1869, Ep. 143 w/ Vajra Watson, Kindra Montgomery-Block, & Patrice Hill on the new book Faith Made Flesh

10:10PM Dec 7, 2023

Speakers:

Jonathan Hall

Vajra Watson

Patrice Hill

Kindra Montgomery-Block

Keywords:

black

community

sacramento

city

vajra

child

campaign

homicides

health

work

happen

book

cornell

solution

legacy

patrice

families

honored

chet

reducing

Welcome to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast. I'm Jonathan Hall. In this episode we speak with editors Vajra Watson and Kindra Montgomery-Block, as well as contributor Patrice Hill, all of whom work together on the new book Faith Made Flesh: The Black Child Legacy Campaign for Transformative Justice and Healthy Futures. Vajra Watson is Senior Associate Vice President and Professor of Education at Sacramento State University. Kindra Montgomery-Block is Vice President of Diversity, Equity, and Social Impact for the Sacramento Kings. And Patrice Hill is a poet, public speaker, youth advocate, host, curator, community based educator and the current director of Sacramento Area Youth Speaks. We spoke to Vajra, Kindra, and Patrice about Sacramento, California's extremely successful and inspiring community-driven initiative, the Black Child Legacy Campaign; how organizers, policymakers, educators, scholars and young people alike work together to strengthen black families, black leadership and black legacies; and how this effective campaign can be a positive and sustainable role model for cities and communities across the country. Hello, Vajra and Patrice, welcome to the podcast.

Thank you so honored to be here.

Well, it's our pleasure, I'm excited to talk to you about the new edited volume that both of you and many others have contributed to called Faith Made Flesh: The Black Child Legacy Campaign for Transformative Justice and Healthy Futures. Tell us how this project came to be.

So many years ago, about a decade ago, there was an initiative in Sacramento to address the disproportionality of death among black babies and black children. And instead of taking a kind of damage centered perspective on it, the community and city council members, philanthropy really got together and said, How can we do racial equity differently in Sacramento? And how can we build solutions that center health. And so that momentum served as a catalyst for the black child legacy campaign, and colleagues and I really had the privilege of documenting that movement that continues until this day,

I would add that there have been organic movements that have transpired around the city to help combat black childhood deaths. But the black child legacy campaign really brought stakeholders from all areas, from education, social services, together with a strategic movement that was funded by the city of Sacramento in the county of Sacramento. So I think it gave it gave the black child legacy not only the community by him, but the financial means to execute a movement of this of this size.

Nice, nice. So you mentioned Sacramento, that's where the program originated. The Black Child Legacy Campaign, tell us the origins of it, and how it has been a success. Tell us the success story of this program.

Yeah, so I mean, there were definite benchmarks in terms of reducing third party homicides, reducing kind of infant mortality rates. And the Black Child Legacy Campaign was actually succeeding on those, you know, set targets years before they were supposed to. And so that is a really interesting question. When we think about social movements and social change and impacts on health. There is a lot of research that studies problems. And so what we started to see in Sacramento, and what got so many of us that are in this book, further invested, is that change was measurable, and that children and youth and families were becoming more healthy, where we're living, not just surviving, but thriving. Originally, there was a framing around like reducing Black death, and it shifted towards really propelling life forward. So you know, I see that Kindra Montgomery-Block is also joining us now, which is really exciting as one of the co-editors and real kind of founders and visionaries of the Black Child Legacy Campaign. So I'm sure she'll have some great insights as well.

Yes, that's great. More people are coming in.

Yes.

There you are.

Hey, everybody.

So yeah, one of the questions that Vajra was answering was some of the successes of the of the Black Child Legacy Campaign. Do you want to add something to that as well as Patrice?

I think, you know, the best thing to me about the Black Child Legacy Campaign is that it really is of community, it lies in the community, it is made up of the best of our community, and then it has sustained that way. And so to me, that is the best part of it. And the opportunity that, you know, so many different things have grown from just those nucleuses, that got a lot stronger in those neighborhoods that needed it the most. Nice, nice.

I'll add that the black child legacy really brought the community together, it really brought this community together in a way where, you know, there's traditional there could be fighting amongst nonprofits around funding and and who gets what the black child legacy campaign I felt neutralized that because everybody was working towards the goal of reducing the deaths of black children. And it made it non competitive, it made it organic, and it made it centered in the health and wellness of black children. And I, I, I've never seen that in any of the work that I've done.

That's amazing. That's amazing. Yeah, like how it was working on issues that are negative, but turn them into a positive, like, how can we make change? Rather than focus on what's wrong? Let's focus on what's right, and how we can make it right. I like that a lot. And what I was reading from the book that it was saying, for the children, the four leading causes of death, where infant sleep related deaths, perinatal conditions, child abuse, and neglect homicides and third party homicides, and that this campaign addressed all of those in a really effective way. What are some lessons that from the success that other cities and communities around the country can learn from the successful campaign?

