the book, The most important thing and valuable thing I could ever do was serve the American people. But I was a kid. I was 27 years old, running around the White House and so that always, you know, there's so much mystery and excitement being in a place like that, that young in your professional career.

Joshua Johnson: 5:35

You know when I think back, it just it feels like a totally different time and different era. It just feels crazy to me that it really wasn't that long ago, but it feels forever ago that there was, there was, I mean, he was campaigning on hope, but there was, there was hope, right? There was a sense that we could come together as community, that we actually have this, this national identity that's less about division, but it's about coming together. I felt like hope palpably during that time and like, Okay, we could, we could start to do this. And it feels like there's a lot of chaos now that things are unraveling, you even starts your book talking about Martin Luther King, Jr's talk about the very end of his life between chaos and community and his prophetic call to bring about community. What were you thinking that community was at that time? What were you thinking about community and hope and bringing people together?

Jason Green: 6:44

When people ask me who I am, often, I'll say, what you need to know most about me is, I'm the product of a Methodist preacher and a public school teacher. And I want I grew up watching them kind of ferment community in a school system, in the church, you know. And I grew up a product of a pretty, you know, engaged and active grandmother who also built community. And so I had a sense of this idea of shared responsibility, of self sacrifice for greater good. I saw that modeled quite quite a bit. And so I realized, and you see this play out in the book, that I was attracted to those sorts of ideas. I matriculate to Washington University in St Louis because there's a dean there that says, Here we want people to be known by name and by story. You know, an idea that you're more than just sort of the labels that we put upon people. And then, similarly, to your point about kind of that feeling from what shouldn't be that long ago, but 2008 there's some time there, right? The fact that we're about to say 20 years from from when he ran for office, I was attracted to that campaign because he talked about there not being red states and blue states, but that these were the United States, and there was just a hunger for that kind of potential for progress and moving forward. And so that was very present when we were in the administration. I think that was something that we campaigned on. We didn't when he won, he didn't want to govern just for the people who voted for him. He wanted to continue to try and model behavior that would allow people to reach across and come back to the table. And I think we can look back on that experience and say those decisions weren't always right, but he tried to lift up this idea of kind of moral leadership, and that was the expectation for all of us, too. And so I think, to your point about community, even then, I had a sense of what it meant, what was possible, right, what we wanted to imbue and instill in people, really to inspire them. You know, President Obama would say change doesn't come from Washington out. It comes to Washington. And so those sorts of ideas of what people can actually do in their communities was what it was important. And now we need to see it modeled. We need to show examples that people can continue

Joshua Johnson: 8:57

to do it. So as you're wrestling with this, you're on the the White House Council. You know, one day you get a call from your mom to you about your grandma. Take me into into that what was going through your mind and what trajectory happened because of that call?

Jason Green: 9:14

Yeah, so just to put some context to the point you're pulling out Joshua, so I call this my kind of period of self importance, right? Where I was, I had gone off to Yale Law School. I had done the Obama campaign. I was the National Voter Registration director. I then, you know, I was supposed to go home. I didn't. I'd go right to the White House. I missed a couple of births, right? Missed the wedding like it was self so consumed in this period, I wasn't as engaged in some of the things that are important, that are, I think we can all agree, are universally important. And so I get this call from my mom, you know, and I'm only 35 miles from home, right? And but I haven't been back. So I get this call from my mom, as you state, and my grandmother, who lived at the top. Of the street that I grew up on. My grandparents were very involved. It's where my both my parents worked. We got dropped off there after school. And so I volunteered with my grandma, going to this hospital, watching her give people this gift of dignity late in life, right, sitting with them, giving the daily devotional, all those sorts of things. So I saw service up front, I saw that you could sit and bear witness and make somebody's life better just by being present. So fast forward in the White House, I've been there for four years, slogging away, and I get a call from my mom that I embarrassingly first send a voicemail, right? So I send it to voicemail. She calls me back. I pick it up, and she tells me that my grandmother's in the hospital, and that doesn't look good. She's having some problems with her foot, and the doctors say that she should amputate it. And she's like, I'm not doing that. And so you kind of know what the what? What's going to happen. I then take that as an opportunity to go and sit with her. I say, oh, okay, God, I get it. You want me to go and sit with my grandmother the same way that I watched her sit with all those other people late in life? Hold the hand, give the daily devotional, offer an ice chip. I can, I can do that. In my mind I was going to go do it once. In that time with her, she opened a window or a doorway into our history and our past that I didn't expect, didn't appreciate, and I decided that instead of continuing to work at the White House, I needed to go and be with my grandmother and spend more time there, more fully understand our story, where We came from, who I am and and the product of that is, is this book too precious to lose?

