Lee Farrow focuses on the profound connection between love and reverence in grassroots organizing. Drawing inspiration from the Book of Nehemiah, Lee discusses how community-building efforts grounded in love, respect, and honor can create lasting change. She also emphasizes the need to set boundaries around what we revere and to ensure that our energy is directed toward worthy causes.

Listeners will be moved by her reflections on the sacrifices made in service of justice and equity, as well as the importance of honoring legacy while fostering new leadership.

Transcript

Lee

One of the other acts of reverence for me is to honor myself and know what my capacity is and to really engage in self-care in a way that plenishes myself and I’m able to take the time I need to disengage and really be fully present when I return.

Ceasar

Hey, Ayushi.

Ayushi

Hey, Ceasar.

Ceasar

Here we are again. You know, I’ve been someone in my life who’s had, I’d say all kinds of different jobs. I moved around from all kinds of different things in my life, from higher education, to public school education, to working in, you know, nonprofit organizations, to organizing, just moving about and moving about. And there are other people I know who’ve kind of done that kind of movement too, and I think what’s hard about it is, how do you do that movement and, in the midst of doing it, stay true to who you are and shape the spaces that you’ve moved into to be more aligned with those values that you have, as opposed to those institutions shaping you. And, you know, when we talked with Lee Farrow, that for me became a real clear piece that she brings wisdom to, about thinking about issues of reference and what does it mean, you know? Because she’s moved from being, you know, a senior fellow at MIT. She’s at the Carsey School of Public Policy now. She was at Union Theological Center. She ran organizing for the Harlan Children’s Zone. She’s been doing work in prison. She’s just moved, but she’s been steady.

Ayushi

Mmm, that’s so true. The ability that Lee has and that she shared with us to, like you said, not be shaped by the institution, but to actually shape such large institutions, to bring, not just reverence, but in some cases healing for a greater community, to bring a certain kind of altruism to those spaces that otherwise could be very transactional, is really, really powerful.

Ceasar

Yeah. Well, I’m sure you’re going to enjoy this talk with Lee. Lee Farrow, who’s just absolutely an amazing person. And I first came across her because I was following some of the work of the Harlins Children’s Zone and the most amazing organizing work that was going on there on the ground. And Lee was leading that work. And I asked her to come spend some time with us over at MIT. And she did. And then we just kept getting in trouble together. It was actually really nice. And then she went off and got in trouble on her own. But it’s just been wonderful to have her around. Lee’s really, she’s taught in different universities. She’s now, I think, you’re know, the Union Theological, is that correct?

Lee

That’s where I am, at the University of New Hampshire.

Ceasar

And so, the University of New Hampshire teaching there, yes, someone who’s just done so much around this issue of reverence and thinking about it, and what does it mean to kind of lead and organize and support other people in their development as strong organizers and yet still hold this sense of reverence. And particularly, I know she’s done a lot of this really holding the spirit and the lives of women of color through this work, and that’s really been a focus of hers. So, Lee, welcome.

Lee

Well, thank you so much for having me. And I’m quite honored to have been invited by you. And I feel the same as you do about our relationship over the years, it’s been, you know, very rewarding to me. Thank you, after 18 years in Boston, but now back in New York, been able to give me that experience because it’s not an experience I think I would have sought on my own. So thank you so much for the experience.

Ceasar

It’s so kind of you.

Ayushi

Thank you so much for being here. I’m excited to be in conversation for this next hour and just kind of watch this beautiful friendship too.

Lee

Glad to be here. Thank you.

Ayushi

I have a reading for us to start off our conversation, maybe provide a little bit of grounding. I know we’re kind of at the end of our day here, and so it might be a Zoom-filled one. So I figured something that kind of brings nature into the conversation might be a helpful change of pace. I’m reading from Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, speaking of women of color. “Just as old growth forests are richly complex, so too were the old growth cultures that arose at their feet. Some people equate sustainability with a diminished standard of living. But the Aboriginal people of the coastal old growth forests were among the wealthiest in the world. Wise use and care for a huge variety of marine and forest resources allowed them to avoid over exploiting any one of them, while extraordinary art, science, and architecture flowered in their midst. Rather than to greed, prosperity here gave rise to the great potlatch tradition in which material goods were ritually given away, a direct reflection of the generosity of the land to the people. Wealth in this context meant having enough to give away social status elevated by generosity. The cedars taught us how to share wealth, and the people learned.”

