Welcome back to another edition of Audio Nuggets, here in the cypher.  We are honored to welcome Derrick Stephens for Episode 12: Underdog Dreaming Liberation.

Come find out for yourself who Derrick is and how he does justice.

Derrick brings his uniqueness and dreaming to the cypher. This conversation unpacks the shoulders to stand on and obligations of Black bodies of this generation to “get into a lot of good trouble,” acknowledging that planting seeds for tomorrow requires liberation.  Derrick reveals that from a young age, he was always dreaming of freedom and liberation. 

To Derrick, liberation is freedom for his family to live life in a way that is enjoyable.  Free to dream.  Free to question. Free to be our authentic self.  By not creating unnecessary adversarial relationships, Derrick is on the healing journey by showing up, sacrifice, giving love, loving oneself, and making hard boundaries.

Derrick leaves the audience with ideas that start with SELF to grapple with. What is my identity? What are my behaviors? What really matters in life? 

You can learn more about Derrick and justice doing at www.underdogdreams.org.

Till next time…

Audio Nuggets welcomes Takkeem Morgan to the cypher for Episode 11: Families As Architects For Change.

Takkeem Morgan is a nationally recognized leader driving systems change in child welfare, working across technology, service delivery, research, and data to improve outcomes for children and families. He has a proven track record of mobilizing cross-sector partnerships and utilizing his own experiences to drive effective innovation at the local and state levels to solve both entrenched and emergent challenges.

In this conversation, Takkeem shares and unpacks his value with our listeners around people who are closest to the pain ought to be the architects of all the solutions. Families have the data, and they have better and less expensive ideas on how to spend government resources to help communities in a meaningful and impactful way.

Takkeem outlines what he identifies to be the three major challenges faced by current child welfare; the great awakening around the family policing of Black families experiencing poverty, a moral deficit among the child welfare workforce, and a nationwide shortage of foster homes capable of providing therapeutic care for the children that are in them. Takkeem is clear in his vision that his work and influence acutely focus on the first and third challenge.  The conversation also confronts the challenges and opportunities of the TFSC project.

Sit back and absorb the activation! Do you believe in yourself? Can you alone make the change possible? Are you healthy? Grapple with these questions good listeners.  Until next time.

Welcome to the Mining For Gold cypher for this explosive, special Black History Month 2023 edition of Audio Nuggets.  23 commemorates the 47th year that February is designated as Black History Month.  In honor, we gather in this sacred space for Episode 10: Truth-Telling Is Justice Doing.  And we are here to be guided by the truth.  

The cypher is graced with the ONE and ONLY Joyce McMillan, of JMACForFamilies. Joyce McMillan s a thought leader, advocate, activist, community organizer, and educator. Her life’s work is to build a net that works to ensure that our punitive, interconnected systems of oppression are extracted from human ecology. JMACforFamilies is widely known for their humanity. This humanity has shape-shifted the way we hold conversations about family policing. Her vision is felt through action. 

Joyce embodies justice, humanity and belonging in her life’s mission for abolition of the family policing system, educating the listeners that abolition is the removal of the parts of the system that are harmful, destructive, and creating outcomes that are horrific for Black families. Joyce’s body of work in relationship with her community and with parents recognizes power by ascribing power to those most impacted by government intrusion and surveillance. 

We invite you to sit back, open your heart and mind, and immerse yourself in the conversation. This episode is a tribute from MFG to all that are “justice-doing” alongside Joyce. And a deep appreciation for their ability to fearlessly organize to become a movement that is unstoppable and unmatched. MFG is honored to be in a right and accountable relationship with such fascinating humans. 

WELCOME TO AUDIO NUGGETS IN 2023. The Liberated Voice Exchange is a Mining For Gold cypher, where we are expressive, independent and a bit impatient as we struggle for even a taste of justice. The edges of society exist for protection for some, simultaneously evoking expression. Here is where you will find a symbiotic force; both the heaviness of the air to breathe and the light of freedom of liberation. The longing for connection ceases to exist, because we ARE the community.

Audio Nuggets ushers in ’23 with special guest, Ivory Bennett.
Through love, Ivory is reclaiming her voice and right to speak. Her right to full humanity. Her right to heal, practice empathy, and engage in the healing process for herself, so that she can then show up for the collective mission of justice as the throughline.

During this episode, Ivory and MFG revisit their partnership in writing the introduction to NACC’s 4th Edition Red Book, which ultimately was an opportunity to insight change on an individual level. MFG and Ivory hold a set of credentials that remarkably qualify them to critique, love, and stand for justice.

The conversation succeeds in deepening the frame, illustrating the connection that justice-centered practice is self-work first; relationship work first. It is only then that we can embark on a laboratory journey where empathy is the pathway to healing.

In our final episode for 2022, Audio Nuggets is overjoyed that Angela Olivia Burton joins the cypher as the anchor, in Episode 8, “Organizing For Black Family Justice”. Angela Olivia Burton is a Black woman and a child of the 1960s who was raised by her maternal Grandmother and a host of Aunties in the villages of Meridian, Mississippi and Brooklyn, New York.

A lawyer and former law professor, Angela has spent many years teaching, researching, writing, and speaking about the Black family experience with the family policing/family regulation system, and has spent the last ten years as a public servant in New York State government working to improve the quality of legal representation for parents targeted by the system. Her personal liberation journey and using her power, influence, and liberated voice, is the core of her work, as she leverages these experiences to elevate the voices of Black parents, who are fighting to protect their families from unwarranted government intrusion and destruction of their families.

In this conversation, we turn our attention to CAPTA. Angela educates the audience that “CPS lives here- so we must begin here.” Dissecting the history of the law written in 1974, which was written for reporting, investigating, prosecuting, and the treatment of alleged child abuse and neglect; this law criminalizes parents. So much so, that the government feels they must intrude. Angela unpacks for the audience her experience in the organizing movement of bringing the condition of Black families in the U.S. to the international stage in Geneva Switzerland at the United Nations, and the mission of repealing racist policies such as CAPTA and ASFA.

Angela is bold in her message to the audience that her view and approach to dismantling and rebuilding a violent and destructive system calls for reoperations; the repairing and reconciliation to heal Black children and families, that dates back to slavery and is continuing on today.

Angela leaves us with her wisdom that there is no time to waste, and time is of the essence. The evidence is in; the family policing system is a racist system that has the most harsh impact on Black children and Black families, and she is not going to argue with anyone about it. What we need to be talking about is ENDING IT and REPAIRING the damage. Being Black is AMAZING!

Twitter: @SankofaRose
Instagram: sankofarose
Email: jd2u_98@yahoo.com

Audio Nuggets welcomes Shrounda Selivanoff to the cypher, in this episode titled “Family Is Not Important, It’s Everything.” Shrounda is a Mother, a Grandmother, a family justice warrior and a longtime friend, and partner of Mining For Gold in the quest for racial justice, belonging, and liberation.

In this episode, Shrounda shares her humanity in describing the impact that the coercive nature of the violent family policing system has had on her family’s life. In this conversation, Shrounda shares that one coercive tactic of the family policing system’s goal is to erase family history, and ultimately extinguish hope for parents.

We examine and ask why this violent system tears children apart from blood lines, and family. In her activism for change,  Shrounda spearheaded House Bill 1747: “Keeping Families Together” in Washington state, which would encourage guardianships over termination of parental rights when possible. This proposed legislation comes from the Keeping Families Together Coalition (KFTC). According to the Keeping Families Together: HB 1747 Black and Brown families are especially vulnerable — in Washington, Indigenous children are 2.7 times more likely and Black children are 2.4 times more likely than white children to experience the termination of both parents’ rights.

Shrounda reminds the audience to always remain hopeful, filled with integrity, and to always center the conversation in family.  She is waiting, watching, and is activated as we are constantly building our legacy. How are you going to live in your power and write your page in history?