You know, for me, it I think it emboldened all of us to be unapologetic even more about black kids and their families, and like to wear that badge of honor on our sleeve, so very, very proudly, I couldn't shake, you can't shake us now for any of that. And I tell Vajra, the thing that you should know is that all of us on this panel probably have been working together for the past 15 years. So it's a conglomerate of all of our special skills, attitudes, and knowledge that comes together in one initiative that we all got to be a part of. And so all of us bring a little something special to the box, and we were able to really stand shoulder to shoulder or what we knew to be true. I mean, really prove that in, you know, our own petri dish of Sacramento, and it really bold away.

You know, I'll just add to that question that, you know, every city has a story that can be kind of told through the lens of race and white supremacy, whether you are in Minnesota, whether you are in Detroit, you know, really anywhere that you are in the world, you know, racism has had an impact. And so when I think about the way that this work can be translated to other cities, I think about one City's having a deeper reckoning with their own DNA, when it comes to the ways that we didn't just wake up with disproportionality regarding black health that comes from a series of, of structures and systems that have actually seeded and created these intergenerational divisions. So one is for cities to recognize the systemic role that they have played in disproportionality and then invest differently in who are the solution makers. And so for any city that's grappling with an issue that feels intractable, we really have come to understand that in Sacramento, and I would say elsewhere, it's those that are closest to the problem are also closest to the solution. And that is a different framework in many cases. So the investments happen at a very localized level, as well as trusting folks and families to say this is what's not working for us. And this is what we need, and having the policy respond to that versus the other way around, if that makes sense. And so I think that this, whether or not it's a specific issue around black childhood health, because not every that might not be what it is in an area, you know, on a reservation for it, for instance, but every city has been grappling with the, with the lineage of white supremacy. And this book, I think, in particular, shows a hopeful way out of both addressing that DNA, but not allowing it to define kind of the lineage and destiny of equity work going into the future.

That makes sense. That makes sense. So I love that term that you use solution makers, how does a city how do people figure out who is the solution maker? And and who would do that? Is this, you know, community organizations, educational outlets, or governments? And I guess it's all of the above. But how do we empower solution makers in a community,

You have to be able to kind of do a smell test of sorts. One is that you should know we stand on a lot of people's shoulders on a lot of folks that have poured into myself viaja, all of us, I'm really, really dynamic ways and would be really remiss if I didn't say Chet Hewitt at the Sierra Health Foundation came and got me from Davis, where we all worked at and said, I need you to come over here and help lead a community impact initiative that will reduce the deaths of babies, I just happen to be like, 10 months pregnant at the time, like so pregnant. And this was really when you know, that Badgers, I'm going to save the babies and went to go really, at this, you know, foundation to really think about what is change, impact philanthropy, in the neighborhood, that and the city that I grew up in. And so really an opportunity, when you think about when you get called to the carpet to save your neighborhood, what would you do? Well, you would bring all your best soldiers and all your best warriors in the game that you've ever known since you were coming up. And again, like I said, we work together very, very long time. And so the initiatives that you see in the book, the people that you see in the book, that's not by happenstance, those are the folks that were doing good work before the Black Child Legacy Campaign. And they still do good work right now. And they're still experts in, like I said, their own specific special skill and their knowledge. And so what we were able to do is bring everybody along, and really, you know, pull everybody up to this opportunity. I think Vajra is right, you know, whether you are in a reservation, or you know, the streets of whatever city, you really do have to prioritize if you are thinking about health and well being who among us, has it the worst off? And it just so happens that in Sacramento it's black kids. And we had an opportunity to really help that.

That's great. That's great. Yeah, that you're talking about Chet Hewitt, that I was reading in the book that it was the Sacramento County, the research, showed shocking information in 2011, that since 1990, black children were dying two to three times the rate of other kids, which is insane. It's horrible.

That's not unique to Sacramento or any other city

It's all over the nation, okay, it's good to know, that's not good. So what is good is that you guys figured it out. That's what's amazing, this quote from Chet Hewitt, president of the Sierra Health Foundation. "So between 2014 and 2017, the number of preventable black childhood deaths dropped by 25%. And then in 2018, and 2019, there were no third party homicides, which is unprecedented." So Chet says, "For 28 months, we went without a single homicide for anyone under the age of 18, within the city of Sacramento, that was the first time anyone's ever seen that happen." That is unbelievable. That's amazing. Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

And I would just say that it didn't happen with over policing.

Interesting.

