Episode 11: How to Succeed, Part. 2

We brought three people together to discuss the recent legislative wins around reforming the incarceration system, but the conversation becomes much deeper. These guests share insight on how to build a loving, stable, successful, sustainable community within the most difficult circumstances. Guests: Justin Terrell, Raymond Dehn and Brother Shane Price 

0:00- Intros
13:39- Can you say a little bit about the context of POP, the Power of People Personal Development and Leadership Institute?
21:19- How do you humanize the people that have had a dehumanizing myth told about them for so long?
33:22- What were the key pieces that lined up this year to get things done?
50:30- How do you find shared purpose to get things done, when everyone has their own ideas? 
54:15- What advice would you give someone just starting out? 

Transcript

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Leah Cooper

Welcome to Our House, a podcast that pulls back the curtain on Minnesota State government. I’m Leah Cooper.

Alan Berks

And I’m Alan Berks. We’re the co-artistic directors of a theater company called Wonderlust Productions. In the process of putting together an original show about life at the state capitol, we learned that Minnesota government is very much like theater.

Leah Cooper
 In our previous episodes, we’ve been able to explore the multiple pressure points that affect public policy, legislation, and the laws that we live by in Minnesota. 

Alan Berks
We’ve asked people to tell us what the secret ingredients to creating change might be. 

Leah Cooper
We’ve heard “It’s complicated” over and over.

Alan Berks
Many people have told us that the political process is like an old machine - made from a different era and difficult to update.

Leah Cooper
 In this episode, we hear about a spaceship. The kind that you take to escape  a world that divides, marginalizes and dehumanizes large segments of the population.

Alan Berks
Our guests in this episode work with people who have been incarcerated. They are immersed in some of the most difficult issues that currently plague our society, and yet they somehow manage to lead with love.

Leah Cooper
We’ll let them introduce themselves. Because who they are, what they do, and how they talk about it are what made this such a great conversation.

Shane Price  

Brother Shane Price, North sider - I'm proud of that fact. I am the founder, co-founder of the Power of People Personal Development and Leadership Institute, we’re just about 19 years old now. 

Raymond Dehn 

I'm Raymond Dehn, I have a job that utilizes my architectural skills. Right now I'm doing project management work at the interior renovation of Minneapolis City Hall. But before that, I was a legislator for eight years and actually came to the legislation, or to the legislature because I was involved with a group that engaged with Critical Resistance, which is an organization whose main goal is to dismantle the prison industrial complex. I came to that through my association with architecture, because I was part of a group called Architects Designers and Planners for Social Responsibility. Went to the conference, went and heard Angela Davis speak at the keynote, and she asked everybody at the Ella Baker Center in Oakland that if you were convicted of a felony to stand up. And I stood up that day. I was with my fellow board members. And since 1982 - I received a pardon in 1982 - or the crime I committed in 1976. And so I live my life as if I've never committed a crime. And then at that moment, I'm like, I need to do something because I have had all these incredible opportunities because of when my crime was committed, and the fact that I was a white man that committed a crime. That's how I come to all this stuff.

Justin Terrell  

I never get tired of hearing that story. My name is Justin Terrell. I'm the Executive Director of the Minnesota Justice Research Center. And we are a small nonprofit in South Minneapolis based out of Sabathani, which is a community center right up the block from George Floyd Square, where George Floyd was murdered by Derek Chauvin, and the other former officers. We, our mission at the Minnesota Justice Research Center is to transform the criminal legal system. We believe everything from policing to reentry, and everything in between needs to be changed. And we use research, education, and policy development to go about enacting that change. I came to this role, I started out as a social worker in the community serving youth and families in crisis, which is actually where I met Shane. And after a series of events where I saw young people ending up in adult services, I realized there was a policy issue at play here. And so I decided to study policy, which landed me a job at Take Action Minnesota as the Justice For All program director. And in that role, I was an organizer working on several racial equity and criminal justice campaigns, which is where I met Mr. Ray Dehn, who I had the pleasure of being his organizer and my first role as an organizer. And so he and I took on the world together with several other folks and established a pretty successful run.

Raymond Dehn  

Yeah, some change happened. One of the key things, of course, was what happened with around ban the box initially, and Target, getting Target to actually change their policy. It took many years for that to happen. But finally the right people got in the right places at Target and they were one of the first major private employers to not have the box on their job application so individuals that committed crimes could have an opportunity to actually present themselves for position

Leah Cooper 

So you two worked together on that.

Justin Terrell  

Yeah it was my first campaign. He was running for office. Ray was running for office.

Raymond Dehn 

Well, not initially, but yeah, I got there.

Justin Terrell 

He got there. And, and, and Ban the box was my first campaign as an organizer. Day one sat in a room full of lawyers for eight hours, I'd never knocked the door, ran a campaign before. And we spent, you know, 2012 in 2013, escalating tactics on Target Corporation, shutting down their lobby multiple times, we went to crash the shareholders meeting in Colorado flew, we flew janitors and formerly incarcerated people out to Colorado, introduced ourselves to the CEO and his senior, you know, his senior staff and we held a - once we won the campaign, we held that sort of a rally event at the Capri Theater on the north side, packed house. And-

Shane Price  

We were there.

