Healing Work Through Understanding Our True History: In Community With Dr. Cory Greene.

Chris: Peace y'all. Welcome to the Carma Chronicles podcast, where we speak to the nation's leading healing center practitioners. I'm your host, Chris Nguon, and today we go back to New York, y'all, where we have a beautiful soul with us. Dr. Cory Greene, is a co-founder, co-director and organizer of this wonderful organization out there called How Our Lives Linked All Together, or also known as H.O.L.L.A., which is a nonprofit developed from the organization work in political strategizing, the people who serve sentences in the New York State Correctional facilities. Brother Cory is an amazing and humble person in community, y'all. And I'm so looking forward to sharing our conversation with y'all next, and then some of the intro music play. And then we going to hop right in. Brother Cory, how's your spirit today my brother? Thank you so much for hopping on with us.

Cory: Spirit is up, spirit is beautiful, happy to be on. And looking forward to echo the myths of the ancestors and the legacy and the work we do.

Chris: Absolutely. Thank you so much and I appreciate you lifting that up too from California, here in Oakland to New York City. We always lift up our ancestors and we give thanks to the land that we sit on, or elders who are able to build up space for us to also be here today. And although they're not definitely ancestor, definitely both of our elders in a lot of way. We've linked up to Shawn and Nedra Ginwright, who's been doing this work so much. And Cory, you've been out here in Oakland doing some work with us for Camp Akeely over the years and some other things. So we're just going to jump right into it and really learn about your healing journey, your story and who you are, your organization that you co-founded and all the beautiful work you're doing.

So as we step right here in 2023 and we're in March right now, and as we're having this conversation, when you think about healing work and your perspective, when you think about healing work with what shows up for you right now, what is the thing about healing work that you really see that's just prevalent in all the work, in all the communities and all the young people and adults that you're talking to right now? What is it about healing work that you like, man, you know what, it's really popping in this way right now?

Cory: Thanks for that question and I think it's a lot with that. It's so much. I don't know if there's like one thing to talk about. I think a couple, like five, six years ago, people were kind of like not really onto healing. It was only a small cadre of organizations and thinkers that was thinking that healing could be political, healing could be a certain way. I think nowadays that energy done bubbled up and a lot of people understand healing more. So I think that's good. I think a lot of times it's also not grounded with all of the history and all of the understanding what it could be. So I think that's something to talk about and grow with. I think there are so many elements of the healing from our families to our own personal development.

A lot of us are in movement and organizational spaces. So, we got to think about how does that relate to movement and organizational spaces, like our own transformation alongside other individuals and sometimes multiple individuals transformations. I think healing, a lot we've been talking about is a decolonizing process. So how do you get out of the lies of history, the lies that we've been told and particularly as black and indigenous people the world is a lie and a lot of us are not only getting beat up by institutions that continue to perpetuate anti-blackness and anti-indigenous and lies, but we internalize those lies, we start to believe them. So I think I stopped there, but one more thing I would say is there's a conference going on at Beyond the Bars March 24th to March 26th.

One of the national conferences around justice and prison abolition and this year is centered on restorative justice, transformative justice, and healing justice. And I think those are also really important conversations when we're talking about healing. Particularly thinking about the roots of restorative justice and even the roots of transformative justice being born out of the prison industrial complex out of the prison system. And also talking about the funding, the propaganda across the nation where everybody alternative practice is restorative justice when it's really steeped in mad whiteness. So I think there's a lot to talk about where healing at different levels of the conversation. So all of them are worth it too. All of them are important and they fall into.

Chris: And you're working with institutions a lot, Cory, and you spoke on it just a little bit right now about March 24th and what's coming up out there and you talk about circles and restorative justice and healing justice as well. Do you get a sense lately because a lot of folks who've been healing centered pioneers on our end, do you get a sense over the last three, four years that you see healing become more at the forefront that institutions or embracing at least some portions of it where you're having conversations that you've never been able to have so far with institutions? How's that been rocking for you?

