Hallelujah with Sendolo Diaminah

Sendolo Diaminah is here to point us to the pathway of hallelujah! Co-Director of the Carolina Federation and community strategist, Sendolo brings profound wisdom for how we’re abdicating our power, shares how she is guided by prophetic wisdom and offers inspiration for how we can all take more potent action in our lives.

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BTP - Sendolo Diaminah
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Prentis Hemphill
00:06 - 00:28
Hello, everybody. This is Becoming the People, and I'm Prentice Hemphill. I am currently on the road, so please do forgive the audio of this introduction. The episode that follows does sound beautiful, but I didn't want to miss a chance to give an intro to this episode where I'm talking to Sandilo Diamina, who is a dear friend of mine and is also one of the co-directors of the Carolina Federation.

Prentis Hemphill
00:28 - 01:20
He's a strategist, he's a poet, he's a prophet, and he's one of these people that I really trust to engage in an assessment of this time in a really thoughtful way. I know for myself and for people that I've been around, there's been a tendency to look at the pressure and intensity of this moment and either try to minimize or catastrophize so that we can make some sense of what's happening. But Sindolo has such a sober yet warm way, I think, of thinking through what this time is about, what the forces are that are at play, and how we become even more human, I think, through this moment of incredible repression. This is a really, really beautiful episode.

Prentis Hemphill
01:20 - 01:32
I want you to pinky swear with me right now that you listen to this whole episode because I think it is needed. It is very needed conversation. It is energizing for me to even re-listen to this episode. I get so much out of it.

Prentis Hemphill
01:33 - 01:47
This is a good one to share with people that you care about or listen to in community. And if you want to be a part of our community that's in conversation, please join us over at the Patreon. And without further ado, hope you enjoy this episode. I'm really excited to talk to you today.

Prentis Hemphill
01:47 - 02:03
You are, to me, just a really fascinating person to be in community with because I feel like you are living your life fully. You are really digging into the questions that you're in. You're studying them. You're practicing in them.

Prentis Hemphill
02:03 - 02:25
You're coming to conclusions. It feels like there's such an awareness to the way that you live your life that to be able to be in conversation with you really about anything is exciting. But I also feel like you just provide so much depthful insight into this moment that we find ourselves in. So I just, I'm grateful to be in conversation with you and also friendship with you.

Prentis Hemphill
02:25 - 02:43
And I'm excited to get in today. I hope you are too. I'm going to ask you a question that might throw you a little bit off guard. I don't know, but I wanted to just start because I know you're going to get into so much that is, um, that's really going to bring a lot of concepts, ideas, perhaps like clarity to people.

Prentis Hemphill
02:43 - 02:54
But I want to know a little bit about Sindolo, the person, like what can we know about your story or where you come from that will illuminate something for us about how you got here and how you became who you are now?

Sendolo Diaminah
02:56 - 03:23
Hmm. So I grew up in Kalamazoo, Michigan, and every Saturday we had dance class, and the first two hours of dance class was like beginner's dance class, and then there was a break, and then there was another two hours of advanced dance class. And I don't actually know how old Mama Cahamba was when I was in high school. She had to be at least in her fifties.

Sendolo Diaminah
03:24 - 03:49
And she just like danced circles around us, like we were teenagers. And she would just be like, ta-da, ta-da, ta-da, ta-da, ta-da, ta-da, you know, just like all the way in it. And you know, when you're saying the piece around like fully living your life, I remember her just saying these things like, don't do small mistakes. If you're going to do a mistake, do it all the way out there.

Sendolo Diaminah
03:49 - 04:00
And one, the audience ain't going to know because you're going to be all the way in it, and they're going to be excited. And two, I'm going to actually be able to see that you made the mistake. Don't hide it. How else are we going to correct it?

Sendolo Diaminah
04:01 - 04:13
And our drum teacher, I remember this one time, we were all tired because she was wearing us out. And we were leaning against the wall. And some of us were sitting down or laying down on the floor. And he came by, he was very quiet most of the time.