Justin Terrell 

You were there - you were the closer, Shane

Shane Price 

Well but organizationally, I got involved because I saw your effort. And, you know, your desire to see change happen was so infectious, right? That it caused us you know to move into it, organizationally. I was just sharing with Ray a moment ago, I'm careful about what I participate in, or what I allow the men who are under our watch on our, under our mission, I'm careful about them, because they're politically charged. They're released from prison, most of them are living good lives, we call it the good life, and we're pursuing that. But I have to make sure that, number one, I'm maintaining your freedom - you're living your life in such a way where your freedom is going to be maintained. So I have to be cautious about what I lend ourselves to organizationally, I can't expose our guys to things that's going to flash back on them and cause them to have some individual challenge that they wouldn't have otherwise. However, when effort and commitment are so powerfully, you know, utilized that overrules it - that's like a spade a trump card. And you are playing a spade with me, because of our relationship. So this where we converged at the Capri, Ray, you were there, too. We converged there with our population, all ex offenders, it was about all of our guys, and we were managing it organizationally and saying “We are in this together.” And without having a meeting about it - we met about it years ago - and just decided we flow with each other, you know, when the flow is right, and the flow was right there. I'll send it back to you. 

Justin Terrell  

Yeah I mean, look, Shane, you are two kind. So what you got to know about both of these brothers, they schooled me, right, like I have learned so much from both of them. And, you know, as we continue to all work supporting these brothers coming home and sisters coming home, that your number one principle has always been something that you were the first one to teach me that. Because a lot of people do this work with formerly incarcerated folks and don't know how hard it is, how fragile it is, we can't lose a single one of them. 

Shane Price

Absolutely. 

Justin Terrell

They all have to, they all have to stay committed to their freedom and pursue excellence. And that is not what the average person has to do. Right? 

Shane Price

It’s true.

Justin Terrell

And so you... we had some tense moments. And I learned and grew you know, through all of those tense moments. Because you had to teach me to not be so you know, aggressive with it and and slow down and make sure I learned a thing or two. And so by the time we got to the Capri I knew I was like you got to be the closer because it was 300 folks -  we broke fire code - it was 300 folks in the room. And it was the majority of the room, was we do I don't know if you remember this Shane, but we had to break up. We had to keep a couple people separated. You know, there was - It was all peaceful, all love, but there was an incident where somebody was like “I saw so and so and I think they saw me,” And it was it was that kind of room but then Keith Ellison was there. All the mayor candidates was coming through, we had the Vice President of labor relations from Target was on stage getting schooled by Nekima, who's a local activist. And, and at that event, Target stood up and said not only are we going to adopt Band the Box for our organization here in Minnesota, but we have it throughout the country, which we didn't expect, right? And then they went beyond that and supported legislation which applied to all private employees, and employers. And so that was like this, that was my introduction into this world. And I got to do it with these brothers who, you know, Ray set an example for me. As somebody who had the courage to run for public office with a felony, right, as a white dude, and didn't shy away from talking about why that matters.

Raymond Dehn  

Yeah. And, you know, it's, it's funny, because I mean, Minnesota had had it for public employment that an employer couldn’t ask, but it was pushing for that private employers, because that's where the majority of jobs are, right? And, you know, there was always a talk about, you know, felon friendly companies and all that stuff. But, you know, when Target stepped forward, and believe me, it's because of the escalation and the pressure we put on them, they actually went farther. And they said, Okay, we'll begin to work with the business community, Minnesota Chamber of Commerce…

Justin Terrell

The Chamber of Commerce. 

Raymond Dehn

Yeah, yeah. And we never got them to the point where they would support it. But they pulled away their objection to it. Which then allowed a lot of, you know, other individuals that legislatively, politically follow what they do and do what they say. They gave them the freedom to begin to think differently about this issue, because politically, it wasn't going to hit them in the same way. And, Justin, I've seen you grow from organizer to now you're heading one of the best research centers around criminal justice, for sure in the state, possibly in the country?

Justin Terrell 

I’d say the region.

Shane Price  

Yeah, the region sounds good. You know, I just think, And Ray, I appreciate you for, for sharing that. That notion of what I call a paradigm shift, I mean, the moment that water becomes ice, or ice becomes water, that right there at that moment. And I think that particular organizing strategy brought us collectively to the point of paradigm shift. It was an amazing point, a point of confluence, it all came together and shifted, where you got more than you were really asking for. And even though - I'm just gonna be honest - Target backpedaled after that. Even though they backpedaled after that, they put it out there publicly and everybody didn't know they backpedaled. So the paradigm was shifting now with or without Target, as it went along and it started to move around the country that caught fire in other places, and people were using that model as a mock demonstration for what they wanted to do.

Leah Cooper  

And might be a good moment, just for context, or just say a little more about POP. I think it’s important context.

Shane Price 

Yeah, sure, sure. Power of People Personal Development and Leadership Institute does three things. We're nonprofit, we do three things. We do a program called Girls Taking Action, where we try to help urban girls, discover themselves and build their dreams and find their way to college, post secondary education, and other training opportunities. We do the same thing for our boys program Boys of Hope. Boys of Hope is kind of an intervention program where we know that  boys from urban areas of tracking to the criminal justice system, at critical junctures in their lives 14,15,16,17. The tracking is beginning to happen. And so we're responding to them in school. We have in school time with these boys. We have 15 sites. We have over 400 Boys every year. Then we also have a summer program which just concluded in early August, continuing to work with those boys who would transition from the school program to the summer program. So we're trying to build those relationships over time. But then we do. The third thing and this is what my responsibility is mostly over, and that is the Replanting Project. Replanting is our way to say that reentry is a failed American experiment and we refuse to participate in something we know you can't win.

Justin Terrell

Facts.

