Support When You're Just Becoming (with Zakiya Mickle)

Content Warning: Violence Against Youth

In this episode we talk with Zakiya, an activist, organizer, and advocate from Columbia, SC. We discuss Zakiya's work with Sowing Seeds, an organization dedicated to providing support and resources for young people, particularly those involved with the juvenile justice system. Zakiya shares her personal story of overcoming challenges, the importance of mentorship, and the necessity of creating safe spaces for youth development. This conversation highlights the power of storytelling in driving social change and the impact of community-driven initiatives.

Come back next week for part two!

Where to find Zakiya on Instagram: 

@Zakiya_Dee 

@SeedsMidlands

@LovePetalsAndPrayers

@Journeytoshe

Thank you for being part of the Liberation is Lit podcast! If you have stories to share, want to suggest topics, or just want to connect, find us on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok @liberationislit or visit our website at liberationislit.com. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider leaving a review! Remember, your voice matters, and together, through the lens of stories, we're making a difference in the world.

Transcript

Tayler: 0:05

Hey, y'all. Welcome to the Liberation is Lit podcast, where the power of storytelling meets the force of social change. I'm your host, Tayler Simon, and in this podcast, we believe in the profound impact of stories. And I'm ready to cut up with this conversation with Zakiya today. Thank you so much, Zakiya, for being on the podcast. Let's kick it off with, Can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your work with sowing seeds and your general work with young people and do you incorporate storytelling into any of that work?

Zakiya: 0:41

Yeah, yeah. So I am the chemical. I'm a native native of Columbia, South Carolina. That's something that I'm really proud of in my older age. I'm really proud to be where I'm from and to, to, to understand like how rich the culture is here in our city. I'm a mom of two, I'm a partner, a writer, I'm an activist, organizer, and advocate. So yeah, that's a little bit about myself. I'm a tea lover. I love herbs and making all types of things, teas and baths and oils with them. I also love being near the water. And I'm someone who is trying to like, I'm actively not trying anymore. I'm doing it. I'm actively, moving away from like my work. As as my identity. And so that was an exercise for me. I'm really trying to make sure that I am bringing my full self to these spaces because all those parts of me are really valuable. So, yeah, that's who I am. I think. My work with sowing seeds is a long story, but I do try to tell it as often as possible because I think it helps people understand, the depth of the mission and how it was born. So, I went to the College of Charleston, and I had a great experience at CofC how did I not know that about you? Yeah, did you go to CofC? I graduated 2016. That's crazy. No, I did. I didn't know that about you. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I had a great time. And I know that a lot of people have had, you know, especially black people, negative experiences at CofC, you know, people experience racism there all the time. So it's a PWI. It is like, A P W I P W I. So I try to make sure that I don't, I don't, I don't talk about it a lot because I had such a great experience and I think because of my level of visibility, sometimes people, I don't want anybody to use my story to like negate somebody else's experience. So it's, I had a good time at, at CofC, but I, they have a lot of work to do and we could do that another day, but, It's a huge part of my, my story to founding seeds because I, as a sophomore, was about to get kicked out. I was preliminarily accepted because I didn't have great standardized test scores, but I'm a good writer. And I had good, a good GPA. And so they were like, we see, we see these, these are not great. Go ahead and come just like, stay on the straight and narrow while you're here. And I did not do that. I was having a good time. And so they, they sent me home for six months. They, they, they, I guess like kicked me out. And, I had a mentor there. His name is Greg Leota. He worked in like the multicultural department. He was great. He was kind of the first, Sort of my first round of like a very woo woo kind of experience, like someone who's like, we're going to sit in a circle and we're going to pass around a thing, we're going to talk. So when he found out that I, had been excused, he was then working at a group home called Florence Crittenden Programs of South Carolina. And so he invited me to come and work for him. He was like, you don't have anything to do. And at the end of the six months, you're going to have to tell CofC what you've been doing, and that's how they're going to decide if you get to come back. So that's, that's how they do it. They will then, because I graduated a long time ago, but they were, they have you write this essay about like how you spent your time and then they decide based on that if you get to come back. And, Florence Crittenton is a group home for pregnant teens. I got in there and just fell in love with the idea of this mansion in downtown Charleston that no one, if you don't know it's there, you don't know it's there. And it was a safe haven for these girls. And at the time when I was there, women, so I was 19 and I had some people who were there who were in their thirties who who needed, you know, support. But I was in this authority figure space. I just learned so much so fast about like What it means to provide support and community. And I come from a family. That's very like, community and service minded. So I had seen it tangentially, but I had never been in it for myself in that way. And so I was a little obsessed with it. I loved it. I wanted to be there. As often as possible, and I needed to understand how do these people come here and get to have, you know, health care, education, food, shelter. We would do each of them a baby shower. They left with everything they needed for their babies and, mental health care and they didn't pay anything. And it just, I needed to understand how that worked. I mean, I understood grants and fundraisers, but, like, I wanted to get in the weeds of it, and I really did in that in that time there. I wrote college trust in a letter talking to him about what I'd done. And they let me back in and I graduated and never like, I never made below be again. That was, that's all I needed. It was like, okay, I'm gonna be serious. But I tell that part of the story because having that experience, really gave me insight into something that I now do for work every day. But had I not failed out of school, essentially. There may not have been that opportunity for me to be introduced to this type of work, right? And an actual mentor handed me that opportunity. So I know firsthand the value of a trusted adult who sees you having a hard time with something, but knows that you're just becoming. And says, you, yeah, you trip, you fail. Let me help you. Like, let's, let's give you something to do. Let's give you somewhere to be. I mean, that's literally what he called me and say, he's like, what are you gonna, what are you gonna do all day? And I was like, I don't know. I didn't have a plan, you know, my parents had been like, you know, it's no need for you to come home if you plan to come back. So just maybe I was just going to get like a, you know, just Work at a restaurant or something, which I had done many times over the years and that's fine, but it wasn't, it wasn't what I needed. And that that trusted adult in my, in my space in my life was able to help me, you know, sort of have a stepping stone from being in a very down place. I never saw myself as someone that would get kicked out of college. And whenever I tell this story to young people that know me, they're like, you got and I'm like, yes, people make mistakes that people like, I don't even know if it was really a mistake because I was well aware of what I was doing. I was just, I don't think I knew that it was actually going to catch up with me because I was 19. So it just, I wasn't focused. So, That's that's a really important part of the story that I tell right? Because it really helps people understand that. I know 1st hand the value of a good mentor. And Greg was, and it's still a great guy, but. I left college trust and started working at the Department of juvenile justice. I still worked at Florence, Crittenton on and off for almost 7 years. It's like. It's really huge part of my like, you know, journey through this nonprofit and service space. And, when I started at DJJ, I was probation officer in Charleston County and I walked into about 40 or 50 cases like day one. I already had a caseload of. Yeah, it was crazy. It was like, so such an unmanageable, and unrealistic expectation. And I attribute that to the state, you know, the state does that. But before I left there, my caseloads got up to like 110 kids. And, you know, I, You can't you're supposed to see these kids once a month, either at school at home, or if they're in a group home or a boot camp, you're supposed to travel to go see them. We also have to go to court and represent our cases when they are in court and in Charleston, there are so many that they assigned like a week of of court. And so, if it's my court week. I was representing all of the cases that came in that week, whether they were mine or not. So we also had to be able to, staff cases and discuss our cases with our colleagues so that they could, adequately represent, you know, the, the, the, the situation in court. And it was, it was all so , unrealistic. There was way too much to do. And so there were times where I know there were kids on my caseload that I never met. Really stressful. I was sick. Like, I would literally start to get sick on Sundays. I knew I was gonna have to go back to work, but I loved being with, you know, The young people, I really enjoyed their time and their, their presence. I tell people all the time. Love all teenagers, but if I have a choice to like work with, you know, and like a gift and a talented program or the alternative school, like I want to go over here every time it's so fun. Okay. They say the first thing that comes to mind and it's usually true. I just, I respect them so much. They are usually young people who are not, trying to, conform or fit into whatever box society is trying to put them in. And that does create some resistance. And, and so that there is very layered, but I, when the kids were in front of me, I was usually having a good time. And. There was rarely a time where I couldn't identify a thing or something that was contributing to what we were considering delinquency, right? And so I wanted to help, but the truth was in Charleston, I couldn't even, I was so overwhelmed that I couldn't even see how to help. And our kids were, re offending at very alarming rates. And, kids were dying. When I was in Charleston County, a lot of my colleagues were going to funerals for young people who were being killed. And so I do need to give some trigger warnings here. Like the work that I do, gun violence is a huge part of it. So I. Was pregnant with my first daughter and I was like, I need to go home and be closer. And so I transferred to Richland County. Case loads are much smaller and I was able to see my kids sometimes. Multiple times, because I only had like, 30 or 40 kids. I was from 1, 10 to 40. I was like, girl, we can see all these kids in a week. Like, my stamina was just. You know, it was only a little lower because I was pregnant. But what I found was that my kids were still reoffending at the same rates as they were in Charleston. So I was like, this doesn't really make sense because I should be able to help now. I thought I couldn't help in Charleston because I had too many. And so being originally county gave me a different lens. I could see in a way I couldn't see in Charleston. And what I realized that the, the, there were a couple of things happening, there is a gap in resources and both cities in most cities, but especially in Charleston County and Richland counties, both both counties, but you and I both know that they're also cities. If you're not from South Carolina, you're listening, please do not try to follow because it doesn't make sense to any of us. It's fine. You know, we're not, we're not here to talk about gerrymandering. I think, being here helped me be able to, like, pick up on the huge lack of resources and just took some of the rose from my, my very young glasses. Like, you might not be able to come in here and on your own. Turn this systems issue upside down, and I don't think at the time I really knew that I was in a battle against systems. I just wanted to help some kids. I just really wanted to help these kids. So this is where I learned a lot of, you know, how systems work and how they work together and how they are really working to help people that look like you and me. I didn't know, I didn't, I didn't really know that. I didn't have that lens then. So, I was getting in a lot of trouble, Tayler. I was in courtrooms telling judges that DJJ wasn't doing their part, working for DJJ, and DJJ did not like that. So, yeah, that wasn't really, celebrated. And, I just realized really quickly that I needed to do something different and That our kids were being court ordered to do very basic things, like, get a mentor, go to what we then call anger management or life skills courses, maybe take sex ed if there is, you know, if some of the things that. They're having contact with law enforcement about, it's like, social media was still kind of new then and kids were just getting access to it. And so we were having kids, you know, posting things that were inappropriate, like, sexually explicit things. So. They make up the court orders based on the nature of the charges, but there are pretty standard ones, like maybe five or six that are standard. And I was like, well, what if there was like a one stop shop, you know, where we can, just knock everything off this court order? Like, what if that's the front of house? But back of house, we are creating space for kids to rest, to process, to share, you know, To just be kids and for them to get this support in a way that doesn't feel punitive, that doesn't feel like we're, you know, ostracizing them for experiencing a totally normal, scientifically, like all the research says, this is, this is where these kids are. In their development. This is where these people are. This is what we should expect from them. If a 3 year old has a, an accident, like, you know, if they're being potty trained, no one is like, take him to court because that's developmentally appropriate. We understand that how teenagers show up, even though it's disruptive. Is developmentally appropriate and we criminalize them for that for literally where they they're where they are developmentally and I believe this is where people think that I'm radical that that's a violation of their civil rights like it's like you are you are trying to to jail them for We have enough science and research that says this is what they're going to do at this part of their life. And we say, yeah, we know that, and we don't like that, and they should go to jail. It's crazy. And so whenever I would say things like, you want to throw a three year old in jail for not being potty trained? People look at me like I'm nuts. I'm like, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. And I understand that that's less disruptive than this. That's maybe more, we can control that, or we know this, this is also what we should expect. And as a community society, we should be creating spaces to help them through that part of their life and to support parents when they go through that part of their life. And so that's, that's how it happened. So this is the 1st iteration of sowing seeds into the Midlands. It's still here. I have it. It was called sowing seeds into the low country