Ceasar

Mmm

Ayushi

“Cedar unstintingly provided for the people who responded with gratitude and reciprocity. Today, when Cedar is mistaken for a commodity from the lumberyard, the idea of gift is almost lost. What can we, who recognize the debt, possibly give back?”

Ceasar

It’s beautiful.

Lee

Wow, that is beautiful. Fabulous. One reading reminds me a little bit of the book of Nehemiah in the Old Testament. It’s a book that many organizers use at God’s point, not for religion, but for the idea of what it means to build community together, what it means to sort of, you know, go through a process of recruiting and ushering people and leading people and, you know, just the assignments and thinking together and just building. So that kind of reminds me of that book. Just lovely.

Ayushi

I’m glad you like it. This is a book that I’m currently rereading. It’s been sort of my grounding practice to start my day before work every day is reread a chapter. I think it’s helped cultivate reverence as like a practice for me, both the act of reading it, but also the reminders that come from the reading. And I figured it might be nice to start a conversation with a practice that you have or an alternative question here is a moment recently that maybe you felt reverence. Maybe you’re in the space that felt like it brought up reverence for you. And if you could maybe bring us and our audience into that space, what was that like? Where were you? What was happening?

Lee

Yeah, sure, absolutely. I mean, much like you, I start my day with, you know, just inspirational readings. Olivia Newton-John just died recently, and she has a whole portfolio of music. And I’m not sure how popular it became. But as soon as she published this book of music called Brace and Gratitude, I use the slogan as my salutation and my emails number one, and she does a whole litany of music with different practices around reference from different cultures. So but I belong before she actually published that that book of music, I spend my mornings really trying to center myself in such a way that I’m contemplating the things I need to do, but also the practices and the learnings from the day before, and how that will inform what I do during the course of the day. And I use several different books to do this. But most recently, I’ve been working with women from Harlem, women who I worked with over 2025 years ago, and the Harlem Children’s Zone. These are women who we spent time together organizing them. They were women who some were formerly homeless, some were in the workplace, but not making enough money to really make their home life work well, living in squalid conditions. And so a moment I had last Saturday was one of the women basically said, I do this work, because I believe in the good of humankind, I do this work, because I don’t want to see my neighbor, you know, suffering, I do this work, because it is the right thing to do. And I do this work out of love. And so we think about doing the work, reverence, love, respect, deep honor, it’s all kind of tied in there together. And I think for years, that’s how I was driven to this work. It wasn’t because of my educational training, I had no training as an organizer. But I think the idea of growing up in the South, and how we live to really sort of create this space of mutual respect, reciprocity, when you know, just giving back to people who were in our community, supporting those who had less than others, you know, having harvest times that really share the food that we had cultivated from the land. I think those were the earliest seeds of what it means to and to be very much a part of the human goodness of people and looking at the human dignity. So, but it brings you back to the meeting of this past Saturday, that was a total reverent moment when I heard this woman say why she did the work over the years and why she will continue to do the work until she leaves this world. So

Ayushi

Wow, that’s beautiful. I also love that question, right? Like, why do you do this work? Why do you continue to do this work?

