Black Forward - Episode 5 - July 28, 2026

Welcome to Black Forward, a multi-part series about resilience, leadership, and building stronger community. Produced by KZFR 90.1 FM and the Black Resiliency Project. On this week's episode, we'll be discussing youth leadership, civic engagement, life-saving services, and why young people's voices matter. I will be talking with Ife Saint and Maya Jones about how today's youth are shaping tomorrow's communities and what it means to move Black forward.

Recording and post-production by Carlos Casarez / KZFR 90.1 FM, Chico, California. www.kzfr.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Hey, I'm Rachel Morton. Welcome to Black Forward, a multi-part series about resilience, leadership, and building stronger community. Produced by KZFR 90.1 FM and the Black Resiliency Project. On this week's episode, we'll be discussing youth leadership, civic engagement, life-saving services, and why young people's voices matter. I will be talking with Ife Saint and Maya Jones about how today's youth are shaping tomorrow's communities and what it means to move Black forward. Welcome to the program. Maya, Ife, so happy to have you here. Thank you for inviting us on today.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Happy to be here.

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Ife, would you take a moment to just share with our listeners who you are, what you do, and why you're here serving in the community.

SPEAKER_03 0:53

Thank you for that opportunity, Rachel. Who I am, I'm Ife Saint. I work for the BRP or the Black Resiliency Program, uh Project, excuse me. And I am the outreach coordinator. My basic duties are going out, giving food out for hot meals, food distribution, tabling at events. You might see me doing that, and all kinds of stuff. I mean, I have a lot of hats. I feel like everyone does in our organization, but I really appreciate the introduction.

SPEAKER_01 1:18

That's uh definitely the typical nonprofit role. Uh, you wear all the hats, maybe not at the same time. And sometimes it might feel like the same time. Maya, will you take a moment to introduce yourself to our listeners?

SPEAKER_00 1:31

My name is Maya Jones, and I'm with the BRP Black Resiliency Project. And I just started on as an administrative assistant, just someone to kind of assist with keeping things running. And I'm here today serving in the community because I've experienced not having the support and help that you need. And I think it's important that young people are heard and listened to because voices, young voices should matter.

SPEAKER_01 2:00

Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing. And we're so happy to have you on our team as a new team member. And yes, she's already keeping things running that much smoother. So let's jump out the gate with when you hear the phrase moving black forward, what does it mean to you as a young person?

SPEAKER_03 2:21

As a young person, when I hear moving black forward, I feel like that has to do with our past. When I was younger, I always heard the phrase, if you don't know your history, you don't know where you're going. And I think that's really powerful because we've got to remember what we've accomplished so far and what we still want to accomplish, what barriers we still hit. And when I think moving black forward, I think of, well, I think of people like Ruby, Ruby Bridges. She's still alive. And she was the first black female, first black student to go into desegregated schools. And she's still alive. She goes to, you know, NBA games, she has an Instagram, and that's still going on. So if she's still very much with us, then it feels like we haven't gone, I wouldn't say far enough, but I would say we still haven't put a lot of the hurt behind us. Maybe a lot of our progress still needs to be propped up. But moving black forward really just means to me that we need to remember where we came from and what our path is and where we're trying to get.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Thank you so much, Ife. Maya, did you want to weigh in?

SPEAKER_00 3:19

To me, what comes to mind when I hear the phrase moving black forward is exactly that moving black forward. I think that there are a lot of stereotypes and a lot of very ignorant opinions that people have about black people and what we went through in the past. Some people think that it just happened so long ago and that it shouldn't be relevant anymore. Some people would much rather hold on to their ignorant views than understanding and realizing that black people are people too capable. I think that it's time to move away from all of the oppression and the stereotypes and all of those things into black being successful and those being the stereotypes associated with the race.

SPEAKER_01 4:06

Beautiful. Thank you so much, Maya. Absolutely the concept behind moving black forward, recognizing celebrating 100 years of black history and now looking forward 100 years. How do we move ourselves forward and what does that look like? And we definitely can't do it without your voices and input and energy. So, what kind of future do you want to create for your community?

SPEAKER_03 4:33

Well, the kind of community I envision or that I will I want to see is the kind of community where we are one, we're together. I mean, there's supposed to be around 50 million African Americans in the United States, you know, in like any group or nationality, there's some division. What I want to see in our community is more of a cooperation, you know, working together, upbringing each other. And it is not from a place of prejudice. I feel like it's from a place of love because sometimes when people hear, you know, support your local black businesses, that might sound like you're not supporting other businesses, but I feel like it's just to highlight, to highlight our community. It just needs, it just needs us all to be able to cooperate and to back each other up and lift each other up because no one is actually lifted up by their own bootstraps. No one picks themselves up. It takes a community and a village. So that's what I feel like.