Joshua Johnson: 11:46

What was then starting to be uncovered about history? Why did you why did you sense that it was important to really sit and listen and hear and discover what was in that place?

Jason Green: 12:59

Well, I think part of it was the fact of where I was. So I think you starting with the context is so right? I'm in the White House, running around this building, trying to get people to listen to me. And I realize now that in some respects, I didn't really have much to say. And sitting with my my grandmother actually gave me a story. It gave me a foundation and gave me a grounding. And so in sitting with her, in the you know, the first time I went to go sit with grandma, my mom was there. My mom was peppering my my grandmother was questions, right? It sort of planted the seed for this idea. And I just got to sit there and be a witness. And you could tell that my grandmother, these are, my mom was sort of cherry picking these stories from my grandmother's past because she was firing them off and was excited to tell them. And I it sort of struck me for the first time that my grandmother lived a whole life before she was my grandmother, right? Like she was Ida Pearl green before she was grandma green. And that in that Ida Pearl green stretch, and in the grandma green stretch, but in the eye of a pearl green stretch, she had done some pretty tremendous things and seen some tremendous things. I once asked my grandmother in her life, who lived to be 106 years old? I said, What? What's the most amazing thing you've ever seen? She said, the transition from horse and buggy to the car. You're just like, you've really seen some things in your lifetime. Well, particularly to your question, Joshua, when we were sitting together, my grandmother started to talk about our history. And it really struck me two stories in particular sort of captured my attention. One was how my great, great grandfather and grandmother, a few years after emancipation, pulled together some dollars with other members of the community to build the church, the schoolhouse, the cemetery that became the sort of cornerstone of the black community of quince orchard. I didn't know that story. It floored me that quince orchard was a place that I was a product of. I didn't know that. I didn't know the slavery component of our history. So that piece was significant foundationally. But then if you layer on top of it, you sort of move the timetable 100 years forward. In 1968 my grandmother and her generation who she grew up in that black church that my great great grandparents founded, they were faced with a different decision, and a difficult one, with dwindling membership. One night that church gathered together and they decided to merge their congregation with two white congregations, one of which was Northern, one of which was southern. And that decision happened in the wake of Dr King's assassination. And that hearing that, the fact that I didn't know that, the fact that it happened to your whole point about now our national identity being one of division like that. That happened in 1960 Eight in a period where we would call pretty radical, that those two things started to capture my attention, and that were, I realized we're just scratching the surface of the story.

Joshua Johnson: 16:10

So as you're scratching the surface, one of the things is, one of the questions I have here is, in this moment of chaos and division, we look to maybe a week ago or yesterday for our answers and our stories. What do you think that we miss if we don't listen to the history, if we don't uncover the past of the stories that actually shaped who we are and who we are today?

Jason Green: 16:36

Oh, I think the context is so important. It's such a good question. It's interesting. Joshua, so I serve on the commission for remembrance and reconciliation in montgomery county, and it has helped me realize, and as you see, sort of my journey through the book, how I was often one to initiate reconciliation, to start with hands In the middle, without going through the process of remembrance or truth. And to your point that that requires us to look back and remember, to understand the process by which we got to the place where we are, what's worked, what hasn't worked. Understanding this is something my grandmother would say a lot. She would say, it takes a long time sometimes, and I don't want to hear that, but to be able to see the journey and understand where we fit in this longer arc is really important, and also to understand how things have progressed. You look at the period of the civil rights movement, I think one of the pieces that is often overlooked. We look at the successes, we look at the violence, but we miss the everyday intention, the everyday practice, the training that went into that effort. And we sometimes expect that these things will progress on their own or by magic, and not appreciating that we can't just show up the Flashpoint or the for the headline or for the vigil, like it really requires sustained organizing and movement pressure, because our history is one of progress and backlash and progress and backlash, and so if you don't understand that, it's really easy for your spirit to be consumed, but in understanding The broader context, to understand that this pendulum swings, and so then we need to be ready to force it in the other direction. Gives momentum and inspiration.

