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Disturbing Inequity with Abiola Agoro | Otter.ai

Disturbing Inequity with Abiola Agoro

Amber Watkins53min

Unknown Speaker

00:00

Music.

Megan Speciale, PhD

00:09

Hello and welcome to the thoughtful counselor, a podcast dedicated to bringing you innovative and evidence based counseling and mental health content designed to enhance your life, whether you're a clinician, supervisor, educator, or a person wanting to learn more about the counseling process. We are here to demystify mental health through conversations with a wide range of counseling professional powerhouses. In each episode, you'll learn about current issues in the field, new science and real life lessons learned from the therapy room. Thank you for joining us on our journey through the wide world of counseling. There's a lot to explore here, so sit back, take a deep breath, and let's get started.

Desa Daniel

00:54

All right. Hi everyone. Welcome back to the thoughtful counselor podcast. I am super, super excited to have Abiola with me today, talking about their work, their life, what they're excited about. We have a lot to cover, so I'm just going to kick it straight over. So tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and like maybe what you're currently excited about.

Speaker 1

01:18

So my name is Abiola ogoro. I am an online educator, a fashion designer. I do strategy communications work, and like other types of visual arts, I think for me, what I always like to make very present is that I like to divide my work into those three areas of being able to talk to things from an artistic level, from a strategy perspective, whatever that may be. And from that educator or racial justice lens, I'm 26 I feel like people always are, you know, more in tune now with like, talking about age and what that looks like when it comes to expectations and unrealistic expectations, etc, etc. Born and raised in Fort Worth Texas, so from a very rural area, I have lived all over. I moved back home with my parents last year in January because I wanted to start this nonprofit and really be able to do this work from a purposeful ground up level, after having a lot of very negative, problematic experiences with mentors and in general, people in the professional, so called realm disturbing inequity is my nonprofit. So I I love it, because I actually submitted the paperwork for in 2021 and the goal was at the time period to really do something that discusses disturbing inequities that exist, while also being able to disturb those inequities. So it was, like the cheesiest thing. I spent, like, a month and a half typing up names, and I was sitting there like, oh, it has to be perfect, because, you know, I'm an ADHD er, and unfortunately, that need for something that's really unique and flexible, on top of the need for something that is really useful and cute and compact and describes the work really easily with something that was really important to me. So when we started it, the initial was like conversation was, how do you kill a system while saving the people? And that became my slogan when I was building it up, because I realized a lot of the work that people do is trying to build upon a system. It's really focused on maintaining that system, and I realized people don't understand that. They have to prioritize actually destroying a system in order to save those people. You can still have maybe certain aspects of the groundwork, you know, whatever that may be. I could use a whole bunch of different examples where people understand, but at the end of the day, you have to get rid of what's harming the people, if you actually want to save them, it's not helpful to just try and save them without being able to destroy that underlying route. So that was a really big foundational part of doing this. And like I said, after a whole lot of just unhelpful professional experiences, I was like, I'd rather have nothing and start on this journey by myself. And, like, start over. And, you know, do like, the embarrassing thing, which isn't really embarrassing to me, to be able to follow that purpose of work. And then it turned to online content creation, because I've always done the things I've done. I've been teaching classes since I was, like, maybe 12, on different topics to people. And then I started doing live videos during the initiation of the pandemic, the first forthcoming part of the pandemic, and being able to give people like the opportunity to learn about what was going on around them from a very deconstructed perspective. And after I came back home, I was like, I am trying to figure this out. And my older brother looked at me, and he was like, you have a camera. You do professional videography photography, go sit in your yard and record a video and talk about something. And I was like, Okay. And then it became my DSR series. That's a miniature version of the classes, but I had been teaching forever, so that's that's kind of like the story of how I got here, of course, abbreviated because from a mental health perspective, like I said before, I have ADHD right officially diagnosed. I have some. Slightly diagnosed autism, because working with, like the psychiatrist I've been working with over the last couple of years to shift my mental health work has been very odd. They just all have very different opinions. And one of them was like, it's autism, but I need for an autism like psychiatrist to diagnose it. And I was like, Why can't you? But you know, my therapist was like, Yeah, this is exactly autism. So I count myself as an ADHD er because of, like, the autistic burnout that I ended up experiencing that aligned with that a couple years back. Well now a couple of years back, but as somebody who, like, was hospitalized for suicide ideation when I was 17, as somebody who does a lot of like, very open mental health work as somebody who has a service animal that I sometimes take with me, sometimes I don't, depending on how my physical and mental health work, it really is important to me to be able to continually push those boundaries and align that with the racial justice work. So people do know I get harassed in places because I'm black with a service animal. So you have two levels of that. It's not just the harassment of, you know, one disability, but it's the harassment of something that shouldn't be a disability, but unfortunately, sometimes can act like a a blow to your ability to stand on two legs when it comes to certain things. So I feel like I kind of got off track there, but I'm going to stop

Desa Daniel

06:17

there. No, that was excellent and all of the questions I had for you, you covered just so eloquently, especially thinking about like this double identity disability of like, not just the mental health part, but then also realizing like of being black in America always tends to be a completely different level, especially when we Think about intersection with gender, right? And like, moving around and starting a business and all of these different aspects of it. And I'm really excited you talked about, like, your chair series, because I think that's like, how I found you, um, and I just like, I don't know your brother, but like, tugs to him, shout to him for, like,

Speaker 2

07:02

doing because I think it's, it's such a simple concept that's

Desa Daniel

07:09

also, like, so powerful, because it's just like you and frame couple of dogs walking around. You're like, chilling there, but you're you really make the information not just like, educational, but also digestible. And I think too often as someone in academia, that's one of our terrible traits of like, making things so complicated that it loses its meaning. And so like, how many years have you been doing that? I know you said you taught before, but like, as that has transformed. What keeps you coming back to, like this chair form, like quick to the camera. And I know it's not easy, because I'm sure there's lots of takes in there, but like, what brought you to bring that content to, like, 1000s of folks?