Sendolo Diaminah
04:14 - 04:41
But he said this thing, he came by and he said very quietly, stand up inside of yourself. And we were all, you know, it's like one of those things that like an elder says to you, of gets you together. Yeah. And so I feel like those two things are just kind of like the joy, the kind of like over the top exuberance of West African dance is just part of me in my bones.

Sendolo Diaminah
04:42 - 04:55
And that sense of not just Assume a posture to externally look a certain way But that like stand up inside of yourself is is something that my people passed on to me So those are some things that came to mind

Prentis Hemphill
04:55 - 05:04
Hmm. I love that. Stand up inside of yourself. I mean, when you said that, I was like, okay, how am I actually seated?

Prentis Hemphill
05:04 - 05:11
I bet everybody listening is like, okay, let me, let me stand up inside of myself. It's such a, there's a potency there. I love that. Thank you for those stories.

Prentis Hemphill
05:11 - 05:27
And just to imagine your work as dancing or coming from that place that you're dancing comes from is really sweet. I can feel something in that. I mean, I would call you an organizer, strategist. Do you accept these terms?

Sendolo Diaminah
05:28 - 05:46
Yeah. I think probably now I mostly think about myself as a strategist that organizing is one of the main vehicles through which I try to move strategy. But how are we going to get to where we're trying to go? That's the thing that I really care about.

Sendolo Diaminah
05:47 - 05:52
And I just believe unleashing people is so critical to that. Yes, organizing.

Prentis Hemphill
05:53 - 05:59
Unleashing people. That's that's like a way that you're defining organizing, unleashing people.

Sendolo Diaminah
05:59 - 06:47
Yeah, that's a big part of what I think about it as of like, um, you know, we've been taught to be small we kind of internalize these senses of being small and the kind of world that we could be co governing as being just kind of like me and my friends or me and my boo. And I think organizing at its best unleashes people to be like not only can I change this grievance that's coming up for me and folks like me, but like actually me and my folks could be governing our city, our state, our country, like to unleash our sense of possibility to be that big that like everyday people being like we can do extraordinary things feels like what organizing does at its best.

Sendolo Diaminah
06:47 - 07:01
I don't know, James Lopez who's at Power U has this other way of talking about organizing where he talks about earning the deep trust of everyday people. So I like those two definitions.

Prentis Hemphill
07:02 - 07:19
I feel a little bit compelled to drop into this some because it really feels like people are, and maybe always are to some degree, but contending with this, do I have the power to do? What do I not have the power to do? How do we impact the world? How do we not impact the world?

Prentis Hemphill
07:19 - 07:39
These feel like really core questions. And I, you know, when I'm in conversation with people, I'm reading things or online, see a lot of people saying, like, what are we going to do? Like, who's going to save us, essentially? And I think the idea of organizing is saying, let's look at that question a different way.

Prentis Hemphill
07:39 - 08:14
And so I'm just, I mean, one wondering, like, you can talk some about this moment broadly, just what you see is kind of what's happening, but then people's relationship to power in this moment and the ability to, like you said, govern our lives or govern locally, govern nationally, whatever it is to actually be involved in our lives, like, where do you see people as at with that, like, the awareness that they even can do that? Talking about this moment.

Sendolo Diaminah
08:17 - 09:04
You know, one of my dearest friends, Brian Proffitt, a few years ago, helped to organize these walkouts across the state of North Carolina that shut down dozens of local school systems in order to protest what the state legislature was doing. And one of the things that he said was he was like, A core victory of this campaign is the victory over fear and the victory over hopelessness of like public educators being like, oh, it's worth it to step out and try. And there's an interesting kind of like despair slash desperation of this moment that kind of whiplashes, right? Like nothing can be done.

Sendolo Diaminah
09:04 - 09:33
It's all too overwhelming. kind of numb out, or I'm so enraged, something is so intolerable, I'm gonna throw myself at it. But in a certain kind of way, both can have a flavor of despair. And I think a lot of what I'm listening for and longing for and trying to find in myself and other people is like, what are those capacities?