Joshua Johnson: 18:28

I get frustrated with pendulum swings that we're we're actually going one direction, so far to, you know, the east. Now we're going so far to the west, like we're going so far away from each other that there has to be something, as you said, you used to try and start with reconciliation, that there is something here in the middle that we could hold hands together, that is not just pushed back and forth, but you started to uncover some things that actually help, like, ground us in The it's not the middle. It's just not about like pushing so far one way to get off course in another direction. Has that happened in history where we could actually see something bringing us together in a tangible way?

Jason Green: 19:17

Yeah, I think what I hear you talking about is sort of the values orientation. One of the things that really struck me looking back doing the historical research for this book, was the intention that people really brought to bear about success survival, and that requires, sort of an understanding of the longer term goals. What are we really here to accomplish? Because if success is only measured in whether I succeed, maximize my, you know, whatever today, or you maximize your whatever today, then this wouldn't have worked. You know, one example for you is when these churches were coming together. They were really thoughtful about who was going to be president in the women's clubs. And so they decided that they were actually gonna have been rotating rotating presidents. This year it was gonna be a black president. Next year is gonna be a white president, you know, with a with a vice president. And just really thoughtful about that. And if they had sort of just turned it to a vote that probably wouldn't have turned out that way, because the majority the numbers didn't quite wouldn't have come to that sort of a vote outcome, but they realized that for the outcomes they wanted to achieve, they needed to implement that sort of balance. Now an individual might be really upset to say, this would have been my year to be president, and I'm going to miss out. And, you know, this was my window, and I can't be, you know, obligations won't allow me to be president next year, and that is really unfortunate for me. But they realized that the the individual definition of success wasn't their overall goal, and they're just examples. You. And more and more examples of that in the actual binding together of these congregations that I think we could take heat of. I know that's hard. It's really hard because we're in a society right now we're really are pushing individual maximization, but where we can be well and also ensure that other people are good, puts us all in a better position

Joshua Johnson: 21:26

this community of quince orchard. Why do you think that those things got forgotten? They were forgotten quickly where you didn't realize what what happened, where you were growing up at all? Why do you think that gets erased quickly?

Jason Green: 21:44

Yeah, it's a really good question. So part of what Joshua's getting at folks will see when they read the book is Mike. I grew up in the same community that my grandmother grew up in that my father grew up in. By the time I got there, it wasn't called quince orchard anymore. I didn't know that quince orchard had been a community, like a defined community. I grew up on quirtz Road, so I knew the name, but I never heard of it sort of described as a place. So this was very new to me. Now, part of it goes back to one of your original questions about what happens when you don't know the history, and that is, we kind of fill it in ourselves, or we assume a lot of things. So I grew up not really making time to know the history. It's funny, when I started hearing these, having these conversations with my grandmother and hearing our story, I went to my older sister, Keisha, and I said, Hey, Keisha, did you know all these stories about grandma and everything. And she said, yeah, yeah. How did you not know? Because she used to go and have breakfast with her every morning before high school. And by the time I got to high school, that was the last place I wanted to be, was sitting with my grandmother before school, right? And so every year we actually would go to the historic site, that old church, that old school house. Every year there was a festival, but I didn't ever process it. I didn't really take it in. I was much happier with the soccer ball playing out in the field than going inside to hear the stories of how my grandmother started attending that one room schoolhouse in 1924 right, and in some respects, that's what's unfortunate, is that we are in a generation that doesn't have that opportunity, often, to have stories passed down generationally. I mean, that is kind of the history of our story. You'd sit at the grandparents knee and hear the stories. But it's also a testament to why we tell stories, right that I didn't pick up on the stories the first 10th or maybe a 100th time that I heard it, but when I was ready to hear it, the story was still there. And I think about this, is true in religious context, right? You tell the Christmas story, we tell the Easter story, we tell we tell the stories over and over. It's the same story, but people are prepared to hear it in a different way. So that's part of it, is that I didn't know, or wasn't able to approach the history, but you're right, there is also the reality that this place wasn't named quince orchard anymore, right? There were physical changes. And so that community went through changes between, you know, that period of 1950 and 1980 where it transitioned from being a predominantly rural community to now it's a bastion of suburbia that is kind of a suburban town for people that work in DC, a federal agency got moved to gaithersburg, very close to this community of quince orchard. In so many respects, they had a population boom. And so it transitioned from a rural, sleepy farming community to the science capital of the world once the National Institutes of Standards and Technology came there. And so the story that I'm telling there's, there's rapid change that's happening around the church, while at the same time it's trying to sort of preserve these core elements of community inside it.