Lee

I do this work. This is going to sound very mushy. Bring it. I do this work out of love. I do this work out of a feeling that everyone deserves to be treated with a level of dignity and respect in the same way that I do the prison work that I’ve done over the years. You won’t find it on my resume. You won’t find it on my bio. But I’ve been doing this work for years. Prisoners who are incarcerated for life, they will never come home. My centering of this work really comes from a place of love and respect for humankind. Now, that doesn’t mean that I don’t see the evil and the bad disorder that goes on in the world and that I try to avoid myself getting caught up in entrapped in that. But I think it’s something really important about helping your fellow sister person to achieve their dreams, to really sort of engage in a way that they’re able to learn. And there’s a book called Learning as a Way of Leading. I don’t know if you’re aware of that book, but that’s a book that I’ve used in my classes a lot because it was a book that examines the civil rights movement and the work of Dr. King. And it talks a lot about the different institutions and activities that they engaged in, their training programs, and how they saw learning was a way of leading, because as you learn, you grow and you empower to do more. So I’m a lifelong learner and someone who has always felt that I’d want someone to do for me in the same way that I do for others. And I put my stuff in a place where I’m here are some like empire. This is my empire. This is like grassroots practice that regards humanity as a precious jewel, a precious commodity in our society.

Ceasar

It’s really amazing. I mean, you’ve brought up so many things that I want to ask about and kind of explore. Two things. One, you said you talked about all the work you’ve been doing in the prisons for the years. I know about that work because of conversations we’ve had, but yet how you don’t publicize that work. It’s not on your resume or anything like that. And for me, that’s actually a really perfect example of reference. It’s really holding sacred in some sense, that work. And it doesn’t need to be known any other way except for, and it’s happening. And that’s all that’s important about it. So I just really appreciate that. You also said something else for me that we had another guest at one point in time who brought this up and with some different words related to reverence. And one of the things he mentioned is, some things may not be worthy of reverence. What do you think about that?

Lee

I can only agree with that. I mean, I think that there are some things we see in our society and among our people who are in community that if you’re shown over and over again, the disregard, the disconnect and just basically a need to break down what others are trying to build up. It almost seems like a wasted source of your energy. We only have so much energy. And I know from experience, you know, people people are at different levels. Some people require a whole lot, you know, to really get them sort of at a point where they can function or feel as though they are contributing. What I’ve learned over the years is people don’t always know what they know. And and so we talk about this when we work together, Cesar, this whole idea of tacit knowledge, right? And so sometimes it’s like having to pull a big cannonball to get that tacit knowledge out to help people kind of understand that, oh, I know a few things. But if you have others who are kind of there and kind of really interacting in such a way that poses major threats to those who are trying to do well, I just I agree with that. And that doesn’t mean that I don’t try, but, you know, I think we can only spend so much energy in areas where we don’t really see the kind of reaction in a favorable way that we were looking for. From time to time, there’s been sort of like disconnect and one or two of them kind of really try to undermine the work that’s going on for the entire group. And as much as I show patience and show respect and reverence towards them, if I see that they’re really creating more negativity than I can handle, that the group can handle, I just let that go for a while. That’s a small example, but I think it’s the same way in community.

Ayushi

It’s a tricky balance to work from a place of love and to work for dignity for all while also having to set that boundary, right? Because time and energy for us as individuals is finite. Yeah.

Lee

Right, I’ve always regarded myself as a practitioner, no matter what institutions I’ve worked in or I’ve taught in and I’ve taught in a few of them, but I never thought I would do that I mean I just don’t forget what my grassroots, you know, derived from, you know, one of 10 children on a farm in the deep rural south, the children of sharecroppers and really sort of growing into a space where you elevate yourself to expand outside of your community outside of your state and do the kind of work that you were kind of trained to do. It’s almost like a patchwork quilt. But when you fold into that, the idea that it’s so draining. And I think about, you know, from a biblical perspective, miracles were offered and the same way you kind of engage in this deep work. It’s very draining if it drains you, the one of the other acts of reverence for me to myself is to honor myself and know what my capacity is, and to really engage in self care in a way that finishes myself, and I’m able to take the time I need to disengage and really be fully present when I return. And so there are times when I’ll just simply say I need, I don’t call it a mental health break, I call it, I need a break to restore my soul. I have to restore my soul, because it does get weak at times. And, and, and I know exactly when it gets weak. I started sick, or I may start to be edgy, I mean, in any number of ways it manifests. And so one of the highest regards that I say to people who I work with over over the years, take care of yourself, be good to yourself, honor yourself. As you honor yourself, you’re honoring the work that you do, because when you’re not at your full capacity or at least operating near capacity, you’re no good.