Shane Price

And so we we renamed it Replanting, saying that we would take you and nurture you, hold you close, put you in new soil, and replant you so that you can come up with those things that were already resident in you before we got there, but maybe not nurtured so much. And so in so doing, we started in 2005 wiith that, in the Faribault Minnesota State Correctional Facility at Faribault in 05, we were really successful there. The DOC approached us to expand in maybe 08. First started with only African Americans. The warden at the prison, Kenny Rorick asked me “Brother Shane, what you're doing with these men is causing the incidents of violence to go down. Would you be willing to take all men?” And I said absolutely. What we're doing is principle based, it's not race based. And so we have one white guy. Daniel Sturgeon, I'll never forget his name, who was able to come into one of the classes and sit and get fed. And then Daniel went out, like a Clarion caller from that point on, and then we, you know, the white boys started to come after a time, the Asian, after a time, the Native. Very difficult to get the Native to be involved in anything other than what the Natives are involved in independently. Same with Asian. And so we were able to move through those circles expanded to five of the eight Minnesota correctional facilities, stayed in all the way up from 2005 to COVID, in about 20. And we're getting ready to return here now, coming up. So our population of - and let me just share this real quick. And I don't know if you notice. So we really were going in as just trainers, leadership trainers, I didn't have any intention of messing with you when you came home”, except for the brothers kept on saying, Brother Shane - where you gonna be? I was like What you mean?” And I realized that they wanted this thing to continue. So we started a reentry group or replanting group on Tuesday nights. Just had it we just met last night. Brought Brother Myron Berell in last night. It was his first time being with us. And we were so glad. Right, right. But see what I mean? Sometimes you can, you can believe you got it, you got it going on. And then some drummer will come to help you understand that you need to be yoked up with people who are like minded. And it was a great session for all of us to have him in our bosom, and he enjoyed himself immensely. His last words to me were like Brothers Shane, I'll be back next week. You get it? So I say this to say that our housing project grew organically because people were saying, hey, POP, I don't have a place to live. It’s like, Okay… I’ll tell you this one quick story. I have one guy who came out during George Bush 2. He was a sex offender, a young man. He was working a temporary service. He had an apartment, he was renting from a slumlord. I didn't have much experience with them at that time. He… the economy tanked, all the guys on temporary employment had to go. He couldn't pay his rent. He fell behind. He was two months behind, the the the landlord called his parole agent, not petition the court for eviction, that was the that was the method he was supposed to use. But he circumvents the system and calls the agent specifically. The agent says hey what? You got to be able to have a roof over your head. So the agents gonna violate them. So I called the agent up. I said, Listen, this guy hasn't committed any crime. He just can't pay his rent, and nobody's working right now. You're lucky to have a job. He said, Hey, man, this guy's got to pay his rent, or he's going back to prison. So lemme tell you what, my wife and I will pay his rent, we'll pay that landlord up, and we will give him a job. And that man told me No!, in a vicious way. And that young boy, I never seen him again. Even though I've been in it for all these years, I've always looked for him, he went back. But that caused me to go and buy a property. So if I couldn't be competitive in a housing environment, if I didn't have an argument that was strong enough to open up the door for somebody, then I needed to just get out of the business. So we bought our first properties, a huge property, you know, five or six bedrooms. After that a couple of years later, another, and then another. So So I mean, we have become these kinds of real estate folks. We had no business, no idea that this was going to happen. But in order to serve our guys, and become educated in how to do that, and how to do that effectively, we've become property owners and all these other things in order to secure our men successfully. I’ll stop there.

Raymond Dehn 

No, and I think the point you bring up is, what a huge problem with the carceral system is. It's set up to make people fail, not to make them succeed, not to give them the leg up when things get tough. It's set up that: you screwed up. Great, you're done with again, and it's - 

Leah Cooper  

This leads me to a really key question that I would love to hear your perspective on. You've already jumped into many of the tactics it takes to make change happen, right. But one of the things that is really unique, I think about the work that you all do, to support replanting, and support healthy communities when people come back, is you're having to explain to a general population that has been given a myth about who these people are, right, a dehumanizing myth. And I think you have an extra challenge when you're trying to affect change, whether you're trying to convince Target or legislators or voters, you have to humanize the people that you're trying to create reform to support. Right? And so, I'm just curious how you come to a place of being able to do that. I mean, I hear so much compassion in what Pop does. But how do you transfer that compassion to the general public, who have been given a mythology about these people?

Raymond Dehn  

You know, I, I can tell my story, and the advantages that I've had, and believe it or not, actually, I think helped me at the legislature, because my colleagues on the other side of the outcome, like dismiss me, because I was like them, you know, and it's easy to dismiss someone while you know, you have a certain lifestyle, and all those other types of things. And that's why you're in the situation, you know, this whole thing about you made bad choices, well, they don't know, half the choices, or maybe even what kinds of choices people have when they're in that situation. They’re often left with little choice. I mean, one of the first books I read was by Geoffrey Canada. He's known for the Harlem Children's Zone. But the book that I think is the best is a book titled Fist Stick Knife Guts. It’s about violence in the African American community, in the black community and things. And one of the stories just stuck with my head forever, was single mom doesn't have a lot of money, you know, gets kids winter coats, the young boy goes out and some kid steals his coat, comes home, mom looks at the older boy and says “You go get his coat back.” That's what life had dealt them. And that's why he made those choices and those decisions, because he had to provide for his little brother. Because otherwise, you know, it’s the humanizing piece. Most people don't understand that decisions that people make are because sometimes the choices that they have very minimal, and when I talk to people of privilege, they don't even begin to understand that sometimes. And I was like, Well, why would you make that choice? Well, because there wasn't much else to do. So. So when I used to speak when I was an elected official, I would ask everybody in the room, when I was telling my story, everybody in the room that if you’d been convicted of crimes stand up, you know, usually about 15/17% of the people would stand up. And then I'd ask the question. So if you did things between like the age of 15, and 25 that if you gotten caught, you'd have a criminal record, almost the whole room stands up. And I think that that's, that's what I think is beginning to change with some of the messaging. Granted, COVID screwed everything up. You know, I mean, we're at the point now, where we're listening to this discussion about SROs in schools. And, you know, I mean, there's again, that vilification in trying to instill fear into people about the criminals. But, you know, I mean, that's why we continue to do this work, and Justin's got tons of research on this stuff. 

Justin Terrell 

Oh well I’m not even going to talk about the research I’m going to talk about organizing, because like, I want to take a crack at this question. So like about, you're asking about the humanization. Right. So you know, one thing I think is really important about the human experience is that we let you know, you heard of the rose that grew from concrete. I like to think about, like, people grow into shape. Like we all come into this world, we experience life, we have our biases, and over time, you grow in the shade of that bias to become a different person, right. It's a human experience, you hurt people, you love people, you know, these are things that we all experience. As an organizer, where you're focused on like systems. One thing we used to say all the time is, you know, we it was a shorthand for that, if you've come to help me, you're wasting my time you come because your liberation is bound up with mine, and let us work together. We would just say, you know, I can't get free unless you get free. And, and then we would say, I mean, as a cisgendered, heteronormative, black man, I can't get free unless a black, transgender, you know, however, they want to identify gets free. Liike we are all tied up in this mess together, we all grow in the shade, we all have our own biases. And so if you want to get free and we want to build safe communities, because I like to remind people, there's tons of safe communities in Minnesota, just not filled with black folks. And I want black folks to be safe. If we want to live in that reality, we have to recognize how my liberation is actually bound to yours. You know, some of my more radical progressive friends get mad at me and frustrated with me because I don't talk about abolition, or ending mass incarceration. And I talked about, you know, transformative change, which is something ideas that came out of Ella Baker Center out of the Bay Area. And this is really important, because it implies growth implies that the way we are today is not the way we're going to be tomorrow. These are all humanizing ideas. And so, you know, Danielle Surrett, out of New York, she runs Common Justice, which is this  restorative justice process that she leads and it gives people these experiences. One of the stories just - it’s brief. She talks about someone who was assaulted. And part of the rest part of their restorative justice practice was they wanted to learn to defend themselves. And the person who assaulted them was someone who teaches self defense. And so part of their restorative process was the person who harmed him, teaching him how to defend himself. And this is a this is a system that like is set up, right? This isn't like, they're not just doing this on the corner. It's an actual program with a process, right, that gets people ready for that. And so this person got to actually have the person who put them in a chokehold, teach them how to get out of a chokehold. This is a, these are interactions that create opportunities for healing. These, which is not something we do in this country very well. You just got people walking-  Brian Stevenson talks about people walking around broken. Yeah. And part of like, I think how we transform the system is really important that we talk about this humanizing aspect. Well, I recognize the brokenness in someone else and they can recognize the brokenness in me. And, and that becomes like, the baseline. And we understand that we have to grow through all of that. And so for me, it's, it's important because like, for me, it's important because like, the older I get, like I'm having these like life experiences, like my cousin just died this week. And my family's lost, like several you know family members. And I'm just like, damn, I’m getting old, instead of going to weddings, I’m going to funerals, right. And, and now, it's just really important to me that, like in this work, we focus on growth, and we focus on that, and that requires us to identify people's humanity. And it requires us to realize that oh, actually, like, there's a, there's some racist, white Trump supporters out there somewhere who is bound to the same bullshit system that I'm bound to. And for us to try to fight for revolution, and see who's going to be in charge of this nonsensical circle of violence and oppression feels like a complete waste of time. We have to recommit, or commit ourselves, to smash in that cycle, building a spaceship, and getting the fuck out of here. And the only way we can do that is by recognizing the humanity in each other.

Shane Price 

Wow. So, you know, from a justice research lens, right, I get all of that. On Me, I, I have a ground level, look at this. I'm with you in prison, I'm going to follow you out. Let's just assume everybody's against you. And we're going to just act as if that doesn't matter, what we're going to focus on, day in and day out, is bringing out the absolute best in you, is setting very high expectations for you, inside and out, living up to your own personal potential, discovering the greatness inside of yourself and not allowing anyone, regardless of their political persuasion, letting anyone keep you from achieving the goals that you have for yourself and your family. And I have to keep it right there on the daily, right? So I have a guy, I got a guy right now. He's served a life sentence. That's 30 plus years. He's done a good job to come out with his healthy mind. He’s active. But now he's in the world, the structure that was there isn’t anymore. Somebody's knocking at his door. And in his old days, it used to be a dope fiend, a drug addict. He gets a dip and then picks up all of the habits from yesterday. It goes beyond the 30 years he just served, picks up those old habits from the ‘70s. And now he's sitting there saying to me, Pop, what do I do? That's my reality. And so I have to make sure that we're prepared to just kind of love this guy through. Love is the key. That's what makes us successful. organizationally. I'm married 20 years. I didn't even know I knew how to love, Justin. But I love my wife more now than I did when I first met her 22 years ago. She's a hard worker, she outworks me and that's hard to do! But love really is the key. And even the Trump supporter you described, I can meet him closer if I can figure out what he loves, and get him to listen at what I love. And what we find is, those things are the exact same thing. And so I don't know that we are going to be able to fly out of here. But we do have to get the funk off. Love is the only weapon I know. That will give us an opportunity to fight and win.

Leah Cooper  

That was all beautiful. I feel like we could we could actually just stop right there with the inspiration of all of that. But I want to get a little bit tactical if I can, because part of the goal of the podcast is to share with others, how do you affect change? Right? So what I’m what I'm hearing is you've each got your tools, you have a story, you have love, you have organizing and a big vision, right? You’ve got all the work you've done and the skills you've attained along the way, right. But the journey to what just happened in our most recent legislative session, right, is a long journey. And it takes a lot of people and a lot of luck and a lot of variables to line up just so. That much. I know. But I would love to hear really specifically from each of you. What do you think are the key pieces that came together? That started who knows how many years ago and all lined up this year? And if you want you can get into a specific piece of legislation, I know there were many different things that passed this year where you could speak generally about why it happened this year. But from a really tactical standpoint, how did it all come together?

