Moving People from Empathy to Action (with David Ambroz)

In this episode, we have a powerful conversation with author and advocate David Ambroz about his new memoir, 'A Place Called Home,' and his advocacy around poverty and the child welfare system. David shares his personal journey from homelessness in New York City to becoming a foster father and advocate in Los Angeles, emphasizing the transformational power of storytelling in driving social change. We discuss systemic issues like child poverty, the role of community and government in supporting those in need, and practical solutions to end homelessness among foster youth. David also offers insightful advice on civic engagement and the importance of collective action to create a better future.

00:00 Welcome to Liberation is Lit

00:54 Meet David Ambroz: Advocate and Author

01:23 David's Early Life and Struggles

02:52 The Power of Storytelling

05:30 Systemic Issues and Responsibilities

07:56 A Vision for Change

14:53 Personal Care and Advocacy

19:01 Upcoming Projects and Ideas

28:49 Call to Action: Making a Difference

34:21 Closing Remarks and Connections

David’s Book

A Place Called Home

Where to Find David

IG: @HJDAmbroz

http://davidambroz.com

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

0:05

Hey y'all. Welcome to the Liberation is Lit podcast, where the power of storytelling is the force of social change. I'm your host, Taylor Simon, and in this podcast we believe in the profound impact of stories. And I'm so excited to be here today with author and advocate, David Ambroz And we're gonna talk a little bit about, a place called home, a new memoir, and. Just advocacy around care system poverty, things like that. So I'm super excited for this conversation. Hi David. Good morning. What an introduction. Your energy. My goodness. I, I'm just starting my coffee and I'm gonna just dump it because you just filled up my soul here. Good morning. Oh my gosh. Good morning. Yes. I did have my coffee so it. It's working. So to kick us off with our discussion today, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your advocacy around poverty and child welfare? And then also tell us about what led you to tell your story. A place called home. Oh my goodness. So, I'll tell you about myself. So, David Ambroz I live in Los Angeles. I'm a father and a foster father. I'm a Scorpio. A native New Yorker, although I now think of LA as my true, true, spiritual home. But I think what you're getting at is a little bit more about my story and, my story started in New York City. I grew up in the city with my mom who suffered from a kind of a, a panoply of mental health challenges and issues. And then my brother and my sister each a year older than the next. So my mom was, was homeless when she had me and me, my brother, and my sister. I lived in and on the streets of New York City for about 12 years. And through that journey, it was both, challenging, horrendous, violent and scary, but also kind of magical. And it then ended me being up in foster care, which was a crazy and challenging experience. So the nitty gritty of the early life was just being born into the ecosystem of poverty, I think. In our country. We couldn't have designed a better system to trap people in poverty if we had sat there and thought of it. So my mom was in it and therefore we were in it. And it was all that was expected of me, my brother and my sister. But what I am here today and, and my brother and sister as well, we refuse to be statistics. And so through grit, some conniving, a little bit of law breaking in a whole lot of, thrust forward. We today are happy, healthy, successful members of society, and I have dedicated my professional life and my personal life to making sure kids don't grow up the way that I grew up. And you asked why did I share my story? I, you know, I got to my late thirties and I realized something really profound, which was I had this incredible tool. To affect change. I had been working on policy to help kids, even though that was kind of a, if you will, side part of my life. It, it was this tool I never really picked up, which was my own story. And I realized kind of how you introduced the show, that one of the best ways to move people from empathy to action is storytelling. I wanted to use this tool that I had earned with my early life and advocacy, and I began to think about how best to do that one thing led to another as these things do, and I found myself publishing what I always like to think of as both my diary and my hidden photo albums. If anyone's listening as one of those, I'm sure we all do. I just decided to publish it for, for the use of it as a tool in my memoir and also. To release the shame. I think there's a lot of things that poverty leaves you with in terms of a hangover, one of which is the shameful feeling you have for the things you had to do to survive. So both use it as a tool and kind of clean out my closet so I could live the next 40 plus years of my life just free. And that's what I've chosen to do. And that's the memoir that we're talking about today. I love how. talked about, you framed your memoir as a way to clean out your closet so you could be free, and essentially a lot of what I do with liberation is Lit is both that empowering people to release themselves from the shame and embrace vulnerability through telling their own stories, but also what you said about storytelling as a way to move people from empathy to action. So. You're using your story as a tool for all of that is literally all I