Ayushi

Yeah. That’s beautifully put. Yeah. You have to honor both concurrently, right? To honor your soul and that space, but you have to also honor the larger community or people that you might be there for, whether it’s your family or others. And yeah, that alone takes practice, right? And you have to kind of be aware of the honor that both need. Yeah, absolutely. I have a question. I don’t know, Ceasar, if you’re…

Ceasar

No, please.

Ayushi

You mentioned the story of the two people testing your patience is the way that you said it. And I’m curious if there are other times where you’ve felt your reverence or your own personal energy fall away when you’ve kind of been like, wow, I’ve been doing all this out of love and I feel like, I don’t know, it’s being misused or it’s being taken advantage of or maybe something else. What does that feel like for you and when has that happened? When has your reverence kind of fell by the wayside?

Lee

I don’t want to be too personal because I’m not sure who else will listen. However, I think it’s important to be honest and to be authentic with what might trouble your spirit or where you’ve gotten become weaker. Yeah. Ceasar talked about how we met, you know, all those years ago. And I first met him. We were upstate New York and I think a Rockefeller Brothers Foundation. Retreat is something of that nature. And I felt I had been at the Harlem Children’s Zone for 11 years at that point. And the work was so magnificent. It was so great. It was just really rewarding. But of course, in any organization institutions you have, you know, you have trouble or you have issues that you can’t quite control. And so you go on and you do what you can do and try to avoid those things that bring negativity to your spirit. When my commitment is being challenged or I’m feeling like I’m not able to give the full breadth and strength of what I believe in. And it’s not even that I don’t believe in the work. It’s all the other kind of political things that go on around it. It’s time for me to begin to kind of move on. And every time I’ve gotten to that point, honestly, I haven’t had a whole lot of jobs in my life or a whole lot of commitments. I’ve had, you know, assignments. I’ve always been offered to come and support or become a team member. And the same was true for the Harlem Children’s Zone. And I love the institution. I love the people. But Ceasar caught me at the point where I had been feeling so weary and so tired and just and I could not regain my balance.

Ceasar

Lee, when Ayushi and I started two years ago thinking about this season of shows, and it was a long dialogue, we went back and forth. And we started with this notion of thinking about kind of faith, spirituality, religion, and democracy. And what we were really trying to get at was that in our public conversations in our civic life, when we have to wrestle with really tough things, sometimes in those conversations, there’s no space for the things that are really at the core that really guide people going forth. It can’t bring it. It can’t be heard. It can’t be spoken. It can’t be wrestled with, right? And so it feels like we are then creating these situations where we don’t have really us fully into the conversations. And so therefore we don’t get the right kind of results or direction that we want to have. We kept struggling with those three words, faith, spirituality, religion, and we said, well, they’re not quite right, but they are right. So we kind of moved to this word of reverence that it’s about a way of showing up and wanting to know the other and creating that space. But I’m going to step back to kind of some of our original, say, connecting to what we originally said. As you’ve worked in, you know, you’ve done organizing work all over. You’ve been within the work of, you know, people struggling in small groups, struggling with institutions, governments, whatever it may be. What have you found or have you found instances where folks were actually able to bring that into that struggle?