Joshua Johnson: 25:14

I mean, it's pretty amazing that that those three churches can come together and merge and like, that's a great witness for us moving forward. I want to know, like you just mentioned during that time, you know, it's 1968 there's two things, and I think the the civil rights movement did, did really well, of, of figuring out how to how to organize, tell cohesive stories, to make significant change, even though it was costly, and the black church tradition actually is a lot more community oriented and communal than a lot of the white church tradition in America has been a lot more individualized, and we're in an individualized. Moment and not a communal moment. What do you think that the black church tradition and even the civil rights movement can teach us some of these values and the things that we may have lost today that we need to recover?

Jason Green: 26:15

I love the question. It takes me back to being in the Pleasant View sanctuary. I got to go back and interview family members in the sanctuary where they kind of came up. And my dad, you know, plays an outsized role in my story. Obviously, I remember him talking about the role of the black church. For him, growing up in in Jim Crow right, attending segregated schools and being told repeatedly and shown repeatedly that you are less than but not at church on Sunday morning there, you were able to be lifted up and shown that you were somebody and that you were somebody's right to your point of the communal that there was a there was a faith in God, but also a faith in each Other and a communal responsibility for one another. People talk about quince orchard of that generation as a place in the church, as a place where you got in trouble, you get a whooping before you got home. The members of the Church treated each other all the children, it was communal children where they were responsible for one another. That's that's a hard concept today, right? If someone, if a child, did something wrong, and somebody else went to discipline them, I don't know how parents would react, like it's a real conversation that should be had. When I was growing up, there was someone named Miss Emma. When we were come out of Sunday school and reach for the cookie table, Miss Emma would, would deploy her justice upon us, all children and all parents, you know, swore by Miss Emma. It's a little bit different today, but that those are ideas of community where we knew, even though I didn't appreciate my hand being slapped, I knew that Miss Emma was slapping my hand because she cared about me, because she loved me, because she wanted me to do right, and she cared enough about me in those things that was willing to discipline me right? It would have been much easier for her to say, oh, that child and walk away. It would have been much easier to do the eye roll or just say, I'm frustrated with these children. But instead, she, you know, took the action to demonstrate a behavior right? That put us on a different course for a different outcome, and that, you know, the thing about that you said it well about the work. It takes time and it takes effort. It's costly, but it's the it is the work that makes it all worthwhile, and is the only way we get to the direction I think that you and I both want. What do

Joshua Johnson: 28:41

you think that community and just working towards real integration and community, and like having each other's back and like being with one another and real community? What does that cost us?

Jason Green: 28:54

It's so funny, right? Because we have this, we know that's right, but then at the same time. But will that happen? Can that happen? It's so hard, so it makes me think about my own reaction to this story. So wild juxtaposition. I grew up in this merged congregation, right? I was baptized in Fair Haven church. I was ran around with an integrated youth choir. I that's, that's where and how I grew up. I was the baby Jesus in the nativity play, right? That was, that was my home congregation. Fast forward to when I'm sitting in my grandmother's room hearing the story she's telling me about 1968 about racial division, about the Olympics, about all that's about Chicago, about the DNC, about all these things that happened in 1968 and then she tells me about three small, little country churches in quince orchard, and how one of them had a meeting the night of April 4, 1968 and they all decided. And before she can get those words out of her mouth. I said, they didn't merge, did they? And my the shock of my grandmother's face and a little bit of disappointment, she's like, Jason, you you grew up in the church. Yes, they merged. They became Fair Haven. And to your point, right? This is, this is our work about shifting culture, to build bridges, to bring people together. I was like, Oh, wow. I didn't think that that would have happened. Like, there was something about the world in which we live that I figured people would have said, that is too hard. People would have said, you know, it's great. If you guys want to do it, I can't. I'm good. And so to your point on today, I think, not only do I think it's possible, I think it's necessary that we have this sort of commitment where people have each other's backs. We're seeing it play out in ways and communities now. But I think we need examples. We're people that despite or alongside our faith, sometimes we need examples. We need. To see it, to believe it. And so here's an example of what it can look like. And to your point, it is costly. It takes a lot of time. There's a lot of meetings. These guys were, one of the rules of their participation was they wouldn't leave a meeting until everyone had spoken, because we wanted you to air it here. We all want you to go and gripe once you get home. We wanted, if you have a frustration, say it so that we can have these conversations. And so it did truly require intention and engagement and ongoing conversation. I tell a story in the book about the Gospel Choir and how that manifested. It manifested because there were black congregants that didn't see themselves represented in the worship service. Well, they didn't just push back from the table and say, This isn't for me. They decided to come up with a solution. They created a gospel choir, and then we're faced with the decision, do you integrate it? And decided, you know. So they were thinking about all these things and committed to this bigger idea of the bigger idea that was before them, to making sure that it was a success.