Sendolo Diaminah
09:33 - 09:53
What are those traditions? that our folks have for how to face this moment with hope. And I don't mean optimism in the sense of like, we think it's likely that things will go the way that we want them to go. But the sense of I'm not just throwing myself at a wall.

Sendolo Diaminah
09:53 - 10:28
that kind of like stand up inside yourself piece that like, I'm taking a step forward. The old folks would say, stepping out on faith, but you know, like that sense of the action that I take is full of potency, full of dignity, full of possibility. And I want it to have a powerful impact and the beauty, dignity, and potency of the act is already in it, right? Like, it's not waiting for the result.

Sendolo Diaminah
10:28 - 10:45
It's already in there. And that feels so key in a moment like this. And moment is even an interesting way of talking about it, right? Like, civilizational collapse isn't something that happens in a moment, right?

Sendolo Diaminah
10:46 - 11:19
the ending of long civilizations, Chinese empire, the Egyptian empire, the Roman empire, like those declines were hundreds of years long. So moment, what does it mean to be in this moment? My sense is the whole civilizational project of European modernity, right, of colonialism, comparatively isn't that old, you know, like, but it's hundreds of years old and it's coming to an end. It's coming apart.

Sendolo Diaminah
11:20 - 11:48
And it would be easy to just be like, oh, the rich people and the white people, their world is coming apart. But I think it's deeper than that. We've all been interwoven in this way of like, what are the deep assumptions about who we are, what we're capable of, what we're here for, how do we be together? All of those questions were churned up by colonization.

Sendolo Diaminah
11:48 - 12:08
And then with the collapse of not just colonization, but the resistance to it, all of these questions, what do we do now? And so, yeah, it feels like we're in a moment where there are deeper resources we need to call on. Yeah, that's kind of how I'm, in this historical period?

Prentis Hemphill
12:10 - 12:36
I want to get to the deeper resources, but it feels sobering and important in a way to say, this is maybe more than a moment. This is an era, we don't know, epoch, something. And I think it feels like the only way to get to those big questions, those big questions that feel like they are open in a way they haven't been. Who are we?

Prentis Hemphill
12:36 - 12:58
What do we mean to each other? All of that, those questions, some of them existential questions, that to get to them, we have to sort of accept that this is more than a moment. This is more than four years, or some people who are deeply on a different timeline than me. They're like midterms, four years, 10 years from now.

Prentis Hemphill
12:58 - 13:24
It's like, no, I think this is some other movement that is happening, some other thing. And there's something really sobering about that, to accept that. But I do agree that there are these other questions waiting for us that we can contend with when we do that. I want to get into a little bit of that deeper resource, but I think I want to start first with, as my grandmother would say, and folks in the church would say, they talk about prophesying.

Prentis Hemphill
13:25 - 13:34
I don't know if that's a, is that a word? Does Webster's dictionary, who makes dictionaries? Do people make, I don't think anybody makes dictionaries anymore. Right, Wikipedia.

Prentis Hemphill
13:34 - 13:53
Yeah, whoever, whoever. I don't want to call these AI bots out by their names either, but prophesying is what I grew up hearing, prophesying. And that tradition, I grew up around people. You'd get up and somebody would prophesy, somebody would say something.

Prentis Hemphill
13:53 - 14:18
I think we talked about it as predicting something. A lot of people these days are talking about Octavia Butler and what she predicted about this moment, even down to being from Altadena and seeing what happened in the Altadena fire or something like that. It's just so prescient in a way. So I'd like to talk to you because I think you're a person that gets people who know you, people who know about you, people who are touched by your work.

Prentis Hemphill
14:18 - 14:29
That's a word that kind of sticks to you. And I wonder, like, do you identify with the act of prophesying, the being of a prophet? And if so, what does that mean to you?