Lee

I have found elements of that scenario in almost every aspect of the work I’ve done, not from the totality, but from a community perspective. You know, much of the work that people engage in, even the women in Harlem that I’m interviewing and we’re telling these stories and having all this wonderful laughter and, you know, people just being free. And much of their work that they started began out of struggle, but also began as a core belief that their spirituality and their faith suggest that they should do more to improve the conditions of their community. They just didn’t know how. So that, and even prior to that, when I did the organizing throughout New York City neighborhoods with the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, I found that to be true in block associations. When I talk about communities that have had these horrendous, heartbreaking murders and trauma and killings that have taken place, and you go back to the community and there’s always a gloom over the community because the community has been traumatized by the death of someone’s son or daughter, a husband or wife, a auntie, a whomever it might be, who died from the hands of violence, from a violent perspective. I feel like the whole memorializing someone’s death, when you see these candles and the reverence of this person’s life and flowers, I think that that’s really important because the community has to heal from that trauma and the healing is a process that goes on, it’s in perpetuity almost. So I really do believe that the spirit of community lurks in every community and it’s a matter of you finding where the balance is, where the core is. I’ve seen it again in the work in Harlem among women. We’ve talked about it in these women sessions. I mean, they talk about how their faith drive them. And so we don’t have the inhibitions of a foundation or some government institution saying, well, you can’t use the word religion, you can’t use the word faith. And so we keep it so open because no funding, just us pulling out of our time together, knowing that this is going to benefit many people once we’ve actually produced the outcome of this work. But we’re able to talk freely. And one of the questions I do ask is, how has your spirituality sort of informed your work? How did it inform your work? And how does it lead to your work? And you’re surprised at the answers that women get. Basically, they’re not talking about church. They’re not talking about the things that people immediately go to and say, oh, no, we can’t have that in the conversation. They’re talking about the practice of what is right and what is wrong. They’re talking about good, bad and evil. They’re talking about doing for others as they would want them to do for themselves as they’re in that position. And when we begin to really think about the 140 million people who are living in this country in poverty or below poverty, or they’re living in such a way that two or three paychecks, missing two or three paychecks, they will be impoverished.

Lee

That is a big commitment for someone to make as far as their spiritual growth and their desire to really struggle and work through a process where they try to do the greater good for all mankind. And I think that that’s important. Now to the work in Sudan, it was very, very relevant in Sudan because this was work that was done with women from the North and women from the South. And women in between. And so women were from different tribes, different villages. They all had a core thing that they believed in, which was their faith. Some of them were practicing Muslims. Some of them were practicing Christians on different levels. But we didn’t kind of use their religion as a basis to have the conversations. We use their practice, their desire, their struggles to try and get through some of the hard conversations. When I talk about the various interest groups. There may be women sitting in the room whose warring opposition groups may have torn through their village and rape their mom, rape their daughter, or killed their husband or their brother. And so to have that as a construct within a group and to understand that they were there, drawn by their faith and their desire to bring peace within the country of Sudan was a big, big, big, big step for those women. And one that I had such high regard for because you just can imagine, you know, being in a room where you can look across the room and see someone who was in an opposition party, opposition village, who tore through your village and burned your heads down. So through their faith, they were able to sustain and go through that process and build a level of trust building was a huge piece. And I don’t know that we ever got to really build trust in a real authentic way. We’re able to get to a point to work together to build peace. But I don’t know that we ever really built trust and that’s my perspective now if you speak to others of my team, they may feel differently, but I never felt that sense and that was the most grassroots rooted person in the room among my team. But that was a very good example of, you know, the idea of how you kind of acknowledge your faith, your religion, your spiritual practices and use it as a part of driving your work openly. I hope that was that was clear because I think that that example is just so profound in my mind and I tell that story all the time, and I actually show pictures of the women in sessions, and you can kind of see it as you’re taught as I’m talking through it.

Ayushi

If you want to share those pictures with us, we’re happy to add those pictures to the sort of site that we’ll have along with this recording. How do you find it within yourself to still show up and interact with in the same physical space people who might have been perpetuators of hurt?

Lee

I’ll tell you a very short answer and I get it from people all the time. What I struggle through and what I experience, which could have sent me home to my bed, never to get up again. I do it for the children. I do it for the next generation. That’s what people see. And that’s what people feel. The worthwhile sort of engagement in their their time and effort to continue doing the work. I think people have great. I mean, people have great, great reverence for the future, for their children. And so I get that, you know, even myself, I think about, you know, why, you know, work in neighborhoods sometimes that are just not moving forward, but slowly, slowly, slowly. I’ll give you a little quick example, a quick story. I know we kind of I’ve talked a lot, but I love these stories because stories are great. There’s just so many of them. I’m I’m back in New York now in the original co-op that I organized as a young 21 year older. Right.