Joshua Johnson: 32:08

You're learning a lot from the story of this integration, this church, the place that you were. I know that you took a trip to South Africa. How do you think the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has really shaped the way that you are thinking about what, even what you're doing now. Oh, it's such a

Jason Green: 32:28

good question. I got to go to South Africa. I was in Johannesburg in 2006 so 20 years ago, which is so hard to so hard to believe. And so my my work there was with a group called the kulamani support group, and they were an organization supporting survivors of apartheid, and many of their members had gone through the Truth and Reconciliation process, and some had been awarded reparations, but not had not seen those awards, and Part of the complaint was that there wasn't enough financial activity in the country, and so part of my role was to try and develop strategies to see more multinational companies engaging in the South African economy, to have resources for some of those reparations. What was amazing to me was the willingness and commitment to this idea of democracy, right, that it had real consequences, and you saw the scars, physical scars on people's faces. I remember being with a gentleman, Douglas and Tully, who was one of our clients, and he was very active in the center. And we were, I think the center was only the third floor, so we were taking the elevator down, and we got on the elevator, and someone gets on the elevator the second floor, and he looks at her, and he says, You're lazy. And we get down to the first floor. And I said, why'd you say that? And he's like, I took a bullet during the uprisings, and I had two inches of my spine removed. He goes, I wish that I could walk down the stairs. And it just those sorts of experiences right, like he lost that capacity in the fight for democracy. There's real consequences to this and and how even small things in his mind, like elevator rides, are manifestations of that right, like what he lost and what was what what he was fighting for, was really beautiful. And so I take those experiences and what South Africa has done and and particularly in that time period, right, that we were in a time period where it felt like they really were trying to give democracy a chance, and they really were putting a lot in the of weight and expectation of what democracy could deliver. And I don't think that the political systems within South Africa has always delivered for their people, but it was, it was pretty beautiful to see people believing in that concept and willing to put those beliefs into action. And so that's the thesis that I bring back, is that there are real consequences of these conversations. When you think about, how are we going to help each other? How are we going to is it worth investing in these ideas of having each other's back and doing something robust and resilient that's going to take place over time? Absolutely. And we see the costs physical manifested people's faces through those sorts of experiences,

Joshua Johnson: 35:26

people there, they're actually they're fighting for democracy. But even in your own story, you're looking at a community that decides to choose community and tries to protect community. That's what we need to do if we want to. We want to choose. We want to protect. What do you think threatens community today, more than anything else, what are the things that are threatening our communities?

Jason Green: 35:51

Certainly going back to Africa, the old African proverb, if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together. And I think that that, in many respects, sort of lifts. Up the conversation that we're we're having in communities. Community goes a little slower. Community is not nearly as sexy. You know, in the author's zone, I sort of talk about some of this. I worry about community because we are a little bit more of a click mentality. You know, social media mentality. A lot of the content that's being put forward is very individualistic. And so we're not seeing a lot of messages that are talking about building community, though. I think people are still hungry for it. And I think that we're at a real, you know, we talk a lot the metaphysical kind of institutions, Republic, democracy, these big concepts, but we're seeing it play out in people's real lives. You know, there is, I think it was 2024 the Surgeon General Report and warning about a pandemic, an epidemic of isolation, where people are feeling lonely people, and there's this interesting juxtaposition between what people say that they want, but actually do people say that they Want to be in community. But then, you know, only know one or two neighbors names. You know, we're seeing remarkable rates of people of unfamiliarity with neighbors, never going inside. And so the threat is the speed, some of the commercialization, some of the individualization that we're seeing really being promoted that that fights at the idea of slowing down thinking about shared responsibility to frame this one story for you. Part, part of what got me writing or thinking about this idea was Trayvon Martin's murder. Trayvon Martin looks a lot like my nephew. You know, where his hoodie up and ran his bike on the street that I grew up on. And so I see that, and saw that, and I was like, I want to protect him. I want to I want to wrap my arms around him, and then let's see what we can do. We build a big fence, we put him in private school, like, how can I isolate him. And I realized that that actually won't protect him. The only way that I can really protect him is I need you to care about him. And the way I get you to care about him is I care about your kid and I care about your you know. And just so some of this we have to realize is a strategy. My goal is still self interested. I want my family to be safe, but the strategy to get there much, much more realistic and successful, resilient strategy is to care about your kid and the and to protect your kid, and you'll do the same for mine.