do with liberation is lit. And I love how had this realization after working in policy reform for so long and I've, that's one of the aspects of the book that I really liked is you using kind of yourself as a case study to show how, from the system or the state or just the, the structure system of poverty that we have in this country, keeps people often, keeps people poor, or forces people to do things that, they shouldn't have to do in order to survive. Mm-hmm. What do you think is the difference in responsibility of the state or the system and the community or family or chosen family for care? What are the differences between their responsibilities in your eyes? Yeah. Interesting. So I will get there. I will tell you a quick story. I, I, one of my earliest memories is begging on the platform of Grand Central in the morning, and my family, and I would beg on the mornings because the commuters people are more generous before they have a bad day. And I remember so distinctly this morning that the crowd parted a few feet in front of me and then came back together behind me and not a single person looked at me. And the lesson was just crystal clear is that my life did not matter. And when I think about children and families in poverty in this country, I think we collectively flow around the issue. It has become white noise, unremarked and unremarkable in our country. Not since 1999 in a presidential debate, has a phrased child poverty been uttered. We have 10 million children living in abject poverty in this country. We talk about coal mining, almost every debate, and perhaps we should. There are more baristas in Southern California than coal miners in America, and it doesn't mean one is to the exclusion of the other. It just simply means sometimes we forget to see what's right in front of us. So when you ask about the responsibility of both society and or a family, they're not different. We are a family. We are stuck together in a space. We have to follow certain rules and we live amongst each other. I don't know what else is family. It's messy, it's argumentative. You're, you're always grumpy at uncle so and so, and aunt so and so. They don't, you know, their politics don't align with yours, so you avoid the topic at, at Christmas dinner, we are a family and for good or for bad. We have to do better. We can no longer look at children 10 million and decide that they're not our problem, that it's okay that we have intergenerational poverty and violence, and it's simply a decision we have to make. 10 years before I was born, we went to the moon and it always perplexes me. What happened to that American spirit? I believe it's still there. Choices like ending child poverty are hard. As they should be, but they're achievable. This is not something mysterious. I want us to make the choice to end it. I want us to realize that we're better as a family, both morally, but also economically. This doesn't make any sense. We can do better. I want us to choose to do better, and that's, that's how I think of family. We are collectively as a country, a family, and we have to help each other. And it doesn't mean blindly so, but certainly children should not be culpable. For what the adults in their lives have done or not done, and we collectively have to do better by them. That's so interesting that you say that because I remember sitting in a senate education policy, senate education, subcommittee, here in South Carolina, the debate that was up for the next budget was, free lunch for school children. And the focus of the conversation was well, the parents aren't filling out the form. I don't understand why they wouldn't fill out the form, or I can't believe some schools are just taking away the lunch tray after they've given it to the child because, oh, you have lunch debt. You can't, you can't eat today. And am just thinking about how so many of these adults, not necessarily the parents, because just reading after your experiences adults are humans too, and sometimes they have trouble having their needs met, and so that affects their responsibility with their children. but I just think about all of these adults in this room discussing this topic were so okay with letting the children suffer and punishing the children for things that adults are doing, and almost using children as a way to punish the adults. For living in poverty. Sure. I thought that was just, Such a good point. yeah, just such like, how, how do we do this as a society? How do we think this way We've become, we, we, we've, we've started to fetishize process Mm-hmm. and when one fetishizes process, you begin to lose focus on the outcomes. So, you create this high wire that if someone steps off, they fall. Instead of thinking about where you're trying to get them, so you failed to fill out forms. Therefore, and I remember in the book I, I talk about how my mom homeless mentally ill with no childcare, was required to write down her home address in order to receive housing assistance and we were homeless. Or to go to the welfare line and have to spend days with not being able to make an appointment. Then being told, well, are you looking for work? It's, it's just absurd. So I would, I would say to us collectively. As not even left or right, but just as a moral people, we can do better. However, we need to get off our back foot. We need to stop being okay with the debate around starving children, receiving or not receiving free lunch. We need to create a moral vision of our country of plenty, or as someone recently called it, one of my