SPEAKER_01 5:24

Amazing. Maya?

SPEAKER_00 5:26

A community that I envision is a community where everyone has a sense of belonging and a sense of oneself, especially in this community specifically. It's a predominantly white area. And for people who look different than, you know, other people, people who, you know, can't just walk into a store and see someone that looks like them. I think that it is so important to make sure that everyone is seen, everyone is heard. You know, there's just everyone feels like they have a place and people that they can belong to and belong with. And that would be my perfect sense of community.

SPEAKER_01 6:01

Thank you, Maya. Belonging is essential for communities to thrive. Thank you for bringing that out. So people often say that young people are the future. How does that statement land? How does it feel?

SPEAKER_03 6:16

When I when I think of young people being the future, I don't know if everyone has the same thoughts as me, but my first thought when I think about young people kind of getting past the torch is I think of of government. I think of of of community leadership. I feel like I've always seen great role models in my life and I've always wondered like how they got there. And I think it's just perspiration and inspiration. They they just follow their path and eventually their their their fruits of their labor are seen by the community. And maybe that's what we've got to do. We've got to just just put our heads down into the sand and put that, not maybe hiding, but like to grind and to work harder and to help people around us. Maybe it's more of a legacy for us younger people to to uphold, but it also could be a place of of growth, of maybe knowing more than than our predecessors and and and being able to I even feel it with with generations under me. Teenagers these days, they they have their own ways of of of of engaging with the public, with with what's going on in our current state of affairs, with just our country and in the world. And I feel like they're already kind of contributing in the ways that they'll they'll pioneer in the future. It's just not yet, maybe, maybe it's not yet, it's not yet come to its full fruition where they are showing that what they're doing has a response and has has real movement and real momentum in our communities. Right now, they're the young people and what they look, what they do looks, you know, different and strange, but one day it'll be the norm and the ways that they move will be the the pioneers of of a new generation. So I feel like when you look at young leadership, you've just got to almost trust in in their ideas and and believe in in their actual their ideologies.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

So is there any weight or pressure hearing a phrase like that?

SPEAKER_03 8:08

Oh, there's a huge amount of weight and pressure because you wonder how the world is kept running. You know, I feel like when young people will eventually take the reins of the world, it will it'll be a decision whether we want to keep it going the same way it's been going, or if we want to truly look at ourselves and figure out where we're headed. When young people see that pretty much clear as day. Now, maybe there's different ideas on, you know, what advancement is. But when I think about the black community and black, you know, leadership and in youth growing up, they have ideas and they have ways to implement them. It's just, it's just it looks different than what's been implemented so far.

SPEAKER_01 8:45

Thank you. Maya, what are your thoughts about being the future?

SPEAKER_00 8:49

When I hear that phrase, my thought is just that young people are the future. I think with everything going on, the technology and the economy and all of these advances, it's it's just all so foreign, especially for a lot of adults that I know and I've came in con contact with. So just knowing how to move forward in this world that has just advanced so much, I think it's hard for young people to kind of find the support that they need because many of the adults didn't grow up in a world like today. So kind of trying to find that like that middle ground, like the, hey, like what can you help me with that you've experienced yourself? And then also, like, how do I move forward with all of these new aspects of today's world that, you know, many other people didn't have. So I think that just support is a really big thing for young people being the future, because there are so many influences. Like, my goodness, there are so many influences, social media, friends, just things are becoming norms that should not be norms. So I think that adults just giving young people all of the support that they can get because everyone's trying to navigate everything right now. And whether we like it or not, young people are the future. Like this is the next generation. And I think that it's really important to acknowledge that.

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Absolutely. Thank you so much. How about we dig a little deeper? And I'm gonna ask you both to share. When did you realize that your voice mattered and that you had the power to influence change?

SPEAKER_03 10:27

I think maybe the first time I realized that my voice mattered and that I could influence change was on a small scale. I was in high school still. I had just learned about a robotics club. Growing up, I always wanted to tinker and take things apart. And, you know, every if you see if I see something with screws in it, I want to take out the screws and see how it works and see the guts of a machine. And when I learned about robotics in high school, I think I was in it for sophomore, junior, and senior year. It was really a high school team. It was a student-led team. Now, of course, we had mentors, but even going from fabrication to the implementation to welding and everything, we made all the final decisions. And so that really put a responsibility on our backs, but also at the same time, it helped us see through our own ideas, which I feel like young people don't get an opportunity, an opportunity to do a lot of times, even if we have ideas. Given give being given the responsibility, all of it, to see it through and present it at at the conclusion is is not practiced, I feel like. So giving people like me, young people, a chance to have a say and maybe even sometimes final decision in in a lot in spaces and having a voice, that's actually really important. Maya?