Ayushi

Wow. That’s pretty cool.

Lee

Yeah, I have two daughters. They have their own place. I have my own place. And when we started organizing this work in 1972, you know, organizing tenants within these buildings, two buildings to fight against slum landlords and to reject this whole effort to displace people. It was because we saw clearly there was an effort and attempt to really sort of displace everyone to sell the buildings before the city took ownership of the property because the landlords were not paying their real estate taxes. And so fast story sort of, you know, just to speed up the story. So so we did that because there were families in here who couldn’t fight for themselves. I was the youngest of all these women, these older women who were my my elders and my mentors. And they were even intimidated by took a young kind of snappy Southern girl who just felt like I can’t live like this. Right. So now all these women are dead. Most of the women who organized these co-ops are dead. I moved back. I was gone for many years, but I moved back to my space. There’s been some change of leadership in the building. And the leadership now are younger people, which is great. It’s great. These are all children are young people whose grandmothers organized the building. So they have they know everyone in the building is related. Everyone, you know, knows the other family. It’s that type of thing. But recently, there had been a lot of rumblings about trying to the new board of directors increase in rents that were just astronomical. Doubling the rents 100 percent. So I asked for a meeting because this is a co-op building that’s grounded in very strong principles and values. And I called a meeting with the board because I just felt like I need to understand your rationale. Your lawyer is giving you really bad advice. And so we spent time Sunday talking about this because some of the rent was changing from five hundred and eighty dollars a month, which is still low for New York City. But that’s because people invested their time to keep the rent slow and do the things they could do collectively to now increase to twelve hundred dollars. And so my question was, who do you think can afford to pay that the type of money number one? And why would you even do that? And they said, well, because the market we could get more rent for the apartments and these only two or three apartments that are rental apartments. I said, well, why would you want to put that type of burden on one or two people rather than selling them, let them sell the shares to them and allow them to be co-op members? Why would you do that? Well, because the law said we can do it, I said, but the law is not always in the best interest of poor people. I said, now, let me just tell you the story, the history of this building and what we fought for in 1972, which was to avoid displacement by getting the landlord out, resisting him and and doing the things we need to do to become owners of the property.

Lee

You are following the same path that the landlord followed in 1972. Do you realize that? And you know what? They did not realize it. They they were they could see the light bulb go on in their eyes. Wow. Gave them the story. And so and this goes back to what we were just talking about, you know, investing in young people and believing that your hard work, your labor, your investment in the work is going to really help them to either continue a legacy, build on it or do better. When we left the meeting, they said, well, you know, Miss Farah, we just really didn’t know this. We’re going to reevaluate that. We’re not going to be doing that. We didn’t realize that’s what we’re doing. And just taking some time. Yeah, very respectful. So I just wanted to give you that as a really good example of how why people continue to do the work because I could easily kept my door closed. And so, you know what? My is not going up. That’s that’s not part of my my whole personality.

Ceasar

That’s for sure.

Lee

Wow.

Ayushi

We’ll see you next time.

Ceasar

It’s wonderful.

Ayushi

I really appreciate how this story, not just story, this active, present tense, lived experience from yesterday, from Sunday or two days ago now is quite the opposite of that, right? It’s exactly about bringing others along, supporting others, creating space for that community modality of honor and reverence. That’s beautiful.