Speaker 1

07:58

Yeah, thank you. So I think I have like, a two part, maybe multi part answer to that. So I'll start first by saying I recently, literally, like this week, just started my master's program. So it's a Master of Arts in religion and public leadership, which is, you know, kind of like an interesting theological perspective for me, because I come from so many different backgrounds in terms of, like, spirituality and the people I surround myself with, but for the application, part of what I talked about in it was I realized I technically didn't become I think everybody's a teacher, whether or not we want to call ourselves teachers, everybody teaches somebody something. So everybody is a teacher, but not everybody's an educator. And I think that's the difference in actually being able to intentionally form information, intentionally being able to create something and be able to pass it on to an audience, and that you don't have to be good at it to be an educator. I want to make that also very clear, because you can be a bad educator, right? Like you can do all of those things, but I was always a teacher because, at the very least, because, growing up as a rural like black girl who's dark skinned, you know, I've got a Nigerian father and mother from South Central LA who, you know, my dad was a doctor. So it was a lot of these different intersecting identities that put me in a position to be, like, financially privileged but racially disadvantaged. So you're going through, like, fancier places, being severely mistreated without having while having that privilege of, like, being in a financially higher situation when I was growing up, while then on top of that, still having to deal with the racism that shouldn't have existed. And unfortunately, when I was like a little black girl in private schools, I ended up having to be a teacher because people would do things that were so ill informed, they would say things, they would express things, and often I would know more on certain topics than most of my teachers. So I really wasn't I either wasn't learning because the teacher was wrong or I wasn't learning because the teacher was racist. Four wasn't learning because the students were racist, and sometimes it was all three. And at some point, I eventually just started, like, going like this in class, and being like, what you just said wasn't right. And then I got in trouble, you know. And while we would be out, like, on the playground, somebody would say something like, Hey, like, I'm gonna, you know, call you this racist word. And I'd be like, hey, that racist word actually is really bad, and I'd walk them through it. And as I got older, especially when I got to middle school, it got worse to the point where, when people were talking about slavery, growing up in Texas, like I was right at the cusp of when they started changing the word slavery to indentured servitude in certain history books. And so like during one class with a teacher. I don't even remember her name, but she loved John Wayne, which was, like a big telltale mark of just who she is as a person. She got up and she said something that was just really wrong. And I was like, ma'am, that's not how slavery worked, like this and this and this. I got sent out of the class. And at that time period, I think it's really whenever it became an intentional thing to me slightly to start building up and getting better at being able to break things down, because I've always been somebody that works with people at all levels. You know, I really don't believe in a lot of like, the snootiness that people have, especially in academia. There could be a really beautiful side of like, people wanting to learn, but then there's that side where people get mad if somebody ask a question. And I started realizing really early on, like people may ask you why and have ill intentions, or they have intentions of really wanting to learn. I learned how to respond to the ill intentions with fasci Clap backs. So, like, people would ask me why my hair grew that way, and they really didn't mean it positively. And I would tell them it was magic, and then it came from the stars. And you know, when a teacher asked me, Did I grow new hair overnight when I got braids, I told her yes, and then she just couldn't respond, because you're just going to look stupid. But then on the other side, where people would be like, hey, like, why are people black? I'd be like, I actually, really would love to explain this to you. Like, let's walk through it. And over time, I have worked with a lot of different groups of people that have been comfortable asking me why I still get it on my videos, where somebody will say, but why on this and somebody else will comment be like, like, look it up yourself. And I'm like, no, no, I'm okay with that. That's that's why I'm here. Because why is the question that I think the more you ask it, the better you get to something. So circling it back around to the conclusion, when I was in high school, I ended up being on the debate team, and I ended up doing this thing called extemporaneous speech, and it's one of my favorite things in the entire world. How it works for I mean, if people don't know is you basically are given a topic. You can bring a bucket, like one container, of research on random things. You end up going into a drawing. They give you a topic, and you have, like, 10 minutes to make, like, a three minute speech on it, and you have to have at least three like statistics in relation to it. And a lot of times, my team would have papers and things that weren't really helpful or relevant because the coach just did not do it, and nobody else was in it, except for me. So I was the only competitor from my school that would engage in it. And I just always would want to know too many things. So I was able to, like, end up becoming the Regional Champion, and so on and so forth. And it gave me, it took a lot of my skills already had, and it was able to sharpen them to where I already have a lot of stuff in my brain just all the time, but it gave me the ability to really express things quickly. So some videos are one take. Some videos are three takes. Typically, if I have to do something two or three times I just turn off the camera and leave because I think that's whenever I need to know that, like, it's probably not going to be how I want it to be, and I need to make sure that I can't overthink it. So if I do many takes, I overthink it, but I spend, like, a few hours looking up stuff for each video or just reaffirming my information, and then to tie that off. Like, the last part is I was telling my older brother when all this was starting to happen when I moved back home, happen, when I moved back home, he was like, You need to build a social media presence. You do all this work in person. I've helped organize, like, one of the march on Washington's. I helped organize, like, international campaigns, but I did them underneath companies and people that did not really believe in putting anybody else forward, not even in terms of a level of like, hey, like, I want to show you off. I want you to get, like, summer fancy award. But just saying, Hey, these are all the people that helped me do this. So I didn't get any credit for it. And with that, I didn't get to put it on a resume, because it was hard to verify whenever, you know, I wrote a speech for one of the King children, I don't really know how to verify that other the fact that I have Google Docs and I can show you the process rewriting the speech, but he was like, You need to transform that into something online. So I was like, Okay, I don't have anywhere to record. This house is loud. We have seven dogs here. I think at the time when I came home, we had nine. So he was like, go to the yard. I was like, you know, you're right, it's pretty. I love sitting in the yard. I've always sat outside. And I was like, if the dogs are gonna do things. He was like, just let them do things. That's what we came out was, was, you know, somebody, they commented like, this is really distracting for me. Can you not have the dogs? And I was like, I have seven dogs in this house. I'm not going to regulate them if I don't bring them outside. When I go outside, they're very unhappy in the house. They bark and make my parents mad and, like, they make me laugh. It makes it to where when I. Talk about hard topics, I get to look down at one of them and, you know, like, be able to chuckle. And people don't even see sometimes in the background, they'll just, like, sprint back and forth on the other side of the camera, and I have to try very hard to not look at them. But I think that's where it all came down from, is being somebody who was forced to explain myself. I had to be a teacher, but I think I was able to become an educator, and being able to do that in a environment where I can be outdoors, which is just one of my favorite things in the world, and like, incorporate something that works for me and other people. Being able to have like that multi like, attentive level of being able to learn and have something that's like a miniature distraction, worked really well for me. So that's the end of my long

Desa Daniel

15:40

like that was just so like, it just covered so much. And so first one of good like, congratulations on your getting into a master's program that's excellent. So excited to see you in even more spaces. And you said something that I think just stood out to me, and like, gave me goosebumps a little bit. He said, everyone is a teacher, but not everyone is an educator. And when I see your videos and see people comment stuff like that, like, Oh, these dogs, whatever, I just keep telling myself and thinking like, oh, this content isn't for you. Like, this is content for people who need it the most, right? Like, like, and I think that's what makes your gift, and not just a talent, but just like how easy it flows, especially around mental health. And I kind of want to touch base with the video I saw this week with what's happening in Georgia. And really, at this point, we could just say, like school shooting, Colorado, Georgia, Florida, like the United States, like we don't need to just pinpoint one kind of area. And I was curious, like, what brought you to having that conversation, but really focused on the information you gave of, like, the conversation around gun violence and mental health, is it necessarily the conversation we should be having? This is actually what we should be talking about.

Speaker 1

17:07

Yeah, I think the actual conversation we should be having is the way that, like, regulations are not applied to certain demographics of people and the waste of resources. And that was what I'm hoping to cover in the next video. But I want to make sure I have all my numbers. Like, I tend to, like, quadruple check numbers. It's like a whole thing. But I wish we were focusing more on the fact that it's not just because, like, the FBI is not being able to see these people, but they're spending so much money regulating other groups of people and over policing other groups of people that the resources they have are being wasted and they're not actually being applied. And on top of that, they still are not actually, like looking at the communities are committing this, because they have some of those own internal biases, which I think five high heme. I've actually, never actually looked at how to pronounce their name, but you know what I'm talking about with the number 5h, A, H, E, I m, they talked about, like, how this isn't a mental health issue, but it's a mental health issue. And I thought that was really beautiful, and the dynamics of talking about the fact that we can push it back to like epigenetics and like cultural structures. But the important part to me was, every single time these things happen, everybody is like, mental illness, mental health, and I'm like, Okay, I've been suicidal multiple times in my life, you know, I unfortunately, know too many people that have also been suicidal multiple times in their life, and their instinct is typically to go hide in the corner, you know, like, try not to hurt other people, right? Like, statistically, they've stopped multiple suicides based on telling people, like, if you jump off of this thing, you're going to hit other people on the way down, and the people have literally stopped because they thought they were going to hurt other people in the process. And so I realized as soon as I saw like, you know, even from like the Biden Harris administration, especially from like the Trump administration, I saw multiple things like, this is a thick, deranged monster. And I was like, No, this is just like a young white child that unfortunately, has been indoctrinated into more, like white supremacy, whose parents also contributed to this through, not only, like, a systematic issue of having a mother who was a drug user who did not ever get help, and having a father who, again, like, reinforces all this, like patriarchal like, you know, masculinity, and now somebody who's a kid who didn't have to turn out this way is now in a situation to where it's going to take a lot, if it's possible, for him to have a full life and being able to disengage in this own ideology in and of himself. So mental health has to be talked about. Because when I but one of the numbers up of, like, you know, most of these people actually would have passed a background check even they were like, That's not true. Like, you know, this many shooters are found to have mental illness. And I was like, No. 40% of shooters have had the word mental illness in their media coverage, but most of them would not have actually been denied a gun because they don't consider, like, this obsession with, you know, indoctrination. They don't consider this obsession. With white nationalism a mental illness. And I wouldn't call them mental illness. I know that's an entire debate amongst, like, all the mental health community, but regardless, it's not called a mental illness. Even if it's not a mental illness, they're not going to categorize it as that. You know, when they say, oh, like, whenever I did all the FBI research, initially, there were a lot of comparisons and talking about the fact that they realized that white nationalism was more likely to cause a large scale terror event than like Islam, and they put jihadism, which, you know, but they even in their own biased research, they had to show that, like people that are Muslim are not committing more crimes than people that are, you know, engaging in white supremacy and white nationalism, because that's the bigger problem. And I mean, statistically, we know the numbers are really low for any of that, and it's overblown, but that though all those things were in mind when I was looking at this. And I think the last part is numbers get very deeply abused. Evan the bioethicist, I always love because their thesis in their master's program was disinformation as a threat to public health. And I'm somebody who loves talking about both misinformation and disinformation. And every time I talk about something, people are like, I need you to back it up, which I'm not necessarily mad about in most cases, because I'm somebody who, like, I grew up reading research articles for fun. I found out how to hack into J store, and I've never been happier since, you know, it's not like a normal level of excitement, because, like, 18 printing off, like, research articles on on affluence. What is it? I always forget what it's called, but where they have somebody who is too affluent, so because they grew up too rich, they can't be held accountable for their actions. I did, like, one of my entire senior essays on that project, and they were like, you don't want to talk about something else. I was like, No, I want to talk about this. So I'm somebody who loves numbers I love, like, being able to look at things from a contextual life standpoint. And so I was like, okay, the FBI is own reports show how bad this is, and if they've publicized this, it's even worse. So I think all those things are really important. And like I said, the next video, I want to be able to actually show I can only find so much because there is a large amount of it that's redacted, but show what the funding has gone towards, and like, who is being monitored with the funding that they're given by the government, instead of actually using it to go through and, like, create a better system that makes it standardized for background checks to be seen nationally, and all of those things.

Desa Daniel

22:17

Yeah, it's such a powerful reminder, because it's, it's almost like we're always talking about mental health without actually talking about mental health, right? Like, it's always like, if we address the mental health, it would be better, right? Like, quote, unquote, better. And as someone who's like, in this profession, we see it, especially at like, school counseling level, where folks are like, oh, like, what are the school counselors doing? And you're just like, well, you're at you, like, defunded them 10 years ago, like you said that, like, school should be separate in all of these weird ways. And so it's, I think, frustrating for me as not just a clinician, but also as an educator who is trying to train master students to understand how to work in these systems, while also acknowledging that we can't change the system, right? Like, it's like, how do we change a system when we're still actively teaching for the test? Because they still need to get licensed, right? Like, we have all of these, like, oversight in these weird ways. And so I really do appreciate you talking about that. And something else that came up that you were sharing about, like, suicidality is, like, too often a very like white dominated narrative is like, Oh, we shouldn't talk about suicidality, because then it will make people suicidal. And I think what you shared was just like, perfect of just like, like, just because we don't talk about sex doesn't mean people aren't having sex like we when are we going to let this concept go And so bringing in the numbers and just highlighting how important it is to follow the money, but then also to like, really be just incredibly raw and vulnerable with ourselves about what we're funding, and that, like, whether we mean to or not, we're still fully paying for the system. Like, even if I don't think we should do that, I'm still complicit in different ways, and like, how I show up in that same system.

Speaker 1

24:17

Yeah, I 100% agree. I think that's, like, a big part of being able to move forward is, you know, allowing for people to see how important these things are. Like, you know, one of the things that I also talked about in, like, the video that you mentioned, the other video about, like, the education system, I actually have to go testify at City Hall tomorrow in my city because of the fact that, like, an officer shot at a person after being in a car accident while he was off duty, but the police department won't release any information, like the people found out about it because people that live nearby, they won't say if the person's dead or alive. There's just, like, there's a lot of unnecessary, you know, cloudiness going on around it, but that connects really. Deeply to the way that the education system is run in Texas. And in Texas, like the education system has always, always had funding deficits where they shouldn't have them. So as soon as I heard like, you know, there were this, this narrative, people were like, this student, like, caused this teacher to lose their eye, I was like, okay, it feels like there's more to this story. I'm not saying students can't be bad, but these are kids, right? And it took me forever to even find out that the boy was 11. It took me, like, maybe 12 articles to see an age, and I was like, He's 11, which means either something is severely wrong with him or something is severely wrong with the situation, and regardless, it needs to be fixed. Either the situation is bad or the kid has something going on in him that is making him act in a way that is, you know, unacceptable to also understandable for a kid. And then I dug deeper, and I was like, he threw a hanger. He didn't touch anybody, right? So that says that he's not at a place that is irreversible because he was throwing things at everybody nearby, just trying to get what seems like some personal space. No counselors were involved in the entire situation. And, like, I try to keep up with budgets a lot. It's part of the reason why I've been emphasizing for people to vote locally. Because the national elections have just become really, like, easily weaponized, especially from, you know, ask somebody that's on, like the progressive the left side to come very heavily weaponized by that. And I have way too many people on my social media platforms who have told me they were just not going to go vote at this point, until I told them, like, your school boards matter a lot. Walk into the voting booth, do everything for state and down and leave if you have to. I would much rather have that than have people's school boards collapse this election. And I when I started making that video that was on my mind, and I sent it to some other people that were in the state to say, hey, like they're they're defunding your counseling services

Desa Daniel

26:45

that, like just always catches me off guard, right? Is it just like voting is free, right now? Right? Like how we vote, what we do with our vote really, actually matters, and when we don't use it is when we're just, like, telling folks we don't care, right? And so like, as someone who, like, doesn't have kids, I like, just me and my dog are chilling. I vote if my school board election, and I do a lot of research looking it up, because I think, right? Like, how the school functions and runs dictates how my community functions and runs. And so if you just, like, if you care at all about systems and community, and like, rebuilding community and like, putting time into community voting is often the easiest way to, like, reaffirm the work that we're doing in our everyday lives, to make sure that we're bringing other folks who say they're also going to be committed to that work

Speaker 1

27:44

at a local level, most definitely. And I think that that's the problem with the way we currently look at elections. Is people see right, like, when Hillary Clinton won the popular vote, but, like, lost the electoral vote, they were like, okay, so what was the point of voting? And so the federal systems, unfortunately, can be so deeply wrapped up to where voting still matters, but at the same time, like National organizing can be so much more important on a federal level. But I've been trying to reaffirm people like locally, like those school board elections, those things are so tight, and for the most part, there's not going to be like, you know, there's not going to be voter fraud, or there aren't going to be people necessarily messing with localized polling stations for local elections. Most of the time they're trying to do that for like, state elections. They're trying to intimidate for the higher elections. But like, those local elections and like, it comes down to like, five votes, a lot of the times, like, it's very close. So I've been trying to reaffirm exactly that of like, you know, it's part of the reason why this, this kid, just got, like, stuck on my mind, because I was because I was trying to not read it. Sometimes I see things and I'm like, let it go. Other people can handle that. You can't do everything. Also, like, girl, you mentally ill too. Let it go. Like, but I thought in the car ride home, it was our car ride, and I was like, Yeah, I can't let this go. I can't let it go. But part of the reason also was because I wanted for folks to see, like, those little funding differences, they make such a big difference. And even if you don't have kids, even if you don't care, like, if that kid is disciplined in a way that is like intense and harsh, and he ends up becoming, you know, an 18 year old that's furious, he ends up becoming like a part of very harmful side of society, because all he has had were the resources that were meant to help him be weaponized to harm him. He's going to end up being out in your community, and you don't know what that's going to start he might be somebody that goes and shoots up a gas station because he feels like it right, like he might be a kid that turns into an adult that is like robbing his elders for fun, because unfortunately, the funding that could have made a massive difference wasn't used properly, like kids spend most of the developmental years in school. So if their school system is not taking care of them, they're spending time in a place that's causing them harm, and it's seeping in violence through. A systematic level. So I always, I always tell folks exactly what you just said. Like, it doesn't matter if you don't have kids, it doesn't matter if you don't need certain food programs. It doesn't matter because if the people around you need them and you make sure they have them, you're going to have an easier time living yourself. It's like, part of the reason why, when I've had random black folks like stop me on the street and be like, Why should I care about Palestine. I'm like, okay, don't care about Palestine, sure. But guess what? There are billions of dollars going there that could have been used towards something you need. So you don't have to care about Palestine. Right to care about Palestine, because even if you just care about, like, self preservation, for whatever reason, even though that's not how self preservation works, that money could have been used to do a lot of good for you. Like, I told people, that's your reparations money, and then I saw whole facial expressions change. I was like, that's your reparations money, and they're just using it to, like, give bombs to somebody. I think, you know, being able to help people understand, like, it doesn't affect you, but it affects you, and so we have to, like, really circulate around to that. So I'm so glad you brought that up.

Desa Daniel

30:59

Yeah, it's such a like, just such a critical reminder of, like, the things that you're probably complaining about the most are, like, directly tied back into your community, right? So I live in Denver, Colorado currently, and they've been on this campaign to switch out all of the lead city pipes. We all know why? Fine. And I had a very just like normal day where I was just like, the traffic is like, killing me, right? Like, I was just like, Please, God. And you can hear me, like, I just need to, like, be home right now. Um, and then, like, I had to stop and be like, wait, I need clean drinking water, like, I need these lead pipes six blocks from my house to be switched out, right? And so it's like, I need to give these, like, construction workers a break, because they're actually, like, making our city better, right? And I think too often we get stuck in like, our little bubble, and we're just like, oh, like, this can't impact me, because maybe I don't have the bandwidth to think about it. But like, the small decisions you're making to that always gives positivity back to your community, or, like, reshores your community's resources are things you don't have to worry about in the future, right? Like, I never I'm concerned about how great my grocery store is because, like, of my of how our neighborhood is set up. But like, if I don't keep pouring back into my schools or into my community, those resources will be gone with the quickness.

Speaker 2

32:34

And then lots of folks are like, Oh, maybe they'll bring it back. Like, what? Like,

Desa Daniel

32:40

these are not these are not things we can fix. It's always significantly harder to try to fix something retroactively when we could actually just show politicians, show community, show systems that we care about it right now, so we don't want them to remove it or, like, take it away from us.

Speaker 1

32:57

Yeah, 100% like, I love it so much. I wish folks understood more that it's not even about, like, empathy. It's it's not even about self self preservation. It's like, about, like, Community Preservation, maybe, like, it's so many things on so many levels.

Desa Daniel

33:16

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So as you're talking, I was thinking about, and I know I said on Instagram it was, I think I called it Don mageddon, when, like, your dog was yelling at a frog, and like, I was impressed by how many people were upset about this, and Mostly because I obviously don't have the same fiery passion as some of our Instagram colleagues, but as you're talking right, and you're talking about your own mental health, you're talking earlier about autism, burnout and like all of these experiences you had with, like suicidality and like still pushing through and bringing content and bringing education to folks, how do you manage all of the hate while still like staying focused on the dismantling of white supremacy? Um,

Speaker 1

34:13

so I feel like dogs are obviously, like just a big part of that, just because I just love them, and I it sounds absolutely ridiculous, but I think when you consistently have other things that depend on you, right, like, you can see how that happens, not even just with kids. But I think dogs are lighter than kids in a sense, because they're a little bit more comical, in my opinion. And so when you have like, this thing that's looking up at you, like, if you don't do really well. I think you can't put them in a better situation, just like, from like, a little like, odd perspective, I think even more so, I'm kind of a professional trauma handler in a sense of, unfortunately, I have dealt with a lot of persistent racism, right? Because, like I said, Before, I was born in. Is, you know, in rural Texas, right? Like, we didn't have paved roads nearby for the first, like, few years of life, when I was born, and there are still areas within, like, a 10 minute drive that still don't have paved roads for absolutely no reason. You couldn't get food delivered to here, like you can't get most services delivered to here. I think we just started being able to have DoorDash, and I was very shocked that we had it this year. So being in a far removed place that is riddled with racism, unfortunately, got me very used to dealing with nasty hate comments very early on and kindergarten, I talked about this on a post that also got, like, a decent amount of views. Like my first kindergarten teacher was like, Well, no kindergarten, sorry, preschool. My preschool teacher was, like, vehemently racist, right? Like, she would give me frowny faces, until my parents I was bad, like, every other day of the week for absolutely no reason. And my dad is British Nigerians. He was born in England, raised in Nigeria, but I'm a British citizen. Like, through that, through, like, our passports and everything. And we went to London, and I brought back, like, this little double decker bus toy. And when I got up for show and tell, I was like, I brought this back from London, and she stopped me in the middle of my show and tell and told me to sit down because I was lying. Like, wouldn't let me tell the rest of the story. She wrote a note home to my parents, being like, your daughter is making up things in class, and, like, telling lies in the class. I'm like, when my mom called, she was like, she did go to England. And the teacher was like, No, she didn't. She was like, we just got back from England. What is your problem? And you know, like, I recognize this lady doesn't like me. This lady has something wrong with me, and it kind of just like trickling in the media understand, okay, like she's racist. And unfortunately, like, kindergarten, my teacher was phenomenal, one of the best teachers I've ever had in my entire life. I wish I could find her and give her the biggest kiss on her forehead. But other students were racist and like, by like, first grade, students are starting to use, like, slurs. You're starting to see behaviors. By third grade, I got, like, physically assaulted by a teacher once or twice, like, you know, so I think, unfortunately, some of those have been very traumatic experiences. And even when my mom these were all in private schools for the most part, even when my mom moved me to public school, because she was like, why am I paying for you to get, like, abused? She's like, this doesn't make sense. And like, maybe it'll be better, because you're not going to be around like the other like, rich, spoiled white kids who are more likely to be honest, to cause harm than you know, the country bumped in kids. It ended up being a good shift, in a sense. But I think it was less wrapped up in these weird social hierarchies and it was just racism. So it was a little bit easier to deal with, quite honestly and like again, even then being called, like the N word in class, and the teacher pretending they didn't hear it, having like a condom filled with liquid flung at me in like, 10th grade, across the, you know, across the class, and having to, like, stand up and be the only person arguing about racism, like having to be, I think at one point I held this Democratic and Republican debate in my school because I was, you know, I was in the Young Democrats. I was, like, this would just be cool. And like, the auditorium was full for like, my little activity. But unfortunately, one of my friends, who I also was in this preschool class with, was like, I'm sorry, Abby, I know how you feel about like, slavery, but blah, blah, blah, blah, and I ended up having to, like, hold myself from shaking and give like, a very long telling off with, you know, professional telling off about why the way he was talking about reparations and slavery was wrong, and by the end of it, he just kind of walked away looking stupid, but like nobody else had the information to tell them off correctly, it was just me. And like, a stadium full of people that didn't really know better, honestly, but some of them were willing to learn better. And so I think I've always had to be like, you know, the person making noise in a lot of places, and it's caused me a lot of trauma. It's caused me some harm, but at the same time, it kind of just prepared me to deal with things a lot more now, because, uh, somebody on Instagram, I've been getting called like a man running some hate comments, and I've gotten like, little gorilla emojis, and I was like, Is that the best you can do? Like, like, I've got called, like, an African booty scratcher as, like, a 10 year old, right? Like, you know, like other kids were calling me the N word, excluding me from, like, like, outdoor activities when I was eight. Like, that's not gonna hurt my feelings. And I think that has taught me how to teach other people how to not get distracted by it, because through it all, like, I've been able to do some phenomenal things. Like, unfortunately, I still did with, like, a lot of de realization in this year of my life, it's been different, because I had never really dealt with it before this persistently, but it's been here for about, like, a year. I've been transitioning out of that burnout still, but I think I've always told people like, you can deal with it. Learn how to block people. I've started blocking a lot more people. If I had had the platform I have now two years ago, I would not have been able to handle it. I would have been much more stressed. More stressed. But through some of the experiences I had that brought me here, it kind of helped me toughen up in the right ways, and, like, cut people off a lot because I had bosses yelling at me crazy a couple years ago, and I would just sit there, and now I don't have a boss. Technically, I do contract work, which I'm really in love with, and I just hang up the phone. Own, like, I just tell people No, and that's a big part of it for me. So it's a lot of it's a lot of trauma, but it's learned trauma. I'm really, I'm really grateful, in a sense, to have been through what I've been through. Because, like, when I found out the news about, like, Claudia Candia Bailey, I actually physically cried, right? Like, I, like, I physically had to, like, get off the end of there for two days. And that hasn't happened to me in a long time. But when I had a really bad experience at the DNC this past month where they were mistreating one of my friends, and this lady was telling her she couldn't see Michelle Obama speak, or not Michelle Obama, she's telling her she couldn't see Kamala Harris speak, I was like, I have a black woman here who wants to see Kamala Harris speak. I don't care how I feel about it. I don't care whatever, because speak is not endorsing everything. Right? She wants to be in the room. I'm gonna make it happen. And I spent about four and a half hours, three and a half hours throughout the entire night, and I got her on the floor that night, and the lady turned around and tried to escort me out in the middle of Kamala Harris's speech. And you know, I didn't care about me being there, but I literally started bawling because I saw my friend's face, and I was like, I just brought, like it was her and another black woman. I was like, I brought two black women out to be able to see this. And no matter how people feel politically, like they're watching another black woman, like on the stage, doing something that's on this monumental level, and like, I get to do that for these people. Like, I get to be a person that gets to be because, like, multiple times she was like, it's not going to happen. Let it go. And I was like, No, I'm just one of those people. And like, I I got to do that for somebody. And I'm reaffirmed every time I have the capacity to do that. And it reminds me, like, you know, if, if I had been there. Claudia candy Bailey wouldn't have been hurt because I just wouldn't have let it happen. But it had to happen for whatever universal purpose, and I think that's a good reminder to me every single day when I'm doing something of like, who's next? Claudia Candia Bailey, who can I fight off? For these kinds of people? Because I unfortunately, am used to the games, but because I'm used to it, I can do it, and I can go around loopholes legally and make sure that people are aware of that. So that's kind of just like, it's something that, like, always, like, sits on me heavy and hard, but like, every time I've done something like that recently, I just look up and I'm like, I feel like she would be happy with what I'm doing people like her that have lost their lives because nobody knew how to deal with what they were dealing with, and nobody's willing to go to bat for them, you know? And so I that's also one of those things that I think keeps me going every single day, is, like, when I don't want to make a video about something like, I know that it's going to help somebody else, and I'm like, you know, just knowing that and knowing like, Okay, I don't want to make this video about Congo This is stressing me out, but knowing that I have Congolese people who are like, hey, like, somebody like, did a little protest, and I was able to share this with them and, like, it just, I think that's what motivates me so much more, is like, I get to dump the information I have strategically in somebody else's brain and keep them from experiencing some of the things I've had to experience unfortunately. So, yeah,

Desa Daniel

43:01

yeah. It's such a clear reminder to me of how we end up doing the work we're supposed to do because of one our traumatic experiences, right? And as you're talking, I just wrote down that, like, racism comes from the environments we are raised in. So it's like, right? So it's like, this idea of like, oh, well, like little kids can't be racist. You're just like, okay, but are there parents? Because that starts young, right? And so it's like, we're really trying to help folks unlearn so much of their history and like, what they were told was normal, or, like, just the othering in that. But even just the moving forward, like, I've told folks the same thing about Harris and just like, like, am I excited? Not necessarily, am I like, is the little black girl inside me just grateful to see someone up there, absolutely right? And like, realizing that, like, both things are equally true. Like, you don't have to choose one or the other. We're still in these moments of super powerful representation that folks never thought would happen, and often just sitting in that and like allowing our friends and like people to benefit from our privilege in ways that we never thought we would have that privilege, to be able to bring them into that. It's just incredibly powerful, and so I think about that as well. Of like, like, why am I in academia so I can make room for others? Because otherwise, I mean, this job is okay, but like, I probably would not be doing this job on those days if it wasn't for the privilege I have. Of like, bringing people in, giving people platform, giving people voice, and so just grateful of your journey and what you've shared with us, but then also that your activism is in every single place, and you're actively adjusting it and changing it and making sure it fits for you, but also gives privileges to others that never thought they'd have. That opportunity.

Speaker 1

45:01

Yeah, it's just, it's one of those things where I'm like, yeah, there's certain things I see it. I'm like, I'm gonna come get you. Like, there's certain people I see do things, and I'm like, I'm gonna be a part of a team that makes you accountable for the harm you've done. Because I know I can, I also have do, have to learn when to take a nap. But I think, I think it's a balance that I'm learning to build more on of, like, there's certain situations, and I situations and I feel that I'm called to them, and there are other situations where I'm like, Okay, I feel like I can I feel like somebody else can handle this, but I might send some resources THEIR WAY too.

Desa Daniel

45:33

Yeah, so as we're kind of coming to the end, the one question I ask everybody, and you are a student, but you're also an educator. But the one thing I ask folks is, if you could tell students at any level one thing, what would that be?

Speaker 1

45:54

I think it would be, ask why. And if you ask why, and get told no, find somebody else to ask. Because I you can never go wrong, in my opinion, asking why, like, you just, you really can't. I had a little girl I was making. We went to, like, a big Super Bowl party, and it happened to be, like at the church, and I was in the corner, I was sewing a little leather person I'd been working on, actually, not finishing it. It's like this little,