SPEAKER_00 11:34

I will say that I'm still very young. So I do have a lot of experiences where I feel like my voice isn't heard, and I feel like my needs are kind of dismissed, you know, in like big, big operations like school systems and like places like that where it's hard to really like connect with one person on that one-on-one basis. I think that it's really easy for your voice not to be heard. But a way that I know for sure that my voice is heard is asking for help. And that is something that is really hard for me and really hard for a lot of other young people I know because whether it's they've been, you know, punished for asking for help or dismissed, you know, I think that the power in asking for help that also opens other doors for you and other that allows you to be able to open doors for other people. In that aspect, I think, yes, like my voice is definitely heard. I have been able to go to people and ask for help and ask for support and receive that and also be part of helping other people with that as well.

SPEAKER_02 12:39

Can I touch on that a little bit more? And I'm sorry, Maya.

SPEAKER_03 12:42

Um, I just like I like that you said that that it's like asking for help sometimes, even that part. Because when you're a child, you think that all the adults have everything figured out. You think that they know everything they're doing or or or there's a master plan. But then you get older and you realize that a lot of people do need help and to be aided in a lot of ways. And I would say that that's kind of important because even if you want to hear of your have your voice heard, having your voice heard in a way that's like, hey, this is the problem I'm dealing with. And then people actually helping you or helping you navigate that problem for yourself, you know, like teaching a man how to fish, that is a way that people that you can be heard, you know, at a young age, because usually, you know, most adults will be like, oh, you know, you're young, you don't need to figure that out. Oh, you're young. You don't, you don't have to worry yourself with those problems. But being heard in real life, real predicaments is is powerful because that means that they actually see you as a peer or an equal in some ways.

SPEAKER_01 13:37

Thank you. Thank you for that that last bit also, Ife. So knowing your voice has power is something that wasn't a conversation when I was in high school about five to ten years ago. However, I'm so happy that those are conversations that we're having now. And now that you've recognized that your voice can move circumstances, change situations for our community. We face things connected to mental health, substance use, violence, and other issues. From your perspective, what is Butte missing?

SPEAKER_03 14:18

Well, first, let's say part of what Butte got right. You said that when you were in school 15 years ago, that that that wasn't part of the conversation. I would like to say that in my schooling, when I was in high school, I feel like they started to maybe grasp the importance of mental health and mental illnesses, because I feel like that, I feel like I was well taught about how it affects you and how it comes in symptoms in different parts of your life and sometimes even in substance abuse. But it was ingrained in us that it was important and it was something that was another factor that we weren't looking at before or prior. So when I say that's something that they they tell they taught us, and I feel like was beneficial for my generation. I don't know if they're doing it today in school. I hope they're keeping that up. I haven't, you know, been in high school for a few years myself. But what I think we're missing is the real world, the real examples of of how we can help, because there's a lot of idealistic values these days, but there aren't a plethora of people trying to reduce the harm. One example I'm thinking of is when I go to the park on Tuesdays, giving out sandwiches and apples or oranges and water, there's there's usually some unhoused people there. And one day I asked him, I said, Well, I'm giving you food and I'm giving you water. What what else do you need? You know, I mean I understand you need a home, you know, and to speak frankly, but like what what do you think that we're not providing you that you might want? And one said, like an umbrella, another one said uh a vape, you know, nicotine addiction, you know, and well, let me just say this real quick, actually, just to to go on a tangent real quick. I once heard, this this really broke my heart. I once heard that from a friend, a good friend, that the reason you see a lot of, you know, people, you know, abusing substances on the street is because it's underlying issues, but sometimes it has to do with it has to do with hunger. It's a very real fact for people that are unhoused that if they're gonna go hungry, it's easier to go a couple days on a substance than to have food each of those days. A substance will help curb those those urges and those hunger pings. And so one thing that we need to understand is that these people are basically just on survival mode. Even if it looks like they're, you know, burning their life away, it is just to see the next day. And it might look ugly and it might look dirty, but really it's just people that need help and they're so far from society that they're pretty much overlooked. And we have homeless shelters and stuff like that. We have rehabs, but there's gotta be a way to meet them halfway where it's not so much that we're trying to get them to stop fully, but maybe to educate them on resources they can use or help them curb it little by little, like any other kind of addiction. You know, when you have nothing else to do and you're out in the field of a park and that's basically where you live, it's hard to tell someone to just focus on other things and, you know, go and be busy or about something because what are they really gonna do? You know, of course, you know, you need a house to get a job, you need an address to get a job, you need a phone number, you need a couple of things in place before you can actually be resettled into society. And so I just need, I feel like the best thing we can do moving forward is like judgment-free harm prevention, judgment-free services that that really aren't the answer, but are at least some weight off of the back of someone who really doesn't have much going for them. But I know I've talked for a little bit. How about you, Maya? Do you have anything else to say about that?