Sendolo Diaminah
14:31 - 15:14
Yeah, it's scary and exciting to me. The practice or the emergence of prophecy, to me, is something that kind of grabs hold of us and we can uh, surrender into it, we can become skillful in its flow, or we can try to fight against it. And, you know, there's lots of stories about trying to fight against it. And, you know, I think a lot of my journey has been, uh, especially for the last 10 years has been actually being in the shorter term cycles, the midterms, the presidentials, the electoral fights, the issue campaign fights that I think are absolutely critical.

Sendolo Diaminah
15:14 - 16:07
And every craft eventually will lead you into the real depths of what's really going on, especially in a moment like this. And I feel like those fights have really challenged me and pushed me into what is capable of providing guidance, insight in this kind of moment, in the ups and downs, in the You know, we had an electoral fight last year that was supposed to end in November, and I think it was April? When we finally got our opponent to concede, how do you sustain that kind of work, not just for a single cycle, but over multiple cycles, right?

Sendolo Diaminah
16:07 - 16:28
Like over decades, we're trying to bring strategy to our members where we're like, this ain't gonna turn around in a few cycles. Where does that come from? And so prophecy, the prophetic tradition has been a major resource for me. And I do identify with seeking to live in that tradition.

Sendolo Diaminah
16:29 - 16:45
But there's a shift for me that has happened where I used to be like, oh, there are people called prophets. And I love what you were saying, like prophesying. What's the practice? What is it that's being done?

Sendolo Diaminah
16:45 - 17:21
And I'm very influenced by Abraham Joshua Heschel, Jewish theologian, who was also a deep supporter of the Black Freedom Movement in this country and an incredible fighter against fascism. And he talks about the prophets, the Jewish prophets. And one of the things that he emphasizes is prophecy involves this relationship between that which is holy, that which we value most, that which is free in the world. Walter Brueggemann talks about a free people coming from a free God.

Sendolo Diaminah
17:21 - 17:47
That which is free and creative in the world is in relationship to human beings in history. And it's not just generic values of dignity and love and compassion and justice. It's like, what do those things look like right now in this historical moment? And so prophets draw from those deep resources of a people's history.

Sendolo Diaminah
17:48 - 18:02
How have we faced moments like this before? What's gotten us through? Who is that living source or what is that living source of freedom, aliveness, creativity, the sacred? And then what's this moment of history right now?

Sendolo Diaminah
18:03 - 18:23
And the Jewish prophetic tradition and definitely the black prophetic tradition is unsettling. It doesn't just call out the people in power. You know, Heschel has this phrase, few are guilty, but all are responsible. That's the message of the prophets, right?

Sendolo Diaminah
18:23 - 18:40
And so asking, how did we come to this moment? We can talk about what the kings, the scribes, and the Pharisees have been up to. We can talk about what the wealthy, the politically powerful, all of that matters. We have to call those things out.

Sendolo Diaminah
18:40 - 19:10
And the message of the prophets is we have all become complicit and participatory. We have become callous and willing to accept how things are and unwilling to step into our own leadership, agency, responsibility, freedom, and that all of us abdicating that is the necessary conditions for authoritarianism, is the necessary conditions for greed to run rampant.

Prentis Hemphill
19:10 - 19:40
the part of us abdicating that responsibility allows for these conditions, or the rise of authoritarianism specifically allows for that. And I guess specifically and maybe extrapolating some to, you know, more broadly, What causes the abdication? I mean, I feel like there's a lot culturally that is coercive, you know, it's trying to steal you away from that responsibility. But what do you think causes that abdication responsibility?

Prentis Hemphill
19:41 - 19:54
And how is it that you retrieved it or continue to retrieve it? Mostly like instructional. It's like, how do we start to And I'll just say this. I feel like a lot of people feel overwhelmed by everything that they're responsible for.

Prentis Hemphill
19:54 - 20:09
You look at it and you go, my clothes came from here. My food comes from here. My house was built by this. You just feel in a way entrapped in this web of exploitation.

Prentis Hemphill
20:09 - 20:19
And you're like, how do I step into responsibility? And rather than grapple with the complexity of that, I think a lot of people would rather be in denial because it feels like too much. So yeah, I'm just curious your thoughts on that.