favorite thinkers, abundance. I love that word. Helping people is not a zero sum game. And so what is the vision we as a moral and just people want to move toward. So I constantly find us in these debates on the, if you will, progressive side debating things that are just. In isolation, debatable. But collectively, when you look at them holistically are just absurd. They don't make sense. So I was recently at a town hall speaking. I was being interviewed by, the Los Angeles Mayor, who is just a, phenomenal leader in, her career for foster children. And she, she prompted me on education and I made a comment and then someone in the audience literally stood up and said, shouldn't all kids go to wealthy private schools? All foster kids? And I didn't even reflect, which is not typical of me. I just blurted out, no. And I think this young person who was just this advocate, you know, thinking he was advocating for something good for children, was shocked. And he's like, why? I said, let's think about this differently. What if today we outlawed all private schools? How quickly do you think art music would be returned to public schools? How quickly do you think schools would become safe? How quickly do you think nurses would be available? 24 7 at public schools? And it's not that I do or don't think we should do that, it. But as a people, as a moral people, we need to begin to create a vision, not of what we're against, but holistically what we're for. People wanna be inspired. We've done the fear thing, it's not working for us. We need to do a different thing. So I wanna create this moral vision where, for example, what if we kept public schools open 24 7? What if we provided free daycare? In those schools. What if schools had, I don't know, a clinic in every single school where parents and kids could get basic healthcare? None of this is inventing new laws of physics. This is a choice. Where is that moral collective vision? And I want us to move toward that idea of abundance as so well eloquently said by by people like Ezra Klein. We can do better. I think collectively we've lacked the cohesive vision to inspire other people. We've instead constantly debated what people put in front of us, be it bathrooms, be it school lunches, be it all of these things. And it's not that they're not important, they're, they're very important, especially for the people that are affected. But we are not gonna win the public conversation and move policy at the meta scale that we need to without a vision. I definitely agree, and that's why again, I really love the power of stories because you don't have to just talk about what is awful. You can talk about what you hope, what you envision, what you wanna dream for the future. And I think that is powerful potential of storytelling. And love that you say that about how you are contributing to the collective visioning of what we want to see as society. And I know it can be hard work and sometimes you may get pushback or just reliving like your own. Experiences, some of the negative things. So as someone who is very, vocal in this fight, how do you take care of yourself as a survivor and an advocate? Well, first I would say to all of us that emotion is a superpower, and I think people have this vision and I used to, and I no longer do that. Sharing, showing or sharing emotion is something that is bad. And that I think you've asked a very important question, but I think the interpretation people might have is how do you suppress that? How do you not show that? And I think part of why we're so alienated from each other and grumpy with each other is the lack of empathy with each other. And part of that is our alienation. By hiding our humanity, we are emotional people. And I have fought hard to be able to express my emotion. It was not easy. So first I cry. I cry in public. I cry when I talk about things. It is cathartic. I, I choke up when I do public speaking in my audio book of my memoir. I, I read it and I express emotion much to the chagrin of some of the editors who wanted to me to rerecord. I think empathy and the demonstration of emotion is this amazing thing that the human spirit thrives on. So how do I care for myself? I let it out. I let it out. It, it opens hearts. It opens minds. It connects us as a species to each other. That's one way I, I do it the other way is it's so, like exercising kind of sucks sometimes, right? But you do it every day and eventually it gets stronger and your cardio health gets better. This is what it's like to be an advocate. You, you put the work in it is difficult. The day-to-day is not always what you want it to be. But over time, you hopefully see the work that you've, you've engaged in Blossom, and that's certainly something that I have felt throughout my advocacy career. So how do I take myself, take care of myself? I win, I win. I am moving us toward a vision where children in this country are not starving, moving this country forward in a way where queer kids in foster care are not cured. Of their gender identity expression, or sexual orientation. I win because homeless children coming outta foster care should not be homeless. We just should not have that. I win is how I take care of myself. It's important to achieve victory, but I also learn from all of the years of what I would say is temporary failure, so that's okay too. And that depresses me and makes me sad. I sit in that emotion, I think about it. And then I use it to fuel my fire. I also have a cadre of great friends, chosen family, family as well, and they all nourish me. And then other than that, I drink a lot of coffee. I love champagne. And I have a baby who is just hilarious. So when I need a little moment of reality, I can just watch him stumble around and laugh, and my soul is slightly healed. So those are some of the thoughts I have on that very insightful question. Oh my gosh. I love, I was like, are you living in my brain? Because radical vulnerability is something I'm constantly exploring and experimenting with. Because on the outside people will say, oh, I'm a very vulnerable person, but I feel like I this, pun intended 'cause my name is Tayler Um, this experience of. Okay. I am vulnerable about what kinds of feelings I have, but I am expressing them to you I've already intellectualized them. So it's expressing emotion without expressing emotion. So I love that, encouraging people to be vulnerable and, use their emotions to fuel their fire. Mm-hmm. Speaking of that fire, what are some of your upcoming projects that you have going on? Oh, so interesting. So, but I just have to say, one thing you said struck, struck me. You know, when I was a kid, and I don't think I write about this in the memoir, but we were on the subway where we lived and my mom was trying to explain to me why people were painted blue. And a lot of them, and my mom says, and I quote, honey, it's the Super Bowl. And I, I'm a homeless kid. I'm hungry, I have lice, and I'm like, what? And she's explained this to me. I'm like, it's, I can't remember. January, February, it was cold. And I'm like, lemme get this right. People are so fanatically obsessed with a team. Doesn't care about them truly as individuals, players come and go, you know, billionaires buy one team, trade it to another, move it to a different city, you know, whatever. And people paint themselves that color. She's like, yeah, I'm like, that makes no sense to me. I watch sports, I enjoy sports. But what I've never quite understood is where our values are collectively, where we know the statistics as a people. On athletes, but we have no idea the graduation rate of our local school systems. We have no idea of, the number of children being sex trafficked out of foster care, which is the largest source of sex trafficked children in North America. We don't have that idea because we sort of are too busy following sports and celebrities and I, I do both of those things. Let me just say I scroll on my phone. But I do so with agency and I do know the stats of my local school systems, and I do know the work that needs to be done around child sexual trafficking in our country. So I want us to figure out what color that is so I can paint myself. and Walk around in inappropriate places, fanaticize with a logo on my head. What is the logo for children? Because I will wear it on all of my clothing. I still don't know why. In our country, in Los Angeles, there are four streets named after Kobe Bryant. There are zero streets named after a social worker in California. I don't understand our values and I want us to realize that. Is that the value we would tell our children is right, probably not. So I want us to kind of reassess things and get obsessed with the outcomes and just trade information and create the social space where it's hip. Cool and fun to talk about these, these matters. So I, I just, I think what you said was really important. I just wanted to share kind of my reflection off of it, and I've completely forgotten your question. Oh, what am I excited by? Yes. sorry. I'll give you a concrete example. So there are concrete policy solutions in my memoir, especially afterward. One, one small idea that I think could be transformative. 50% of America's homeless, 50%. Five zero. Experienced foster care. It's the largest correlation, not causation, more than alcoholism, more than drug addiction, more than veteran status. It is the number one correlation, not causation. And I think, I think the stat this year, if I recall correctly, is something between, I think 33 and 39% of the children coming outta foster care will become homeless almost immediately. They're not addicted. They're not chronic. They're, they're, they're just becoming homeless. So we get these kids out of dangerous situations. We take care of them, we spend them money, and then at 18 or 21, we're like, peace out, good luck. And then we're shocked when they fail to thrive. If you're a parent listening, is your kid ready to be independent at 18 or even I'm not ready and I'm in my mid forties. I still wish I had mom and dad, so. I want us to do something different. So I was trying to figure out like what is the thing we might do? And what I came to was like very simple build housing. So I am working on a project here in Los Angeles to build a dorm at a community college, and the idea would be you could emancipate into housing education or vocational skill for two to three years. Then move on with your life. Every foster kid might be guaranteed this pathway. They don't have to choose it. They can do whatever they want at 18, but imagine our country with just 10 of these dorms spread across, would end the pipeline to homelessness from foster care in America. America. We can build a building. So people are just so perplexed. I'm like, it's not that complicated. We figured out our smartphones and how to TikTok and all these things, and then we're like, I don't know what to do about homeless kids. Built housing. Very simple. So I want us to do, to realize our own power, to not imagine the complicated, but really the simple and do those things. And so I've