It happened with community care, with strategic investments with critical love. It happened with listening to young people on both sides of the gun, who said we know how to fix this. The level of trust that multiple agencies put into young people into children into families to develop what was needed is part of I think that when you said like, a lifting up the solution, lifting up those that are like really embody the work that are living In both the trauma as well as you know, kind of ways out of it, and through it, I just think has been really instrumental to why you can pull that data, why that data has been so impactful, and where other cities and other you know, philanthropic organizations and funders can look at this particular book and say it to kinders point earlier, to boldly and unapologetically, say, we're willing to kind of go against some status quo practices, and think about health and community safety and much more restorative and transformative ways.

I would also add that this was a collaborative effort. This is what happens when you empower a community and give the community the resources it needs to solve the problems in the community. And that that wouldn't have happened without all the pieces, Sierra Health Foundation, all the community organizations, the educators, the parents, the organizers, Kindra, the researchers visor, my Isha Tory, it was a collaborative. Yeah, a collaborative effort. And this is what happened. The transformation, no homicides for young people under 18, when there was a point of Sacramento, we were waking up every day to a young person being murdered in the streets. So to go that long, without a third party homicide. That's monumental. And that's what happens when you empower a community to take care of itself.

Yeah, I like that. I mean, it's strengthening everyone and strengthening the group. It's not just an individual working out, the whole team is working on it. So strengthening black families, black leadership, black legacies. And so your your book brilliantly brings in all these voices, organizers, academics, policymakers, scholars, young people, and they all tell their story of how their their team effort made this happen and made them strong. What are some recurring, I know, you guys have a lot of stories. What are some of the recurring themes in the stories that are that are featured in the book?

You know, for me, the story that I write about in the book is really about us going to Proctor, which is a conference that's held in the third week of July, every year, it's put on by the Children's Defense Fund. And it really is, you know, kind of that cross between Church and the Black Panther movement. And we had opportunity to go there, you know, multiple summers, and to really run get to be rub elbows with, you know, legends, in civil rights like Marian Edelman, and all those big, big pastors. But the person that always sticks out to me is as a quite a small but mighty white woman, named Reverend Janet Wolf. She's the director of Non-Violence Organizing, but she is the woman that goes into the jails. And make sure that those young men that are in there, and the systems that surround that those young men have a voice. And she brings that back. And she instills that in us. And one of the things that she kept saying to us very early on in the process was one be unapologetic, again for prioritizing the black body because that is the death bounce subject. And if in fact, you all figure out a strategy, to listen to young people and listen to the community and bring in those solutions, you will unbind those systems and those systems will not just help those black kids and those black families but all of the systems. And that really rang true to for us. And I feel like she put that kind of prophetic message out there for us from the beginning. And we just really focused on it. That's why we have such asset based language, you think about the Black Shadow legacy initiative. That's why we really listen to young people and really use social justice, youth development, to bring in their voices in a really critical way. If it wasn't for Reverend woof, we wouldn't have had glory, we wouldn't have had a lot of the other conferences that helped make sure that we were all as a community, speaking the same language, understood the priorities and understood the solutions together. I mean, that really came from the Children's Defense Fund and Janet Wolf and all of those legendary civil rights folks that have been doing this work for so long, and they go to get their souls filled that third week in July and it really did a lot for us as well.

You know, I'm inspired by what you're saying Kindra, and it it makes me think of this concept that folks are talking about where they say what if hope becomes our discipline, because one of the things that occurred in these spaces either And in spaces of collective mourning, was the power of hope, was the power of healing. So Kindra mentioned like the glory conference, or even when there was a violence that erupted in in Sacramento, kind of throughout this time, there would be healing circles created for community to come together. So something was happening around the ways that hope was operationalized, not as kind of this abstract concept, but in a very visceral way, that allowed people to face challenges and actually still dream forward. And, you know, when I think about the legacy of black people in this country, and just the kind of revolutionary democratic principles that black people continue to show other communities. This is yet I think, part of that much, much longer lineage, a radical lineage of amidst so much oppression and despair, still being able to be the torch bearers, and luminaries of tomorrow.

That's great. That's great. So how does your book so we're honored to be published in your book, we're honored to be honored to be spreading this really positive message of hope, and unity, and strength? What's the best way to spread the good news? What how can we how can we empower I mean, the book itself, by reading it, other communities can can feel the solutions coming in their mind and seeing if someone else can do it, I can do it too. But what are some recommendations that you have? For other communities you had mentioned? You know, listening to the youth, and focusing on the solution makers? What are what is to a community, and there are plenty of communities, as you know, that are in tough times, what's what are your thoughts and messages to them?