Sendolo Diaminah
20:19 - 20:47
I'm also interested in how you are thinking about this, Prentiss, because I think so much of what you do around bringing people back to aliveness is what has mattered so much to me. Oh, how to put some language to this. I can feel it starting to stir up. Agency isn't control.

Sendolo Diaminah
20:48 - 20:57
And there's a say that you know, there's a myth. There's a I won't say myth because myth can be great. There's a lie. There's a lie.

Sendolo Diaminah
20:57 - 21:21
It's a straight up lie. That to be responsible is to be able to control the outcomes. And you know, we was hanging out the other night and I was watching you parent and I was like, there's agency in here, there's love in here, there's responsibility in here, but this baby is not going to bed. You know, like that's a real thing.

Sendolo Diaminah
21:22 - 21:37
Oh God. But to abdicate because you're not in control, because you're not getting the results that you want, because you're, you're not able to have the impact that you want to withdraw. Why, why do we do that?

Prentis Hemphill
21:37 - 22:30
Hmm, I have a little bit of a theory or maybe it can just start us down the road. I'm I Think about myself, you know, that's all I can do my own experience of that. It's like I Have learned to live with a degree of I don't know if it's tolerance acceptance of a kind of culpability Maybe it is some of the blame but it's like I'm not I am not leaving this world Good or pure in some way. I don't have an idea of myself as It's not just responsibility but without blame and I think especially in the US there can be like people want to be good and I don't know if it's like Christianity or white supremacy or whatever might be but there's like a

Prentis Hemphill
22:30 - 23:11
I want to be a good person and I want to think that I'm a good person in the world and I do good things. It's like, yeah, I want to feel fundamentally deeply that I'm living aligned with my values, that I have integrity, but I'm not going to get through this life with clean hands. But the best that I can do and what actually feels fulfilling to me is to do my part in the unraveling. And to do my part through the expression of my work or, you know, whatever it is to contribute to that, and to tolerate that I won't see all of it, that I won't do all of it, that I need somebody else to do some part of it.

Prentis Hemphill
23:11 - 23:28
But there's something about that. That's what gets me through is like, I'm connected. I'm, I'm in also, I'm not just, I'm not just entrapped in the web of that kind of culpability. I'm also in this other web of relationship with people who are unwinding things the best that they can.

Prentis Hemphill
23:28 - 23:33
And maybe that's coping. That's how I get through.

Sendolo Diaminah
23:33 - 23:40
Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. I mean, you've, you've talked about this before around the obsession with innocence.

Prentis Hemphill
23:41 - 23:42
Yeah.

Sendolo Diaminah
23:42 - 23:55
Yeah. Um, and you talk about James Baldwin's kind of just going at it, just being like, we ain't innocent y'all. And, uh, innocence is, is, is one of the indicators that crime is going on. Right.

Sendolo Diaminah
23:57 - 24:59
That's why we announce in our innocence rather than seeking out our involvement with the suffering, our own and others, there's something There's almost this story of like, if we find suffering, if we find harm, that is evidence of our wrongness. And we can only be worthy. We can only be You know, recently, to talk about myself, I was wrestling through all this stuff about having this big crush and just watching myself do these things of like, how can I calculate my behavior so that I will get the result that I want? I will receive the affection that I want.

Sendolo Diaminah
24:59 - 25:06
I'll receive the attention that I want. And why do I want that? Why do I need that? I mean, it's fun, it's enjoyable, it's delicious.

Sendolo Diaminah
25:07 - 25:26
And there's a desperation inside of it that's like, because I don't think it will come unless I get it right. Because fundamentally, the fear is, it isn't for me. that good things in the world aren't for me. I got to earn those things.

Sendolo Diaminah
25:26 - 25:32
You got to earn a living. You got to earn the love. You got to earn all these things. And so you better be out here good and innocent.

Sendolo Diaminah
25:33 - 26:01
You better be out here showing all the things that you're supposed to because the underlying story is those things aren't for us. And there's something, there's something beautiful. I mean, You know, the older I get, the more I'm like, you know, I don't identify as a Christian anymore, but there's some good teachings in there. You know, like, and this sense of grace, there's something important about being like, innocence is not a condition.