Unknown Speaker

46:20

yeah, I was working,

Speaker 1

46:22

and I looked up, and then there was one little girl that was like, What are you doing? And I was like, I'm making another part. She was like, Can I make one? And I was like, Okay. And then I looked up and there were seven of them. All of a sudden, there were seven little girls around me being like, I want to make a purse. So I kept cutting off my own leather and, like, giving them little leather needles. And one of them, she was like, why are you making a purse? I was like, because I want to hold stuff. She was like, but why do you need to hold stuff? I was like, because I got to take stuff with me everywhere. She was like, why? I was like, Well, I gotta have my wallet so that I can get into places with my money and, you know, my ID, in case anything happens. I gotta have medicine. I gotta make sure I have this and that. And she was like, okay, like, why about this one thing? I was like, because, like, you know, medicine does this for me, and it keeps my body in this way. And then she was like, why it's like, because I have like, you know, like, PTSD and like, anxiety, and so if I have those things, then I'll take this medicine. It's not gonna work. And then she was like, why? I was like, because this is how bodies function. And most people, at one point, her mom could go over, she was like, you don't have to answer questions. I was like, No, I'm gonna answer them like the little girl asked why, and she keeps asking why. And like, we're getting down to the basics of like, neuroscience, and she's understanding it. And so I feel like when people keep asking why they are able to dissect so much, like, you can never ask why too much. You literally can never ask it too far. Like, and the only thing I'll say is at some point you might get to the answers that you need. So you can pause there, but if you can't figure something out, just keep asking yourself, why? And like I said, If you can't find a person who's willing to answer, find somebody, because somebody will answer your questions, somebody will teach you, you just might have to look for it.

Desa Daniel

47:59

Yeah, I've been talking a lot about this with some students and other folks, but there's the three questions of identity, which is from phenom, and it's like, it's not mine. A mentor told me about this, and it also makes me think about asking why. And so the three questions are, who am I? Am I? Who I say I am, and am I all that I can be? And when you're making any decision, it should be yes for all three. And so it makes me also think about the why question, right? Like, not even from a place of like, disagreement or challenge, but instead, like, a why of curiosity, of like, why are the things they wait the way that they are, and then, like, why do they have to be that way? Right with the have to of like, how do we change them? How do we change systems, or just influence different things? And so, I just think so often when I was that little kid who asked, why? A lot, if you were just, like, heavily annoyed, what a difference having someone like be on that, why train with me would have made for just like, my own confidence, but then my own curiosity going forward.

Speaker 1

49:10

Yeah, it's like one of those big things. Like, people are like, how do you research this topic? And I'm like, I literally will see something. And then just be like,

Unknown Speaker

49:18

why? That's it? I

Speaker 1

49:19

just keep googling until I figure stuff out. I keep reading journals and, like, you know, watching videos. So, yeah, it's it would have done. I was able to do that because I had parents who also would answer almost all my questions, most of them. And I hope that every kid and every adult even can, if an adult's been shot down like that, if they can re build that up in themselves to continue. Because I think if we can all do that a lot more, we'll be able to get to a much bigger part of understanding nuance and being able to not only actually, like, ask questions, but be willing to listen to the answers to those questions, because that's the next part. Yeah, right. It's

Speaker 2

49:55

not just like, do you have an answer? It's like, I. Do you have the courage to do something with the answer that you found

Speaker 1

50:02

Yes, yes. Like, what are you going to do with it?

Desa Daniel

50:05

Yeah, you're like, No, what you answered the why? Now? What? Okay, so right now, it's September 2024, this is going to come out in about a month or so. And so what are you doing next? Where should we find you next? How do we get in touch with you? Yeah, so

Speaker 1

50:26

people can find any information about me on there's a website. Well, I'm going to be getting it today, but right now, there's a website called beacons, like, B, E, A, C, O, N, S, dot, a, i, and then you just put the forward slash my username. But if that's too much for people, they can just type in a like Apple H, like Harry. Be like boy E, like Evan E, like Evan O, like orange L, like love a like Apple H, like Harry on any social media, and they should be able to find me on there and see all those things, because I think in the next month, my dad had surgery this past week to like, remove a like, it's cancer, not cancer. I don't ever want people to, like, panic. It's like a Gleason cell. But his recovery has been a little bit slow, because he's a workaholic, so he's actually, like, working to recover, which is really amazing. But I have to, like, continue to work on that so people will see me do more stuff with my parents. They'll see me continue to hopefully do a research class. I'm hoping to do an online research class for people to do, like, basics of research they can find that on there. And I'll be doing a election like post debate. What do they call it post debate, recap summary with an app called clapper. I'll be doing another one in a couple of weeks with the next debate. So yeah, so stay tuned. I have all sorts of little things. I'm building more resources out so that I can actually share them with people that want them. But anything could happen. I live in a circus.

Desa Daniel

52:00

I mean, I'm here for it. I don't know if I could handle it, but I give you all the likes, all the love, all the accolades. Thank you so much for just taking time out of your busy schedule to hold space with me and have this conversation. If you're not following her already. You should. I will make sure that your bio and your links and all of that stuff is in the show notes. I'm just super grateful to have this conversation with you, and I learned a lot. And I'm like, we're gonna have to do probably a recap at some point and just kind of follow up on all the things you're doing. But really, just keep challenging the mental health profession to think about mental health in a different in a different way that isn't so rigid and isn't as oppressive. So thank you for starting that conversation with me. No problem. Thank

Speaker 1

52:51

you for asking me to do it. I always love like every time someone asks me to

Desa Daniel

52:57

do podcasts, I'm like me. Please. Yes, please. All right, everyone. I hope you have a wonderful day, night, evening, whenever you're listening to this, I'm super grateful to have Avila with us tonight, and then I will see you in the next one. Have a great weekend, and we'll talk to you soon. Adios,

Megan Speciale, PhD

53:22

thanks again for tuning into the thoughtful counselor. Today, we hope you enjoyed the show. This podcast is made possible through our partnership with concept Palo Alto University's Division of Continuing and Professional Studies. Learn more about the thoughtful counselor and some of the other amazing continuing education offerings provided by concept@paloaltou.edu or forward slash concept, as always, if you are a fan of the show, we would love to hear your feedback and review on Apple podcast or wherever you subscribe. You.

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