SPEAKER_00 17:38

I think you said a lot of really good things. You highlighted a lot of things that a lot of people don't think about. In my opinion, what I think we're missing is like educating people, educating people on why what they're doing is bad, not just, oh, you're not supposed to do that because in 10 years this could happen to you and you don't want that. I know a lot of people who are like, okay, well, then I'll just quit before that happens. You know, it'll be fine. But I think educating people on like the domino effect that substance abuse, mental health, all of these things can happen because I I think they just don't know. They don't understand how harmful specific things are. I think that they need to be, people need to be educated on why what they're doing is bad and why what can happen based off of what they're doing. I also think that there need to be, again, more judge-free places that people can go to because I know even in school, when you go to talk to like your counselor about whatever, they're mandated reporters. So you have to be really careful on what you say because that can end up biting you later. So I just think it's really important to have judge-free places to make sure that everyone is being educated from a young age on what specific substances can do and they can cause what, you know, they can cause to happen because all substances are different. They can all do different things, it can negatively affect you in different ways. So I just think educating people on, you know, all the things that can happen, like, hey, you want a job, that's cool, they drug test you, you know. So just making sure that, hey, if you want to get somewhere, these are the things that you're gonna have to stop doing. And I also think that come like approaching it more from, hey, like this is this is like this is what you want to do. I think that if we show people that, hey, being clean is fun, we like, you know, we we add fun to it. So it's not just so depressing and so dehumanizing for people to go get help or go to the doctors if they've never done that before, or to stop doing a drug that they've been codependent on for all this time. Like, why, why should I stop? Why would me not doing this be better for me if me doing this makes me happy? So I just think introducing more fun ways to do that, and that can look like so many other things, especially for young people, because you don't know what they're being taught at home. They can be being taught that, hey, drugs are good, or hey, this is good, or hey, this is bad, or hey, this doesn't actually matter. So I just think that educating people on exactly what could happen if you don't stop and what will happen, and just educating them on the risks and all of the other things, I think that that would be so beneficial. And also going more into other substances, you know, like we talk about vaping in schools quite a bit. That's the main thing that I hear people talking about. Drinking and driving, that's something that was talked about towards the end of my high school year. And I've never been somebody need to support drinking and driving. I've always, you know, known that that's something I would never do. But I didn't realize how harmful it was because there could be one vehicle, they're drunk, and then another family, they're just trying to go home. And then the drunk, the drunk vehicle hits the vehicle that's, you know, just trying to go home. And now it's just this big domino effect. And I'm sure neither sides thought that that would happen. So just explaining how easily things could happen, negative things could happen from what you decide to do, I think that that would be more beneficial than just vaping's bad. Don't do it, you'll be in trouble. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Thank you so much. Both of you went heavy on the substance use, and I appreciate that. Any thoughts specifically in regards to violence or mental health?

SPEAKER_03 21:21

I think the old adage, hurt people, hurt people, means a lot. If you're not even talking about abuse, you know, substance abuse, mental health. One thing I'd like to highlight as a symptom of of even like abusers and substance abuse is their mental health. Like an example is how hard is it for you to set up, you know, your own appointment to the dentist or your own, you know, the things you should be doing. For me, it's like go get my oil changed for my car. Well, just imagine, just for imagine for a second that even those simple tasks was like a mountain of other problems that you had to had to face, like transportation or or or even just perception. You know, you got to get a certain level of cleanliness before people even see you as, you know, another passerby on the street. I feel like the big topic here is mental health. You know, depression and anxiety and and schizophrenia and other things such as those are huge, invisible barriers that people just have the hardest time getting around or through. And when you're dealing with physical barriers such as you don't know when you're going to eat or drink next, it's just kind of it's not your priority to figure out why you're depressed. So I feel like what we could do is is apply some community unity or community betterment in our own, in our own backyards or in our own cities that really focus on on meeting people where they're at and and not us not assuming that you're gonna fix all their problems and make them feel better now, they can go solve their own problems after the first time you meet them. That's just not realistic. So the mental health aspect of it is just so much more important.

SPEAKER_00 22:57

Mental health is very real. Mental health is something that a lot of people struggle with. And it makes me really sad that a lot of those people struggle with mental health silently. They either feel like, hey, people think mental health isn't real, like I'm gonna get judged for going places, for trying to get help. Some people think that they will like they'll, you know, there's just a lot of reasons why people continue to go undiagnosed. And I think that that makes me really sad because people going in to get their mental health checked, I feel like that should be, I feel like that should be just as common as going in to, you know, get your blood work done and stuff. I think it's very important and your mental health can have the biggest impact on your capacity and what you're able to do and what you feel you can accomplish. So I just think high like highlighting it, having more people come in like, hey, I'm diagnosed with borderline personality disorder. These are the things that I did to get help. Just having those real life examples. So people say, okay, hey, I'm not alone. Hey, I felt the same way. Like I'm glad to know that this isn't just I'm not broken or I'm not, you know, a lot of people think they're alone. And I think that's the biggest, the biggest cause for people, so many people going undiagnosed. With the violence, I feel like in some, in some capacity, people are so violent. They've been getting so violent with each other because they feel like that's the only way that justice can be served in like its own twisted way, especially in the black community. I know that people feel like they they're not gonna be able to get the help that they need or they're not gonna, people aren't gonna believe them when they go say that so-and-so did this to them or that. They're they're just they're just not gonna get it. So they would rather go and take care of it themselves, not knowing that that's putting themselves at harm's way in more ways than one. People would just rather, like, okay, like I went and I fought them because they were bullying me and I told people and nobody believed me, and so I did it. But now I have an assault charge. You know what I mean? I just think it's really important to highlight the other resources that you can take. And there also being other resources that you other resources and support systems that you can go to to say, hey, I'm being bullied, or hey, somebody stole my shoes. You know, there's anything that could happen. But outside of like the school system or like the work, you know, working, just other places people can go to get the support that they need because violence is a really big problem right now. And I just think it's based on people giving up hope that they will be helped and feeling like they have to take matters into their own hands.

SPEAKER_03 25:36

Let me just say one good thing is therapy is cool now. You know, go to therapy, you know, get yourself figured out. And it's not there's no stigma. There is some stigma, but the stigma towards therapy is receding and is going away. People think it's it's very healthy and a cool thing to do these days. So that's that's actually a big plus. And I just want to add that I hate, I hate, hate, hate how much people, black people are stereotyped with violence. I just want to say that there is a history of mistreatment and abuse in the black community that largely has had no direction to be, no, no outlet. You know, we were abused, we were mistreated, and then those people were our grandmothers or our mothers, and they just taught us the best way they have found out to survive, you know, their their survival methods. And sometimes that looks like being extra defensive or extra physical when you experience times where the best option you could have taken was to get out of there sooner than to be mistreated and to be, I guess, I guess, stereotyped to be the bad guy or the the the perpetrator. A lot of times in the black community, whether you're the victim or the perpetrator of violence, it's just looked at as like, well, you know, what do you do? That's like it's like boys will be boys, oh, black people will be black people. But I I really hate that stereotype so much because it really just comes from like not so distant past of us being in slavery and then the civil rights movement, you know, voting act, voting rights, and then like just the fear and the feeling like it's always trying to be, always trying to be taken away from us. And you know, it's invisible, invisible in so many ways. But it's just, it's just an unending, it's like a restlessness of like how poorly can they treat us and act like it's still all okay. You know, people will say racism is over, but it really isn't. And and so to look at, you know, black community and say, oh, they're just violent, it's it's it's it's to look at, you know, the microcosm when you should really look at the macrocosm, the big picture of just how where we've come from in our survival methods that are still in use today because, you know, they're learned from our mothers and grandmothers who already went through all that.

SPEAKER_01 27:37

Thank you, Ife. And that really leads us into our next question. A bit of advice for community leaders, educators, organizations, how to better involve young people.

SPEAKER_00 27:50

A bit of advice I have would just be to try to connect with them on their level. I think the biggest problem between elders and young people in the community is that big disconnect. Because on one hand, you have the elders who are used to doing things a very specific certain way, and then you have the young people who it's just it's it's been a norm to do it this way. And I think that that's kind of the biggest thing, just trying to find a way to meet in the middle.

SPEAKER_01 28:17

Thank you so much, Ife and Maya, for your time today and sharing your thoughts on youth leadership, youth engagement, and life-saving ideas to better serve Butte County. Thank you, KZFR, for hosting us. And to you, our listener, thank you for joining us for Black Forward. To learn more about the Black Resiliency Project, please visit blackrp.org. That is B-L-A-C-K RP.org. Once again, B-L-A-C-K RP.org. And until next time, keep moving forward.