Sendolo Diaminah
26:02 - 26:26
And in fact, it's essential. that we're not innocent. And that not despite it, but because we are involved with the suffering of the world, we are part of the suffering of the world, because of that, grace is necessary and possible. And then there's, you know, so this for me is connected to a Buddhist sense.

Sendolo Diaminah
26:26 - 26:45
You can think about it as, well, the world is suffering, bad stuff is going on, we got to get up out of here. What can we do to suffer less? What can we do to minimize suffering? There's another way in the view of the Bodhisattva is suffering is the arising of opportunities to do good in the world.

Sendolo Diaminah
26:46 - 27:14
How can I seek out? How can I get hungry for? the ways that I'm involved in contributing to suffering such that I can give rise to liberation, that sense. And I think we have to be connected to some source, grace, this sense of something bigger and more, because if we're trying to do it with what we believe to be our personalities, the limitations of our capabilities, then we get tired.

Sendolo Diaminah
27:14 - 27:32
I get tired. But when I'm able to tap into that something greater, something flows, like grace doesn't just come to me. I've had experiences of it moving through me. And when that happens, there's almost a relishing.

Sendolo Diaminah
27:32 - 28:11
There's almost a thrill of being like, maybe it's good that we were born in this moment. Like maybe, This is the greatest opportunity to bring forward goodness in the world, to really bring an answer. What do our traditions have to say to this deep crisis of civilization? Could it be that this isn't a mistake or a problem or it is a catastrophe, but what if it's not something to avoid?

Sendolo Diaminah
28:12 - 28:35
but something that could call forth the answer that our people have been longing for and bringing forward for so long. So that to me feels essential, the kind of dipping below personality into being. That's what I got.

Prentis Hemphill
28:36 - 29:10
Girls about to run around. I was about to shout because you know, one thing I love is a good Christian Buddhist teaching a good Christian Buddhist sermon is going to get me everything I need. Um, Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Because it's that resistance of the learning that deepens the contraction.

Prentis Hemphill
29:12 - 29:19
It's the resistance of the learning. It's like, well, what if we learn this? What if we learn this thing? What if we show up to this thing?

Prentis Hemphill
29:22 - 29:22
Oh, goodness.

Sendolo Diaminah
29:24 - 29:58
Goodness. It's like we don't believe any, you know, there's, I love the word hallelujah, because it's this enunciation, like it's this celebration in the face of all these things. And there's an audacity to it, like there's just a, in the face of the conditions that our people have faced. The fact that the word hallelujah lives in our folks the way that it does, and that's the thing that I want our people to find.

Sendolo Diaminah
29:58 - 30:08
Like, what, when you're like, why do we abdicate? I'm like, we abdicate because we've lost connection to that hallelujah.

Prentis Hemphill
30:09 - 30:10
To the hallelujah, yes.

Sendolo Diaminah
30:10 - 30:16
And when we find it, it's not difficult to stay in agency. Like, it's joyful.

Prentis Hemphill
30:20 - 30:59
I don't know why I have a podcast because when spirit starts moving me like that, when you start moving me like that, I just want to lay down and then I just need to lay down and lay back in a moment. Oh. Oh, you know, it's in a way, it's like what I've been just personally really longing for. I'm like, it feels connected to me, you know, AltaStar is one of our teachers and friends, and everything that she's offered me and through her teaching around, ah, I feel that too.

Prentis Hemphill
30:59 - 31:40
It's like that ah, anyway, kind of feeling like I, want this moment to call forth those people that still have all for all of this, for all this life, for all this world that have all, you know, because I do think, you know, Naomi Klein has written about this and other folks have written about this, that right now there's like a, the folks that we have allowed to ascend to power. have this preoccupation, this obsession with death. And there's, it's like, that feels like the center, the core of what they're circling around.