So a couple of things. First, I also just want to formally acknowledge Cornell University Press, which I probably should have done earlier. And thank just the incredible care that went into this book from the cover to every page, Cornell University Press, really held, really held it and cared for the messaging. And that that makes a difference. So there were many hands, not just us as authors, but at on the Cornell University Press side that again, was like, We can do this if we work, you know, we work together in terms of an example. You know, a lot of government agencies there are there are redundancies, it is important to do a fiscal audit of how things are being spent and Miss bent. An example that I really learned from, with the black child legacy campaign was, instead of relying so heavily on the high cost of like CPS workers and investing in that system, they started doing investments and community cultural workers. Right. So that now it was helping reduce the caseload of some of the CPS workers, but it was also bringing in kind of community based organizers from the neighborhood that knew the families to really be these cultural brokers, intermediaries, that reduced expenses on the CPS side, the child protective services side, and it showed a different level of using money in a way that wasn't punitive, but was actually kind of mending bridges between families, very small example. But I also think it's a really important example. No,

I agree. I would say that when it comes to the proving how to build a social safety net when for all of those health and human services departments, the CIO community incubators became the hub. So you'd be able to walk into the Urban League, and you can see your CPS worker, you help the human services worker, maybe juvenile, you might get some food, you might get a job, you might have a birth and beyond my kind of cultural broker there, you might even have set somewhere in the background, right? Like you can go in and it would be a one stop safety shot for everybody and that improving the social safety net. And using those county fiscal dollars to be in that place, having to work together, share their files together, understand the whole family dynamic together, you serve the whole family better. And for black families. That is phenomenal. And because we had to work with those nonprofits to house all those folks, those nonprofits get smarter fiscally, those nonprofits get are accountable in different ways. And yeah, you know, I agree with the opportunity to really look strategically at how we're building those funding streams. And is there a better way we can serve families together.

And I would add, as Kendra mentioned earlier, the statistics of black children that are mentioned, are not exclusive to Sacramento. This is happening everywhere black children live. And so I think cities can look at this book in the black child legacy campaign as a blueprint for change, how to bring a community together, how to bring a city, a county together, how to have multiple stakeholders to improve the legacy of black children, black children are under attack in this country. And this is a solution that works. And so I hope that other cities could look at this and develop a model of the black child legacy campaign to improve improve life outcomes and legacy for black children.

That's so so good to hear. You had one thing, additional K9ndra,

You know, if I would say that I hope hope people really take from this book is that it is possible to stop preventable African American child deaths, it is absolutely possible to stop gun violence is absolutely possible to stop children from going into the system. This is not some, you know, far off notion. This is stuff we're saying we did it. We did it together, we did it strategically. And we did it with with a lot of knowledge and skill. We have a lot of political acumen that had to go into organizing each other in our communities. And it still goes on today. It is not without saying about understanding your own political background and understanding and having being able to do those types of power analysis when it comes to budgeting and fiscal responsibility. And it's important that we understand how much we had to tap into our own democratic process, to make sure that the money's in the systems that are supposed to serve our children actually do it in a way that benefits us the most. So it's possible it that absolutely possible. It works.

Yeah, it's such, it's such a great story. It's such a powerful story. And you know, the the title itself, Faith Made Flesh, it's great to have faith, it's great to have hope. But if you don't see the result of the hope, or you don't see success, it can turn into despair. But as you have so brilliantly done in this book, hey it is possible, you show that it is possible, we can do this. And by being a role model you inspire others, and to see that there are bright futures for black children. And there's bright futures for black leadership and community and the subtitle Healthy Futures. And it sounds so good. And Sacramento and you guys all have shown that there is a possible way forward. And I think that's amazing. So I want to thank you all for writing this project and bringing it to light, we're really proud to be publishing it. And we're gonna try to spread this message as far around the world as we can to get this message out there and bring hope to other communities. So want to thank you so much.

Thank you for having us. I would love just to read the dedication, just as a as a closing. So to close with the first page, just because a lot of intentionality went into it in terms of seeing this work is bigger than us, bigger than Sacramento. So we write for our parents, our children and our grandchildren who have yet to be born. May the lineage of liberation, guide your steps and carry you forward. Always remember the land you walk upon, and honor those who across time and space, nurture the pathway home. So this book is is bringing all of us home in a lot of different ways, and also calling us into the future. So we really appreciate Cornell for helping, you know, create this moment and help carry these authors much wider than just the Sacramento region. And we look forward to the global implications of this work.

I'm here we're honored. We're very honored. Thank you so much for taking the time to join us. And again, thank you for writing this amazing book.

Thank you, Jonathan. And thank you to your colleagues at Cornell and thank you to everyone that participated in the Black Child Legacy Campaign.

That was editor Vajra Watson, Kindra Montgomery-Block, and contributor Patrice Hill, all of whom work together on the new book,Faith Made Flesh: The Black Child Legacy Campaign for Transformative Justice and Healthy Futures. You can purchase their new book as an affordable paperback or ebook at our website, Cornell press.cornell.edu and use the promo code 09POD to save 30% off. If you live in the UK, use the discount code CSANNOUNCE and visit the website combinedacademic.co.uk Thank you for listening to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast