Host Dr. Gail C. Christopher, Executive Director at National Collaborative for Health Equity (NCHE), talks with Dr. J.Goosby Smith about the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation™ (TRHT™) movements she spurred at Citadel and Pepperdine. TRHT, which the W.K. Kellogg Foundation launched in 2016, unites organizations and the private sector to advance racial healing and build racial equity in our communities. TRHT is centered around the pillars of its framework: narrative change, racial healing and relationship building, separation, law, and economy. “What we're doing is trying to connect people,” Dr. Goosby Smith says, adding that in our cities, “we've divided ourselves into so many different pockets, different parts of town, different professions, different socioeconomic areas, different educational levels. And I think we're at a time right now in a society where there's maximum division and maximum fear among people, but there's also an opportunity because there's a maximum need for authentic connection.” TRHT, which the W.K. Kellogg Foundation launched in 2016, unites organizations and the private sector to advance racial healing and build equity in our communities. TRHT is centered around the pillars of its framework: narrative change, racial healing and relationship building, separation, law, and economy. Dr. Christopher, the chief architect of TRHT as a vice president and senior advisor at the Kellogg Foundation, says: " “We're all on this journey together. This is our collective journey and this experiment that we're in, this thing called self-governance in America, it's learning, it's evolving… (there are possibilities) for the realization, the actualization of our potential as human beings and as a nation, but more importantly as a society and as a world.”

Host Dr. Gail Christopher interviews Ainka Jackson, founding Executive Director of the Selma Center for Nonviolence, Truth, and Reconciliation.  Jackson is committed to eliminating “the cancer that is racism” and facilitating economic justice, she tells host Dr. Christopher on the new episode of the NCHE PRESENTS: Leaders Pursuing Health Equity in America podcast. The center was founded in 2014, Jackson says, “to address different forms of violence, whether that be economic violence, whether that be racial violence or whether that be physical violence.” She adds, “It's insane that this place where nonviolence overcame violence was the eighth most dangerous place in the country in 2016. And we believe that broken relationships led to broken economies, leading to broken communities, all in need of healing.”

But the center’s work has made a difference. “We work with communities to heal relationships, to heal the economy and heal communities, not to fix, but to heal,” she says, noting that their formula includes addressing the root causes of issues. Fueled by their community work and efforts of their partners, murders in Selma declined by nearly 40% in 2022 after an increase of 56% from 2016 to 2021.  

“The work is so impressive,” responds Dr. Christopher, the Executive Director of the National Collaborative for Health Equity (NCHE). “When we think of Selma, we imagine the March, we imagine that original work back there in the Civil Rights era. And for you to give us this data today, it's just heart-wrenching. I'm excited to hear about some of the success that you had and some of the ways that you know you're succeeding.”

The center implemented a violence intervention program in communities, which is bolstered by the HOPE data collection initiative run by NCHE. Jackson describes their comprehensive program, which addresses both victims and perpetrators, while targeting the inequities endured by everyone in the community.“It's rooted in nonviolence, which is unique for violence intervention programs,” Jackson says.  “A lot of them aren't, but given our history of nonviolence in this city, we thought that was important to help produce a cultural shift. Our street outreach workers come from the communities in which they serve, which is essential. They are trusted leaders, trusted community members, trusted vessels to intervene, to actually go to the scenes when there is violence, but also to be in the communities day-to-day, connecting people with employment and educational opportunities, ensuring that people have what they need; but getting to the root causes of why there is violence and building the Beloved Community. The last component is victim services. We are one of few models that actually serve potential perpetrators and victims. When getting to the root causes, we understand that all of these people are impacted by the root causes. Our victim services - our survivor services programs: whether it’s helping to plan a funeral of a loved one, helping to find resources, doing victim compensation, or doing restorative justice, are making sure that healing (is taking place). Making sure that those families have what they need is an essential part of this work. It's the hard part of this work, particularly when there are so few mental health resources in a rural area. But our team is making it happen.”

Learn more about this incredible leader and her program that is addressing inequities in Selma. 

Speaking with Dr. Gail Christopher, Angela Waters Austin, executive director of One Love Global Inc, demonstrates the power of authentic engagements to address racism, telling our host about healing circles and discussions that generated positive results and changed beliefs. She also says the COVID-19 pandemic forced community organizations to adopt creative approaches to helping youths and the community.

“It tested our ability to innovate,” Austin says of COVID-19. “It tested our ability to be able to shift on the ground organizing… And it really required us to think differently about how we can actually continue to organize and be with our people and to create space.”

One of the innovations, Austin says, was to hire a group of teenagers to learn how community organizers could better engage with their age group, especially around attending school virtually, and understanding it was exhausting for students. “They really helped us build out what a digital organizing platform looks like, and they helped us build it...they designed it for their peers.,” she says, noting that the initial local, Lansing offering grew into a statewide program and now includes participants from other states.

“That's a powerful innovation for those of us who are leading nonprofit organizations,” Dr. Christopher responds. “Let me be clear, you hired, you didn't (ask for volunteers), you hired a group of teenagers to build out this platform. That is profound. “

Throughout a reflective conversation, Dr. Christopher and Austin discuss the challenges and successes of their work that aims to heal racial wounds of the past and create paths forward that can transform American society. A chief objective is eliminating racism and uprooting the false belief in a hierarchy of human value, an antiquated notion that the human family can be divided and ranked based on skin color, physical characteristics, and ascribed traits.

In their talk, Austin recites examples of authentic engagements from her work at One Love Global, a non-profit working to transform communities so Black children experience justice, peace, healing, opportunity, and abundance.

At one of their statewide youth gatherings in Detroit, Austin encountered a 10-year-old named David. “We asked what has the biggest impact on your life? And what change would have the deepest impact?” she recalls. “And he said, ‘stop closing our neighborhood schools. When you close the school in my neighborhood, no one wants to live there. People move out. And what moves in is violence. It's crime. It's people who are struggling to actually have their needs met and who are self-medicating.’ “ Austin says that David saw “the harm” caused by a school closing, adding that it amounted to closing “an institution in the community.”

Further, Austin recites an engagement with a retired military official who is a conservative Republican and an advocate for law and order. He openly questioned why people were protesting against police brutality.

“He simply did not grasp it. It was not a part of his reality,” Austin says. “It wasn't a part of his ideal of law enforcement. He was deeply hurt, offended by the criticism, and it took him hearing a perspective of what it's like to not know just by nature of someone's uniform or badge, whether they are coming to help you or coming to hurt you. And that the idea that police are first responders and protectors is not everyone's reality. We are all conditioned to kind of have a belief about policing and law enforcement that doesn't measure up to the reality for many people. And he really needed to hear that from somewhere other than the news media that he was getting information from.”

Our guest, Dr. Kaiwipuni Punihei Lipe, is an extraordinary leader who talks about the culture of native Hawaiians and the many challenges they face in their homeland, including the astronomical cost of housing. “We were struggling in so many ways, all very connected to the loss of our lands, more than half of native Hawaiians live outside of Hawaii,” she says in her conversation with host, Dr. Gail C. Christopher. “We cannot afford to live on our own homelands.” But Dr. Lipe speaks of their spiritual strength and the resiliency of their culture.

Dr. Lipe is uplifting and upbeat, as she talks about the connectiveness of those on earth. “In all places in the world, I believe that at one time or another there were principles that connected us to each other and a place for us in our stories. We know that we are born from this land, that the land, the sky, the sea, the birds, the plants, the animals, that they're all part of our family. It’s a lens or a framework that invites us always to be thinking the ways we are connected, even when we're not biologically related. And so that is a core principle that we are trying to teach anyone who is who is in our presence.”

Join us as Dr. Lipe talks more about her journey.