because I wrote it when I was still appeal in Charleston. Like, I was just very clear that. There needed to be a 1 stop shop for the young people that we are trying to help. They should be able to have some place to exist. That understands where they are in their development and that can support them. In 1, you know, interrupting that contact with law enforcement, the carceral, you know, system. So 1st, 1st, 1st, priority is to knock out this probation order because. It's just a very, if you can get off probation without violating or going any further down the school to prison pipeline, then it's less likely that you will continue to go down. But it's literally the 1 step after that, which is where you go to a group home or boot camp. It's really hard to stop it. Once you kind of get on that train of of being. You know, being housed in one of these jails or jail like facilities. And so I, I saw that and I was like, we got to stop it here. There's so many kids that can use the support of seeds, but I just wanted to create a space that was created for that particular child, a child. In this county, who's on probation, if we can get them at this point, and get them the support and service they need in the home, then we can alter the trajectory of this part of their adolescence and it's more likely that they won't. Reoffend and it's more likely that they won't continue to navigate down the pipeline and likely end up in jail as an adult because we know that's that's what happens. So it was great. It was really a lot of fun. You know, we. Do mentoring and life skills and a summer camp and sex ed we have community gardens where kids can do their community service without a chaperone, which is a huge barrier in our, our community. Most of our kids get court ordered to complete community service hours. But most places in Columbia don't let you do that without having a parent present and the parents. Of our teens don't have 50 to 100 extra hours lying around to go with you to a soup kitchen. They, they don't have that. And so I just, we were able to see all of these, barriers to completion and knock them down as much as we could. And we still want to get back to that. As you know, since 2019, we haven't really had like functioning programs in the space. We've done some one off things. We still do workshops, but that's a funding issue. And it's also a boundaries issue for me, knowing that I can't continue to sustain and un or underfunded nonprofit, no matter how much I love it. And it's my heart's work. I, I saw myself creating disparity in my own life. By not being able to pay myself for the work that I do that people, I mean, I got a gang of awards over here, Tayler. Everybody want to give me awards. They don't want to give us no money though. I don't want no more awards. Please keep your plaques so yeah, I think that is, that's mostly the story we, we have. We have had thousands of kids over the years, be it in this space or through workshops. I should have been counting, but I wasn't. I just I just know and and, it's really important work that I'm looking forward to get back to getting back to it won't look the same. But it will, it's not over. We're not done. And so the storytelling piece of that, as you can see, as I've talked now for, I don't know, 20 minutes, for me is just to make sure that people understand that sowing seeds was not founded out of desire. It was founded out of necessity. And that's something that I talk about a lot. And we look at nonprofits, usually if you're starting a nonprofit, cause you just want to, it probably doesn't need to be a nonprofit. You can just, you can do that in another, another way. I didn't necessarily want to do this. I wanted to help kids at my good state job with my benefits. You know, my grandma told me, go get you a good state job, get you some benefits, go to work, you know, and I did that. And then I got in there and I was like, oh, they're hurting these kids and I can't be a part of that. And there are people that are working for DJJ that mean kids well, and we need them in there. And so I'm not talking about people. I'm talking about the system. And, and we still work. We've always worked closely with them. Most of our referrals came from probation officers at DJJ. The court system worked really well with us as well. We were able to be court advocates and be there as these cases were being called and say, Hey, that's a kid that you don't have to send to a group home because everything you're saying they're going to do there. We can do this at home. And the research says that they do it at home. They're more likely to be rehabilitated and not reoffended. So let us do it and every time that happened, the kids fade and did the things with us and that they did not reoffend. I only had kids reoffend after 2019. like the 1st time I was able to say, one of my kids has committed another crime that, like, was on my radar was 2020 and, you know, I had 2 kids. We charged with gun gun charges in 2020, and I just, I couldn't, it's not a thing of like, we fixed them. That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is when young people have a safe place to be and exist and they have that constant accountability and you know, connection with trusted community and trusted adults, it is less likely for them to reoffend. And it's just no coincidence to me that within a 12 months, I have 2 kids get gun charges and I've been doing the work for 7 years and I had no one. On my radar that had ever been charged with anything again. And so that's why I know we get to get back to work. But not at the expense of my health and safety. So that's the story girl.

Tayler: 20:54

I love that too. And I see a lot of like my story with liberation is lit in that story too. Especially the, part about not being able to pay myself. And, like, it's I was just having a conversation the other day on so I never got my Twitter girly moment. So I'm all on this threads app and I was seeing people talk about bookstore owners. And so many people are like, it costs as much to start a bookstore. I haven't been able to pay myself 3 years. I, I don't know if I know any bookstore owners who have been doing their bookstore less than five years who have been able to pay themselves. And that just has me thinking about, your whole process of developing Sowing Seeds was very much like radical imagination. I've been thinking about that a lot too. And what I think part of that radical imagination is, that we've been not one doing something different out of systems and something that's never been done before and trying to do more prevention versus being more reactive. But also, I feel like an activist in nonprofit and service oriented spaces in general, it's all about. What can you do? How are you putting your body on the line? How are you working yourself out of commission? And it's that martyrdom of this, how much I'm sacrificing for the calls, the struggle, the fight. And you taking a step back because you realize, Oh, this is coming out of detriment to myself. That's part of radical imagination to me. So, I think that is. Definitely really cool and I definitely resonate with that.