tried to share those ideas in my memoir, in my online presence, and then amplify other great thinkers that are doing just incredible work and imagining a more moral, just and humane future for our kids. That's so interesting because I hear about all these places like, oh, there's a housing crisis, there's a housing crisis, and I'm like. Well, billion millionaire and billionaires are fueling the housing crisis by buying multiple properties up and then renting them out at rates that people cannot afford them. it's so funny how everybody's like, I don't know how to solve the housing crisis. And it's like limit investment properties. Like I. people can actually have pathways to home ownership and affordable rent. I, I would even complicate it further. So I don't remember exactly. These are, these are directionally accurate, but, but not specifically. So I think something like 70% of Los Angeles or 75% is zone single family. And when you don't allow density. What happens, the costs go up'cause the supply is limited even as the demand increases. So I think this idea is important to say we as the majority of Los Angeles, just as an example, need to allow density and we don't want it. We love our single family homes and it's not just wealthy people, it's all of us. 75% of la I don't even remember the exact number, but it's something like that. Are creating constraint and supply for housing and what do, what do we all think is gonna happen over time? Homelessness and affordability, increasing rents. So it's us collectively too. Sometimes I think we fail to realize that we are the system. We as individuals or the system we, we vote every four years and we think that's gonna keep this a republic and it will not. We need hyperlocal active. Consumption of politics. I constantly, my friends are like, I dunno what to do. I'm like, schedule civic participation in your calendar twice a month for one hour. Log onto a meeting, go to something volunteer. I don't even know. Figure out what works for you. But we, we have to look in the mirror and realize that we're at fault as well. It's not just these, this 1% we're at fault. We have created a civic society with a failing social welfare safety net because we have made elective decisions. There's more of us than any other small population, and we have just absconded from our responsibility the very moment of our full enfranchisement. As a country, we've walked away from the one tool that can achieve change politics, especially local politics. Most people can name at least one justice of the Supreme Court. People can't even name who represents them in the state legislature or county supervisor. These are the issues that affect us on a day to day, and we shrug. Cynicism is a luxury. Cynicism is a breath of smoke that you're blowing into the face of a baby. It's abhorrent, but it's what we do. We shrug our shoulders and that responsibility is on you, is on me. It's on us collectively, not just some sort of small percentage. We have walked away and that's why we have 10 million children in this country. In poverty, and I think it one in four kids in America are hungry. What are their parents eating? We have just shrugged our shoulders and we look outward, but it's us and we can just make a different choice. We can make a different choice other than the laws of physics. Everything is a choice. We can make a different choice. I want us to make a different choice. I want us to choose that this is the last generation of American children to start with that will grow up live or experience poverty of any level, but especially homelessness, especially homelessness. I totally agree, it's also us too. Part of why billionaires stay billionaires is because we keep. Choosing to give them our money through their products. So I definitely agree it is that this, and how can we choose differently? And kind of my response illustrated, it's it's easier to shift blame on other pers another person, and it's harder to look in the mirror and see how are we contributing to this as a society? How, what are we choosing do to facilitate these conditions as well? Because the system is made up of people. So, That's right. So my last question for you is, what I ask everybody, what advice would you offer listeners who wanna make a positive impact in their communities? And you have already given a lot of practical advice from paying attention to the local and paying and looking into the mirror and seeing how we can choose differently and we can take personal responsibilities. But is there anything else, you want to offer listeners? I think we need a, a new learning and it, it requires a culture shift. And so the new learning is we have a, a culture as individuals and collectively therefore of, of, learned helplessness. And, there is a tattoo on my body that says illegitimate non carum, which means don't let the bastards grind you down in Latin. And for me, bastards aren't always people. They're sometimes processes or things. Change is hard. Change is hard. It's hard to get a tree planted on my street. I've been trying for about a year. It's hard to do these things, right. That's okay. Change is supposed to be hard, even if you're right. So we need to unlearn as individuals the helplessness that we feel and realize it's, it's, it's a yield sign, not a stop sign. And keep going. Just make sure you're safe and go. And so what I want us to do as individuals, in addition to some of the specific things I've said. Is to challenge that. When you hear a joke in your social circle about a