Prentis Hemphill
31:40 - 31:59
They don't believe that there's something here worth celebrating. And you talk about that control piece. It's like, how do we control rather than surrender or have agency, but the kind of agency that you're like, okay, well, right. I gave that my all and it taught me something else.

Prentis Hemphill
32:00 - 32:19
I can hold it lightly enough that it can fall away and teach me what it intends to teach me. But the people that are most afraid say, I'm going to white knuckle this thing. I'm going to try to control it and try to grip it. But you can't be in love with aliveness if you are white knuckling this whole experience and trying to control it.

Prentis Hemphill
32:19 - 32:47
If you're trying to cram God into something you can control and manipulate, you can't love this life. I don't get it. But I feel excited when I hear you speak and the way that you do the work, the way that you go about infusing or inviting aliveness into it. I'm like, those are, to me, the folks that are becoming ready to lead through this moment, the people that are like, let me point you in the direction.

Prentis Hemphill
32:47 - 33:01
of the hallelujah of the awe of the aliveness let me point you in the direction of that of the learning of the growth of the deepening that that's what this process is about and everything that we're being kind of taught to do or coerced to do or doing out of fear.

Sendolo Diaminah
33:02 - 33:02
Yeah.

Prentis Hemphill
33:02 - 33:22
There are these other invitations and these other paths, but we, the beingness, you know, it's being that deep resource of the beingness allows all of that to be central to the, to the journey. So I just, it makes me want to shout, move around. Cause that's it. That's it.

Prentis Hemphill
33:22 - 34:04
There's one more thing. I think, you know, I, It's kind of taking what we're talking about and maybe adding another layer of, I'm going to say like concreteness. I'm a little bit hesitant to do it as you can hear, but sometimes I felt like those of us on the left often end up being much more in a reactive stance to things that happen. Some of that might be that we are You know, a collection of the people who have lost the most so far, you know, it's not like what binds us is often what's been taken from us, or the different ways that things have been taken for us.

Prentis Hemphill
34:05 - 34:42
And I think it's been really challenging, from what I can tell, for there to be a vision that unites us, that we come together around. And I think some of it's in what we've been exploring here, but I'm curious for you, what do you think is enough to put in the middle of us to say, let's organize around this? Are there words that you use to talk about the vision for how we might be together in this time or in whatever emerging iteration of human civilization or civilizations that, you know, we might experiment with. Is there a way that you talk about what that is?

Sendolo Diaminah
34:42 - 35:07
That's very much in process for me. You know, I I've done so many versions of like strategic planning, visioning processes, attempts to shape the future. And I think there is a role for planning. I think there's a role for dreaming.

Sendolo Diaminah
35:09 - 36:05
And the thing I feel most moved by right now is letting action come from the set of relationships of deep integrity. And I'll try to be a little bit more precise to give people something to hold on to as I'm kind of like saying these nebulous things. I I was reading about the origin of the word quilombo the origin of the word for these communities of self liberated Africans who had been enslaved and maroons. And the word comes from Angola and a group of people who, in the face of kind of European colonialism and the slave trade, kind of built these new kind of militarized war camps.

Sendolo Diaminah
36:05 - 36:28
And they called them quilombos. Very complicated history because they also engaged in slaving. But one of the things, the reason I'm bringing it up here They were a multi-national, multi-ethnic people. And the way that you became a member of the group was through the initiation ceremony.

Sendolo Diaminah
36:30 - 37:04
Why does that matter? There's something different about saying we are going to practice ceremonies and rituals of belonging that affirm how and who we are as the way of being a group moving forward into an uncertain future. That's different than saying the foundation for our peoplehood is a set of plans, policy, priorities, strategic maneuvers in relationship to our opponents. I think those things are useful.

Sendolo Diaminah
37:05 - 37:28
The people who were resisting enslavement needed to have tactics, strategies, you know, like plans. But the kind of priceless capacity of being human, is actually relationship. What humans do, kind of better than anything else, is like, we be doing the group thing. And we find new ways of doing group things.