Joshua Johnson: 38:40

I mean, part of that is, I mean, we actually have to know each other, right? That's so that's, that's, that's part of it.

Jason Green: 38:48

There's a line in the book where I said, to see each other, we actually have to see each other. Yeah, when we don't actually see each other, I've been experiencing that uniquely in a new community, or we just moved to Dallas, and don't feel like we're really being seen yet. And so I think it's so important to see each other and get to know each other. My my uncle Tompkins, in the book, says a line that resonates with me, or he says, it's hard to hate up close. We can actually take the time to get proximate enough to know each other. It's a big, big part of it.

Joshua Johnson: 39:21

Yeah. I mean, one of the things that I'm really invested in and I want to see, I want to break cycles of harm and cycles of violence that we see every day and that these are personal, these are communal. These are, you know, nationwide, worldwide, types of cycles that we see that a lot of times when we are inflicted with pain and trauma, we then inflict pain and trauma on other people, and it just continues in this cycle, you're sharing stories where these cycles have a chance to be broken, and we have a chance to actually see a Different way. What do you think it takes to break cycles that is just embedded within us, in our country and our communities, where we're seeing the same things play out 30 years ago, the same thing happened now. It's happening again. Like, how do we break that out of these cycles?

Jason Green: 40:19

Such a great question. I think on the cycle aside, like other things, we we need to see examples. We need to see stories of to show that it's possible to break a cycle, to do something different, to have an outcome that isn't tethered to previous actions. And so that's why it was so important for me to tell a story, not just about three churches coming together, not just about three segregated churches coming together, but about three churches coming together where there was a presence of slavery, where in that community, there was a history of lynching, where right like so you can understand that this. Religion was not predetermined, and they did not have to decide to do what their forebearers did. They went in a different direction. The church that they merged and formed is now 58, years old. You know, it's it's still working and ebbing and flowing and trying to be relevant in today's society, but it's still very intentionally integrated. It still honors the the formation of those three original churches, and so I think that's part of the point in telling the story, is to say we aren't bound by our past, and we have those opportunities, but it also requires a little bit of time. Requires a little bit of time, I would say, even my own journey in the book, right? There are a couple of relationships that I talk about with my family that, you know, we're all living busy, full lives, and to get the time to actually sit and think and reflect and potentially say, Oh, maybe I didn't get the full context of that. Maybe I should give the benefit of the doubt. Maybe I should, like, we don't get to do that. Instead, we harbor the pain and we pass on that pain. And so I like the the idea, you know, the bishop and the Methodist Church would say, transform people, transform people. And so really, that transformation begins with us having the opportunity to sit and truly look inward, to begin that transformation that can then be external.

Joshua Johnson: 42:35

I mean, you're telling a story that is actually rooted in something that is really real, like this is like what the world is supposed to be like. I think we're in a in a time right now where 1000s and 1000s of stories are being told, and people are trying to shout their story, of their idea of what they they want to see happen. How do we tell better stories, slower stories that resonate in a place where everybody's shouting a story and everybody's trying to get their own story heard.