Lee

There’s another book that I would share with you. And this is coming out of my work at Union Theological Seminary because I’m in seminary not because I’m trying to be kind of a religious practitioner kind of thing. I’m there because of the people who are there. And this whole idea of liberation theology has always been something I’ve been so amazed at and always felt like I didn’t quite know the language around that because I was so busy doing the work. But not getting into the school and really being able to read some of the wonderful literature, there’s a great book that’s co-authored by Dr. William T. Barber for the Poor People’s Campaign. And Dr. Lizzie O’Harris, she runs the KRI Center at Union. One of the books that we’re going to be studying this semester is We Cry Justice. And it’s really used in the Bible as a text, but using biblical scripture that supports community building, supports liberation theology, supports resistance work, poor people’s campaign work. Interestingly, it’s in the Book of Devotions. And they may have a reference to a scripture. They use not just the Bible, but they use the Torah. They use various other kind of faith disciplines. But the premise of what they’re bringing to you is about fairness, about equity, about justice, and all of the things that we are out of balance in this country with. And so they have some great reading material. That’s just an amazing, amazing, amazing, truly amazing. We looked at Dr. James Collins, the cross in the lynching tree, which really, I mean, it’s the kind of work that they are doing there at Union is amazing with this whole liberation theology. So thank you for sharing. Yeah, I really am.

Ceasar

What I’m noticing in what you’re saying, not just in your own work and how you approach things, but the people you’ve been working with that you actually have a lot of reference for and a lot of respect for, is this recognition that there’s a responsibility to a kind of future generation, and there’s a responsibility, no matter where you are, there are things that you can do to help advance and move things forward. How do you help? What do you do with folks who aren’t there yet? How do you help them even just open the window a little bit to think it’s possible to step into this kind of notion of reverence? What do we do? Because it feels to me like there’s so much of that in the world right now. People are either actively kind of exploding outwardly at others, or they’re retreating and hiding themselves away, and neither one of those is going to get us where we need to be.

Lee

That is the question of the generation, right? How do you bring those along? Who are the naysayers? Who are the, there are people who impede the process, make it more complicated than it needs to be. I don’t have a true and tested answer for that question. But what I will say is that the idea of having patience and building a critical mass of believers who do, take seriously the work that needs to be done and who are getting it and making things happen or at least making the effort to make things happen. I mean, that’s really, for me, that’s all I can do and hope that they will reach back to their counterparts to bring them along. This is why I think the whole idea of everyone is valuable, but what are you willing to sacrifice by trying to get those who are just not getting it and don’t want to get it versus the ones who are getting it and want to go forward. And that may need more help than others. Within your group, there’s always people who have different levels and different degrees of ambition, knowledge, experience, but you work with that. But when you have someone who doesn’t have any of that and is to be pulling, pulling in the opposite direction, you just have to let it go and go with those who are in a place of movement, movement building. And this is the collective organizing, collective action is something that I have total regard for. And collective action doesn’t mean that the whole group is gonna be there. It means you have a collective group of individuals who are gonna move the radar. And that’s what I try to work with. And to avoid that critical mass of people not becoming discouraged because of the negativity. And that’s, again, those are balance and acts. Those are things you have to be so attentive to and figure out how you’re going to make it work in a way that you don’t lose people. Because once you start to lose a group, then you’ve lost.

Ceasar

This has been absolutely wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us and spending the time.

Ayushi

I was going to say it was an honor to meet you. I’ve learned so much. I’m walking away with multiple book recommendations. This was far more than I would have known coming in. So thank you very much for sharing all of your wisdom with us.

Lee

Thank you all for inviting me. I’m honored that you thought of me and just let me know if I can be of any help in future times.

Ayushi

Thank you all so much for listening to that episode of season three of We Who Engage. This conversation would not have been possible without sound production and editing by Dave Lushansky and Jeff DeWine. A huge thank you also to our team who supported us throughout COVID. Eli Epperson, Ana Perez, Nick Sprague, Mo Bradford, and Patricia Iregas.

Ceasar

Yes, and we also have to send a big thank you to the Silverberg family for their support for our launch event, which we’ve never done before. A belief in disbelief that was held at the MIT Museum, who really stood out for us to give us that space under short notice. And we also have to give a really big shout out to the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, who’s been a supporter of this work from the very beginning and will continue to do so.

Ayushi

Thank you all for listening.

Ceasar

Thank you.