Shane Price  

That’s good. Ray, you wanna?

Raymond Dehn  

Yeah. You know, I mean, it's not one thing, it's many, many things. There was like this pent up stuff within the state. And, you know, I'm gonna say that the election in 2016 got people to begin to think differently that then impacted the election in 2020. That had an impact, and then in 2022, that's when everything flipped, right? And everybody, you know, I mean, you mentioned earlier talking about the media, you know the media always says trifecta, total control, that's bullshit. First off, we have majorities, but that doesn't mean total control. And you know, not everybody in the Republican Party is the same, not everybody in the Democratic Party is the same. When the media sort of distills it down to just that, that's not what happened in 2022. I mean, it was much, much more complex about that. I think part of it was the early organizing that took place in you know, around 2010 to 2016, that a lot of young people began to engage the process, whereas not as many had been involved before. And these young… I mean, you know, I'm an old man, but you know, young people think they can do anything, you know, and that's a beautiful thing! Because guess what, they go out there, and somehow they make it happen. Whereas a lot of people are like, well, you can't do that. And they're like, well, right, challenge me, I'll do that. And I think the public started to shift. And then legislators finally start to catch up, because legislators tend to not want to risk a lot of stuff. And it usually takes the public to shift before they end up shifting. I also think that there was a group that coalesced around leadership that really was able to determine one, how much they could bite off. And I say that there was amazing things that were done. But the time was right,  restore the vote, which was something that was a huge passion of mine, But that was something that started back in 2002. You know, Minnesota's laws, were sort of in the middle of the road of the country, that, you know, individuals that had, you know, a felony record, could vote once they were off supervision. You know, and when I was in office that was one of my things that was critical. And I had a bill all the time, I had figured out ways. I mean there was a chair of the Republican Party and public safety that was not going to give me hearing. Well, there's a little loophole that if you submitted and requested a hearing, after certain amount of time, if you're not given a hearing, you can bring it straight to the floor. Well, when I petitioned that I would bring it straight to the floor, guess what? The committee now gave me the hearing. And I don't know that that testimony was critical. But I had Elizer Darris speak. And I was only given five minutes, which is crazy for a bill like this. And I also had Justice Paul Anderson, former Supreme Court Associate Justice that I’d gotten to know and we gotten and he was willing to testify. So I let Elizer went first. And then Justice Anderson came to do his presentation. 

Justin Terrell

I have a photo of that.

Raymond Dehn

Yeah, there was no way there was there was no way that chair was going to cut off a former Supreme Court Minnesota Supreme Court justice.

Leah Cooper

So that was strategic? You had Elizer - 

Raymond Dehn

Absolutely. Absolutely. Yep. Yes.

Leah Cooper

Probably articulate, persuasive, formerly incarcerated person

 Shane Price

A POP guy.

Leah Cooper

A POP guy. And then you followed up with just Justice ANderson who nobody could cut off. 

Raymond Dehn

Right. Right. Right. Right. So but but I mean,

Justin Terrell 

Hearings are theater.

Raymond Dehn 

Yeah. Well, the most part hearings are theater. Most of the time people don't change their votes, really on the floor. People don't change their votes. But we had already started to get supportive a few Republicans that just thought this, you know this? Yeah, maybe, you know, because because the evidence shows if an individual who's committed an offense, if they're able to vote, they're less likely to reoffend. And that that's, that's like, not really open for discussion.

Leah Cooper  

That’s a very pragmatic argument.

Raymond Dehn 

Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I mean, if you're really concerned about public safety, then you want people not recommitting crimes. 

Justin Terrell

Right.

Raymond Dehn

So but that was an effort of hundreds of people over a long, long time. You know, we had an opportunity in 2014 to possibly pass it, but I'm not convinced we had the votes in the House. They had already passed in the Senate. I'm not convinced we would have passed it in the House. And then a few years went by, but between 2014 and 2022, a lot of things changed in the world.

Justin Terrell  

Here's my here's my, like the Justin Terrell version. So like the, the, um, so I became, I didn't pay attention to politics. I'm a neighborhood guy, I'm a social worker, I worked at Emerge, with brothers coming home from prison and whatnot, that was my focus, take care of the neighborhood, right. But when I got into organizing, and Ban the Box. So first, there's so tactically, there's always got to be inside outside game. So you got to have a movement in the streets, which is an example of that, as you look at what Keith was able to do. And if you read his book, Breaking the Wheel, around prosecuting those officers. we'd never done that before. And the only reason that happened is because folks were in the streets during the pandemic – we set an example to the world about the value of an outside game, and on Ban the Box, Restore the Vote, like we had strong outside game. So on Ban the Box, we described that campaign with Target. On Restore the Vote. You know, we did we did, we did, it's harder to do Restore the Vote because you don't have a restoration of voting rights, because you don't have like, an evil corporate Target that you can kind of spin right. And you're not going to attack Steve Simon. Well, he wasn't the Secretary of State, right?

Raymond Dehn

Well, but as a legislator, he did not support it originally

Justin Terrell 

Ok but let’s leave Steve alone. But you do have Bobby Joe Champion, who was literally a champion on this issue, by the time I got into it, right. And so I remember when my boss brought me restoration of voting rights was like, Hey, you won your campaign. Now you got to find a way to pay the bills. You want to take this up, and I was like, Nah, I'm good. We finna go after background checks, probation. And all these things, by the way, things that we got done this past session as well, right. And so so. So once I ended up with the restore the vote portfolio, it was really about getting creative. We knew we couldn't win. We we were there was no path to victory. And so I was just like, this is a pure base building exercise. Let's go hang out at POP, let's go hang out at Emerges, let’s go to Second Chance Coalition wherever we can find people who are impacted by this issue. We started doing political education, we started getting cats gassed up and hyped up about learning the process of the legislature. Right. So the outside game.

Raymond Dehn

 We also went inside

Justin Terrell

We also went inside, we led actions at the capital that had no impact on anything, probably. But the brothers that we brought, we didn't cause any harm. And the brothers got to see themselves in the space, young folks from Ujaama place and Mad Dads and like so we just started bringing people to the space to get them comfortable, because it is not a comfortable space for black men. And so that was like my outside game tactic. And my favorite thing that we did, we did a we did a photo campaign. So at the time, it was 47,000 … people were, it was ultimately 55 when they passed the bill. It was like 47,000 people were disenfranchised and the state of Minnesota. And so we went all over the state and took pictures of people who just had like the the corny like chalkboard saying why they want people to vote right. And one of them when we did it, we did a basketball tournament with Jamil over at Farview. And so this is like the dopest hoopers on the north side. That don't play for no teams. Because you know, they get in trouble. They don’t got the grades but now these guys jump out the, jump out the gym. And so they, so we did, we had them raise money for a basketball tournament. We just put it on the books of the brothers that we was organizing with inside. We had Kevin, Zeke, and Antonio who are home now, when they were locked up, we had them to do 100. They got 100 letters from, from, from from residents at the at the prisons to that we then had Kev’s son deliver in person for a photo op to Governor Dayton, because he was on this bipartisan pledge, right. And we wanted to get them off that pledge. And then we took those photos we took, while the capital was under construction. I rented $1,000 projector because I was looking at the front of the Capitol. I was like, man, it just looks like a projector screen to me. And so we got a projector. And we brought people to the Capitol, it was a week of action. It wasn't the biggest rally at the Capitol by any means. But it was big. And we had people who had never given speeches at rallies, people who we had spent all this time developing as leaders got up there and shared their story around why this was important. And it was just so happened. And I won't put his business out there. But Bobby Joe, Senator Champion he had, he had had a really rough day. And he came out and he sat, he didn't rally with us. He just sat in his car. And I think he was talking to family while he was sitting there. There was these giant blown up images on this side of the building, that were literally people from his neighborhood. And that was us telling him like, we got you on this. We know we can't pass this bill without you. And I ain’t gonna tell his business, but that was a session that went sideways. I’ll just put it that way. Like, he went to bat for that bill. Yeah. Like, I've never seen someone go to bat for a bill. And I'm not saying it was because anything we did, but I but I will say that we did, we did bring his people to the Capitol. And so the tactic. What's the tactic? If you can't win, build! You know?

Shane Price

 Yes. 

Justin Terrell 

And if you can't, and while you're building, you know, build leaders, build strategies, build networks build. And when the time came for this session? When everybody was ready to vote for this bill, all of a sudden? Not only did we have people in the legislature that went that we helped build, right? And but we also had on a moment's notice a coalition that came together to help get it done. You know, and, like, we had the research, we had it all ready. And so we were ready, Shane was ready, Willy was ready here, right, like

Shane Price  

And so on. I'll just chime in and say so. In the meantime, all of that being said, you know, we continue to work on keeping our guys free on the daily. At the same time, we're paying close attention to this building that's going on on the other side and saying, you know, does that is it look like a spot for us there. Justin opened up the door, and invited us in, and I'm really grateful for that. And, you know, I have some guys who are trained like Elizer -  I had Elizer 12 years before he got out. Willy Lloyd I had him 17 years before he got out. 

Justin Terrell

You were building.

Shane Price

So you know, so you know, and loving them to the place that said, this is going to be all right for you. And, they were ready. And so when the opportunity came when the call came, they were ready to step in and perform. I was so proud, it brought tears to my eyes because our guys performed so mightily. And again, I'm gonna go back to the paradigm shift, the point that water turns to ice. Right there you, you brought us right there brother, to that paradigm right? All that you guys have been doing over the years. It all brought us to a point of paradigm shift. And then collectively we met there and tipped it over to the other side. I'm so grateful for your fortitude. I'm so grateful for your building. And I'm grateful that our guys got a chance to see themselves as they had never seen themselves before.

Leah Cooper  

What is really striking, that I've heard from all of you is you are talking about harnessing the energy and the power and the empowerment of one of the most marginalized populations there is, a population that is isolated by definition, right. And, and I feel like when we when we talk to other people about advocacy and activism, there's always this question of, how do you bring the impacted people into the conversation, right, and protect them at the same time. And you're talking about one of the most marginalized communities there is and so that I’m really hearing this journey around building their strength, and making sure they're empowered in every step.

Raymond Dehn  

And don't get me wrong on the technical side, there were key meeting with legislators and having conversations. I mean, you know, I hate to say this, Justin, but you only bring a certain perspective.

Justin Terrell  

I mean, I was typecast by that, right? But but the point is, here's the guy, here's the guy, he's a Target guy, like there's, you know, like, of course, legislators wouldn't listen to me.

Leah Cooper

Why not? Say more about that.

Justin Terrell

It's my job to make sure they don't listen to me.

Leah Cooper

Because you’re an organizer.

Justin Terrell

If they listen to me, that means I'm not raising enough hell, you know, I'm saying like, like that was the point.

Leah Cooper

Because you’re a disruptor.

Justin Terrell

Because I'm a disrupter. And the point is for them to listen to Ray, or listen, and other community members, 

Raymond Denhn

Or Eli, or Ray

Justin Terrell

Or other legislators who can actually cut a deal, right, like I'm the stick. And it was fun to be the stick.

Raymond Dehn  

When I watched the vote of the Senate. The Senate this year, of course, was 34-33.

Shane Price  

Yeah, 

Raymond Dehn  

They couldn't lose any Democrats. Right. There was someone that I served with in the house, who was Republican some issues he's terrible on. He voted to support restoration of voting. First thing I did was text him saying, Hey, man, thank you, he goes it's the right thing to do.

Justin Terrell  

Texting Republicans is always fun.

Raymond Dehn

Well, you know, I mean, texting you have to say, you know, appreciate your vote. Right? That's that that's real fun.

Justin Terrell   

Out of the three of us I’m the only one who got dragged on the floor this year, did you see that? No, like, literally, like, called us out by name, and called us cronies of the DFL.

Raymond Dehn

Oh yeah, that's that theater part of the floor sessions.

Justin Terrell

I texted a lot of Republicans that night.

Leah Cooper 

I just want to ask a little about coalition building. What I'm hearing is you're mentioning so many individuals, so many organizations that had to come together. How do you find shared purpose because everybody's got their own idea of how to get it done, right? And what needs to get done.

Justin Terrell

I mean it’s a timely question because I'm getting my butt kicked by a coalition right now. I'm trying to develop I think four different coalitions right now. And, and, and it is, so coalition work is it is an art, and it is a science. You have to build alignment and understand not just what people are there to do, like we all agree, we all want to do the thing right? But you have to understand, like how to talk to people.  ou got to figure out and identify shared values and lean into that and actualize that. It’s a ton of work. And I think people are bad at it in general. And that's not an insult because this is a very, like, complicated hard thing. And it is 100% necessary for an executive director of a 501C3 nonprofit focused on research. We can’t advocate for any of the things that we work on. And I need coalitions who are going to be about this work. And what we have in the community right now. And what we’ve had for a long time, there's a lot of activists. Activists are amazing. I rock with activists don't get it twisted. Being an activist and being a strategic coalition, are two different things.  So let me say this, putting my organizer hat on, we talk about the power being a whole bunch of people dedicated to a single cause around shared values, and shared resources. Right? Like that is that is how some organizers define power, it is completely neutral. It's not good. It's not bad. But you got a whole lot of people – Target has power. They got a whole lot of people who walk into the store every day and share resources dedicated to one single guy getting a good deal on whatever it is that they're trying to get. Right. And that's power, and so coalitions have to be clear about, about those things, who are we as people? What are our shared values? And how do we share resources? If you don't have an agreement and alignment on those three things? It's just a headache!

Shane Price  

Man that’s a great explanation. I think, Justin, I see you as one of our elected officials. And I and I, and I appreciate all of what you are about now and in the past. However, at some culminating point, the point of confluence, right, where all of this stuff comes together, you know, you're going to be faced with the decision to step up and be the guy. And to be honest with you. I can't wait

Justin Terrell

Ah, see, look at you.

Shane Price

 I can't wait for you to step up at the national level. So we can push you through nationally and you can be that voice for us nationally. I can't wait for you to be the guy. Now I only have so many more years. 

Justin Terrell

Stop it, brother.

Shane Price

So I would like for you to think hard about this before the Late Show comes. Congratulations, man.

Justin Terrell

I love you brother.

Shane Price

 I love ya man.

Leah Cooper  

Considering that I’m hearing you say it’s long journey. It is a hard journey. It is an emotional journey, especially when you have something personally at stake, and your community does too. So with all that in mind, what is your advice to a young person who has a lot of passion and and wants to affect change? 

Raymond Dehn  

Yeah, you know, for me, you know, there's this whole notion of passion, which is a critical piece. But I like to think, sort of discovering and understanding your purpose, as sort of a key piece of that. This is really, really hard work. And for young people, I would say, if you need to take a break for a year or two from this work, take the break, and then come back to it. You'll come back with a different perspective. And you'll also have a little bit more energy, you know, because this stuff can beat you down, I mean, it can literally beat you down. And if you don't take care of yourself, if you don't understand your purpose, you're not going to be doing it that long. And then you look back one day and say, Damn, I wish I'd have done something differently. Well, you know, it's a long journey. So you know, if you do it for a few years, you need to take a break, step away, that's fine. And maybe your purpose will change, which is good. You know, but I just, you know, it's the energy of youth, you know, we can start with that, you know, I can do anything, now you can, but you also need to take care of yourself first. If you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to be able to sort of achieve and be a part of the transformation that you want to be part of.

Justin Terrell 

So I mentor young men, I love young men, I spend a lot of time mentoring young Black men, so this is very important. So number one, if you're gonna go on organizing, work, even research, claim your damn victories, claim your victories. There's, you work so hard, and you get a bill passed. And then it goes into, you know, no one wants to do implementation, and then it just get, you know, super depressing. And people, nothing's good enough, right? Like, skip all that. Claim your victories. If you win, throw a party and kick it with your people like you're never gonna win anything again. Claim your victories, number one, because that will sustain you. And if you don't, and you have to, then you're actually role modeling for the community, that what you just did together mattered. If people don't believe if people don't celebrate the victories, then they don't feel like they won. And if they don't feel like they won, they will lose the desire to keep fighting. And what I said earlier about smashing the cycle, building a spaceship and getting out of here? Well, I'm never going to get on that spaceship. Like I'm at square one, my job is to smash to cycle, right, my son, might had to convince people to build a spaceship and his kids might be able to get people on the spaceship. And we're borrowing this whole thing from Octavia Butler so thing about how long ago that was. So it’s like, my point is like, claim your victory so people will always be willing to fight for the next victory. And then the other thing and I'll just say is like… you know, be clear about… And this is a newer idea for me, but I think people have to, it is critically important that we develop racial justice lenses, right? How we see the world through a racial justice lens. What I wish more people had, including myself, is a racial justice mirror. Like we have to see ourselves how we show up in spaces with other people as we fight for justice. I”m borrowing this idea from Sean Jeremiah, PhD out of San Diego, I think? It is important to know that like, yes, we can see the injustice in the world. But if you don't see yourself and how you show up in that injustice, you know, you're gonna be that, that white dude at a conference, screaming at people because they're too loud, or they’re using the wrong pronouns. You know, I am not saying that we shouldn't be sensitive to people with sensory with sensory concerns, or sensitive to people with wanting to use different pronouns, like, all of that is fair game. But you got to know how you show up in that, that's the most important thing it’s not  aboutcontrolling how other people see the world. It's about being clear about how you show up in the struggle. So claim your victories. Have a racial justice lens, but keep a mirror close by and make sure you don't turn into the person that is actually like detrimental to the movement. You want to know how you show up so that you can encourage others to show up and we're all growing through this together anyways. It's not graceful at all, you know? So take a look at yourself. You know what I’m saying like? 

Shane Price  

Yeah you know, we get a lot of interns over where we are. And it's a lot of fun to have young people and young energy around. But what I'd like to do is say stay close to what you love. If you love something, and it makes a heartbeat, right then that's it. Then focus your attention on that thing that you love. So we have we just had a young intern, she was with us for a couple of years. She's pursuing her doctorate now. She is a Ghanaian woman by way of Costa Rica, so she speaks fluent Spanish. She's an engineer. Right? She took us down just recently we just returned my wife and I and family from Costa Rica, where we visited the colleges that she graduated from called EARTH University. EARTH University is focused on developing among young minds, young engineers from around the nations and teaching them how to use their ingenuity to create power, energy and agriculture. Fascinating. Yet, she's active here in Minneapolis with our POP guys. And she's able to speak to them with this love and with this energy, and bilingually and you know, laughing and talking and sharing in different languages. For us, you know, the ball goes around with love. And if you find something that you love to do, you got to go at that thing hard, and it will lead you in the right direction, you're gonna end up in the general right area that your, your dream catcher is designed to get you to, I'll just leave it at that.

Leah Cooper
 I still remember when I got to visit the Power of People Leadership Institute. Brother Shane let me attend on a night that somebody was coming home from a life sentence. There was cake, there were 40 men crammed into a conference room designed for 10. They never stopped touching each other, they were holding each other. And the amount of love in that room blew my mind. And I was so honored to get to be there. I was the only light skinned person in the room. I was the only woman in the room. I was the only person there who hadn’t been incarcerated for. And to see what they brought to reentry wasn’t just community, it was a palpable sense of love, it was just the most humbling experience of that entire project. 

Alan Berks
Yeah, I hadn’t met Brother Shane before. You had told me about him, but the first time I met him was at this interview. Where I was blown away. We talk about relationships in the podcast, and in the way they talked to each other, you could see their deep history. But more than that, what do we really ask of people when we say we want to create change that improves lives? Bravery, compassion, passion, humility, fortitude. Like name the seven virtues and these guys are not just talking about it, they’re doing it. Ray stands up to admit he was a felon, even though he didn’t have to and didn’t know how people would treat him after he did. Brother Shane sees problems with the housing market and so he does something about it, something that must cost money and time and effort. And Justi  is willing to be the punching bag for legislators if that’s what will work, he’s pushing forward big ideas with creativity and humility even when they know they can’t win. And yet he stays excited. He says “If you can’t win, build.” I mean, for me that’s a paradigm shift.

Leah Cooper
 We asked them onto the podcast to talk about this session’s legislative victories, and they certainly gave an indication of all the hard work and time it took to pass those bills, but they also, effortlessly, transcended the “game” aspect of it. They talked about all the different ways that people can build better communities–influencing corporations, taking control of real estate, helping to build more leaders inside a community. I think that’s why this conversation was so powerful.

Alan Berks
We started this podcast with the question “How does change really happen at the Capitol?” and after 11 episodes, we’ve heard from an amazing array of people who have seen and made change actually happen.

Leah Cooper 
 In our next and final episode, we will talk about what we’ve learned and also share interviews with people whose lives have been changed by engaging in the process at the Capitol. That’s next time on Our House. I’m Leah Cooper.

Alan Berks
And I’m Alan Berks. “Our House '' is a podcast of Wonderlust Productions. Our production assistant is Frances Matejcek, our editor is Marianne Combs, and our sound designer and audio engineer is Peter Morrow with help from Rachel Briese. Music was composed by Becky Dale. Lyrics by myself and Becky Dale. 

Leah Cooper
The professional actors you heard singing in this episode are Megan Kim, Adam Whisner, Bradley Greenwald, and Laurel Armstrong. For detailed credits on the making and performing of the play, visit our website at wlproductions-dot-o-r-g. And, if you enjoyed this podcast and want to support more work like this, click “donate” while you’re there. Or give us a nice review wherever you read podcast reviews. 

Alan Berks

Big thanks to our partners and supporters who have made this podcast possible, including the Minnesota Humanities Center, Eastside Freedom Library, In Progress Studios, MinnPost, The Theater of Public Policy, and the Elmer L. and Eleanor J. Andersen Foundation. See the thank-you page on our website for a full list of the donors and foundations who make all of our work possible. 

Leah Cooper

Thanks for listening!