Jason Green: 43:14

Well, it's so funny because I feel like I sort of stumbled over backwards, right? This wasn't a pursuit to tell the story. I wanted to go and sit with my grandmother. And in her wisdom, I think, I think it was her wisdom, and not her not wanting to hang out with me. I think it was in her wisdom she would kick me out of her room, and she'd say, if that part of the story is interesting to you, you should go talk to miss Howard or miss Blair, Miss Johnson. And so I ended up talking and sitting with all these people developing this kind of anthology of these griots from from our ancestry. And so I wanted to compile that, almost for myself, this story and this exercise was answering my own question in many respects, Joshua like I felt as though Dr King's prophetic question, where do we go from here? Chaos or Community hadn't really been answered, or there weren't even the example. We got to build the case. Let's help build the case and put, I'm trying to put a little bit of evidence, you know, before the court to help help make a case. And so I wanted to just put this together and answer the question for myself. And in so doing, I've been really inspired, humbled by the people who will say, you know, I I needed to hear that, or that resonates with me, or that reminds me of my grandmother. You know, the pieces that people are able to pull from the story and carry with them in pretty difficult times that will will, you know, feed them to continue to push on, I think is, is critical. And all I can say is, I want to tell this story, to say that stories like this can be made. I remember someone asked me, What's so special about your family? And I said, nothing. I mean everything, because they're my family, but nothing and so in by doing this, hopefully, I'm inspiring you, or giving you license for someone else to tell their unique story that that can give us some hope, because I think there's real power in everyday people doing extraordinary things.

Joshua Johnson: 45:28

If you talk to your readers of too precious to lose your new memoir, it's great book. What hope do you have for this book and for the people who

Jason Green: 45:37

read it? Yeah, I was so appreciative of the time, and I'm so excited for people to get an opportunity to read this book too precious to lose. It's really about that sense. You know, people ask me, what is too precious to lose? And there's so many things I don't want to say. There is an answer. I want people to read it and tell me for them what's too precious to lose. But there is one story there you. That motivated me tremendously, and has has changed the way in which I kind of see how I engage. It's where my grandmother's telling the story about how my great great grandparents founded the quince orchard school, and how there was no public education, and once again, I'm the lawyer that's engaged in paralysis by analysis, and I'm questioning whether it was even smart to do this three years after emancipation. And my grandmother stops me short, and she says, Jason, there was no public education for black children's in montgomery county. Your great, great grandparents looked around the community. They saw a need. They pulled together $54 they bought the land, they built the school, because they were doers and doers do said they looked around the community. They saw need and took action because they were doers and doers do and I realized that I was of the population that would probably question, hypothesize, maybe prognosticate, but then there's a population of people that see a need in their community take action. And I wanted to be on that side of the line. And so I want people to recognize that they have that opportunity as well that some of the the swirling that you alluded to, some of that chaos that people are feeling, often feels like it's happening to us, but we have an opportunity, particularly in our communities, particularly in our churches, in our in our institutions of community, to push back, to build something that's resilient, To see needs and take action that give us certainty, and also will give some light to others that are maybe sitting in the darkness, that can give them a little bit of direction on which give them a little bit of clarity on which direction to go.

Joshua Johnson: 47:55

Jason, I have a couple quick questions here at the end. One, if you go back to your 21 year old self, what advice would you give,

Jason Green: 48:02

slow down. Slow down. Like I said, I was on the journey of self importance that showed me well, and many people say that's ungenerous, but I missed a couple of things along the way that were important. I'm really grateful for the opportunity to go back and

Joshua Johnson: 48:17

pick them up. Anything you've been reading or watching lately, you could recommend,

Jason Green: 48:20

actually, it's funny. So this is my book too precious to lose. But I'd also push a dear friend's book Great Expectations, which is another story from Obama era from Vincent Cunningham, which I really, really enjoyed. So would certainly encourage people to check that out.

Joshua Johnson: 48:38

Excellent, excellent. That's good. Well, two precious to lose will be available anywhere books are sold. Fantastic book. So really want people to go read the story. Give you some hope to say, Hey, maybe I could look at my community and see what need there is, and we could actually do something about it. How can people connect with you? And what you're doing is there anywhere you'd like to point people to,

Jason Green: 49:02

yeah, I'd love to be connected to folks. We're sort of on a mission here that historic site that I talked about Joshua. It's going to reopen in June, the church, the schoolhouse, we built a third building that had been lost to fire. And so I'll invite everyone to come for Juneteenth, for the celebration. But anyone can reach out at Jason green book.com, perfect.

Joshua Johnson: 49:25

Well, Jason, thank you. It was a fantastic conversation. Thank you for taking us into your story so that we could actually learn how to shape our collective story in our communities. And what does it look like to sit together and be together and say that when we look back, there are examples and there are stories that can teach us how to go forward and move forward into a brighter and better future for us and our communities. So thank you. It's fantastic.

Jason Green: 49:53

Thank you so much for the time. Just really appreciate it. You