Sendolo Diaminah
37:28 - 38:12
And relationships hold uncertainty. I think maybe it's Fernando Flores has the thing of like, the future is really just the promises that we make to each other. And so I'm really interested in this question, what ceremonies could we be in together collectively that would allow us to stay in us moving into the future and kind of navigating the contradictions that we're facing in this moment. And I'm very interested in ceremonies of both grief, remembrance, and celebration of the history of this place and our various peoples.

Sendolo Diaminah
38:12 - 39:18
Like, what would happen, what kinds of strategies and policies would come from Black, Indigenous, Latine, white folks coming together in ceremony to remember what it has cost us to be in this country with each other and to celebrate each of our hallelujahs, if we were doing that and then we asked and we had a set of principles, we had a set of virtues, integrity, courage, enjoyment, And we just held those things together. I don't think, you know, I was listening to this Black woman who's a state legislature here, state legislator here in North Carolina, Ms. Cunningham in Mecklenburg County, who's out here wilding out and, you know, supported a right-wing bill to force sheriff cooperation with ICE in the state of North Carolina.

Sendolo Diaminah
39:19 - 39:48
And she got up there talking about, Well, my people were enslaved. And so if somebody asked me to help some other group of people, because they're going through a hard thing, I'm going to say unapologetically, no. And I heard her speech. And I know in my bones, if she really had to sit with the story of the suffering of people's families being torn apart and deported.

Sendolo Diaminah
39:49 - 40:05
And her community insisted on courage, integrity, and love. I don't think she would be capable of making that speech. She's only capable of making that speech by remaining out of relationship. with the suffering of others.

Sendolo Diaminah
40:06 - 40:21
And that was the whole strategy of segregation. That's the whole apartheid strategy. You have to keep people, it's not just they're living in different places. They must not feel each other's grief and they must not know each other's hallelujah.

Sendolo Diaminah
40:21 - 41:03
Like that is essential. And so vision to me, I think for good reasons, we have been intimidated to invite in all the stories, all the stories of this place. And the vision to me is choosing to be stewards of the full history of this place and to ask what from each of our traditions could finally break the history of supremacy in this place and bring something else forward. I know that's not, policy agenda at some other time.

Sendolo Diaminah
41:03 - 41:29
We could talk about public ownership of utilities and all kinds of things about what kind of economic strategies or political structures can enable it. But to me, the underlying piece is actually dropping the abdication, saying this is our history. Every single ounce of it belongs to each of us. And if we're going to live with integrity, with courage, with love, with enjoyment, with that history, what would it look like?

Prentis Hemphill
41:31 - 41:45
That's very clear. It's very clear. Becoming the people to me is trying to do some of that. Like, not we the people, you know, we're sort of referencing that, but becoming those people that you're talking about.

Prentis Hemphill
41:45 - 42:13
And the part around knowing each other's pain and knowing each other's hallelujahs is so rich and I'm just grateful for the clarity Thank you. Honestly, you know, I'm just so grateful to be on this this journey to have Adjacent paths to be able to like crisscross over into each other's play areas sometimes and yeah I love you, and I'm I'm really grateful

Sendolo Diaminah
42:16 - 42:25
Love you so much, P. Thank you. Thank you. I'm, I, I know that's part of the work of this podcast and the feeling work that you're inviting us into.

Prentis Hemphill
42:25 - 42:38
Thanks for helping me clarify, you know, thanks for being a part of it. Um, Sindolo de Amina, you are a light, a love, and thank you for joining us here.

Sendolo Diaminah
42:39 - 42:40
Thanks for having me, love.

Prentis Hemphill
42:42 - 43:05
Becoming the People is produced by devon de Leña with special production support this season by Jasmine Stein. It's sound engineered and edited by Michael Maine. Our theme song was created by Mayyadda. If you're enjoying these conversations, please subscribe, rate, and especially, especially leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever it is you listen.

Prentis Hemphill
43:05 - 43:30
And if you haven't already, please join us over at the Patreon. Prentis Hemphill, we are having a great time over there building community, learning together. Come join us. And as always, thank you for listening to Becoming a People.

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