politician, just stop. Stop them and say, what have you done? What's, what's the last city council meeting you went to? Tell me about the number of hours you've volunteered. In your city. We need to stop denigrating people in the system and realize that they are on the front line, on a war on poverty that we've all collectively abandoned. My sister, Jessica's a social worker, and I once asked her, I said, Jessica, what do you do for a living? And she said, paperwork, David. Here's my sister with a advanced degree from a prestigious university, decades of experience, and she can't afford to buy a home within 30 miles of Los Angeles. What if, what if my sister, instead of being attacked by the public, every time there's a death or something terrible in the system, what if instead we realized that we're the problem and my sister was given interest-free home loan after 10 years of good service from the county, she could afford to live here. What if her kids went to state schools for free? All of a sudden you have a woman who's nearly burnt out, keeping her incredible, vast experience as a tool. For this war on poverty and helping children and families thrive, that can happen in your community. Listener. That could happen tomorrow. Why don't more people foster? For many of them, it's economic. They're worried about retirement. They're worried about their kids' college. They're worried about healthcare. What if we said to those middle class people, you're gonna be treated like a county or or federal postal worker. We're gonna give you a pension and your kids will go to school for free. And after that, after 10 years of good service, all of a sudden these folks who are on the frontline paid nothing to do this work. Would be honored and recognized for the contribution they're making to our society. We find the money to subsidize stadiums. We find the money to subsidize weapons of war, and we should, perhaps we should. It's a dangerous world. I don't think it's an either or. What I want us to realize as individuals is the change can happen, but first we must look in the mirror and realize I am not helpless. And if you need to say that to yourself every day in the mirror, say it, and then go do something. And if you don't know what to do, use this thing called the internet. Find something you're passionate about, whatever it is, bread baking, tree planting, I don't know. And go make that part of your community. Go lift up. I have a friend I was shocked to see. He has what he calls the Wednesday Volunteer Club. It's a very busy, person, very prestigious in his career, and every Wednesday he goes and does something. I had no idea. And so I'm joining him in some of those. What can you do that is bespoke, that is unique to you, but you damn well better figure it out because this country is depending on you, these kids that don't vote, these poor people with less political power rely on you. And so if you're listening to a podcast, you're probably. Able to do something more than we're all collectively doing. So do it and realize that we are not impotent, we are powerful as individuals, especially locally. So that's something I would say the individual can do. Maybe not as specific as you were driving at, but very much I think the first step into making this the just to human nation that we are. No, I love that and I love that your sister's a social worker. I am an LMSW myself, so, trying to find. Ways to empower myself to make change outside of the system. But that is great advice, just finding ways. And I love the idea of like scheduling time in your calendar to be politically engaged. Like I have all of the state school board meetings on my calendar ahead of time, a year in advance. So I know to go to those meetings. So definitely, definitely. Scheduling time to just like 30 minutes a week to make all your calls about your different issues to your different elected officials. You can, you like one lunch break a week, you can knock all of that out. So that's amazing. So thank you so much, David, for this amazing conversation and fired up just like. Talking to you for this short time, can people find you and keep up with the advocacy work that you're doing? Thank you for the compliment. Folks can find me. I'm very active on Instagram, HJ d Amboz one, one word, and or my website, which also links to that david ambrose.com. And I hope people like you pick up the memoir and share the story with others. I think we need to create that interweb of connected people like you that are out there. I think we are the majority. I think we are Dumbledor's army, and we need to be called to service. And sharing stories as I've tried to do in my memoir is one way to do it. So I, I'm a voracious reader. I love reading about you and the work that you do, and I hope we all stay connected. So that's where you can find me and what I'm up to. And I will link, Hey. a place called home, both the. book and audio book and how you can support liberation is lit through that purchase. Um, I'll link all of that on the show notes as well as where you can find and keep up with David. And thank you listeners for being a part of the Liberation Is Lit podcast. If you have any stories to share, wanna suggest topics or just wanna connect, you can find us on Instagram, TikTok and facebook @liberationislit.com or at Liberation is Lit, or you can find us at liberations lit com. You enjoyed the episode, please. And remember, your voice matters, and together through the lens of stories, we're gonna make a difference to the world. Till next time.