Cory: I agree, I agree. That's what I was saying and it's not all good. I think a lot of more institutions are talking about healing and I think in the black radical tradition and just in our indigenous tradition as black people too, a lot of our ideas get colonized, get taken over. So anytime you see your ideas in too many institutions understanding the myths of history and our black radical tradition, if those institutions are not community specific, meaning being led by the majority of the people. And if these institutions are being led by white supremacist structures and they just hire somebody or they got a couple of people, or people still fighting anti-racist policies in there, but you're trying to implement these things and the majority of people that is supposed to serve ain't in leadership, ain't at the table, then that shows you, I'm using myth because myth is powerful.

Myth is kind of, I think I like it better than facts because myth is something that always show up in history. It's not that it just show up one time in history. It's a story. It's enough wisdom in it that you could look at many different moments in history and you could see this kind of wisdom there. So yeah, I think part of the myth is when a lot of our wisdom get into institutions and we're not in leadership, that people are not in leadership, it usually means it's about to get co-opted.

Chris: And you can see that so clearly over the years, I'm sure in the many different experiences and spaces that you've been. How do you navigate that when you see that coming? For folks who are really doing this work and be like, yo, I resonate with this so much and I see this institution shift in this way, but I want to advocate, I want to be able to have my voice heard. What is some of yours that you just shared with other people to be like, hey, when you start to see this shift in vibe, when you start to see this shift in culture and what co-opted culture could really feel like, what is some of the ways in which you've navigated it at in the past?

Cory: Yeah, it's a lot, man. I don't know if I got a blueprint. I think a lot of my stuff happened through learning like, oh, I'm just coming to understand this now, just as I'm still journeying. Yeah. I think some of the answer is being connected to elders and people who've been in the game for a minute and building off of that cadre, that leadership. I think that's part of study right there because these people done studied and they going to give you some study, but also doing your own study because I think a lot of folks in healing justice, transformative justice and restorative justice, kind of conflate these ideas. Like they all one, like we're just doing circle, we're doing restorative practice. Like those rubrics are all the same.

And I think those things, in my opinion like limit the way you can see how cooperation happens. When you're not understanding how those things shouldn't be conflated. You sometimes don't even know co-optation is happening. I think when you are not connected to elders and legacy and people who've been in the game, you sometimes don't know. You think, you're just trying to learn and you're trying to do your part. I think also learned about the myths, the things I'm talking about. Queen Mother Moore talked about, you know, the Black Power movement talked about. Dr. Mutulu Shakur talked about this, the non-traditional approach to criminal and social justice that was developed by the Prison Rights Movement in Attica, I mean, after Attica Rebellion in Greenhaven.

Greenhaven Think Tank talked about this. So we've seen this also in school, reform. No Child Left Behind and many other movements how people's concepts get turned into policies that don't really translate to implementations that serve us. So I think there's a lot of different levels. This is moving at the policy level on funding and how programs are being designed and developed. Who's getting the funding and then it's working on, depending on what level you come into this conversation, you see it play out in circles and conferences. So I think there are many ways that co-optation moving away. I think restorative justice is already a formation of co-optation. I think it's, from my understanding it was built by Quakers people coming into prison and then also people observing indigenous people.

And then using those practices within the criminal punishment system, criminal justice system for some, but the criminal punishment system. When our prison rights movement, when they was coming into prison after we took over Attica, the Jonathan Jackson movement, after we got pushed into prison. That was building programs and prison connected to community. They took that wisdom the wrong way. And we told him, Eddie Ellis told them like, that model is not productive because it doesn't address the real issues that black and brown people are victims to the system. So it's not offending the victim. We come from neighborhoods that have historically been oppressed in a criminal punishment system as align. And it attacks our communities. And we are victims of that system as well.

So you can't work in a system with alternatives and mediations and call people victims if you don't understand not only the historical development process we've been through, but also the everyday environmental contextual process the state is going through.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that breakdown. And your team yourself at H.O.L.L.A. really tend to everyday lift these conversations up and hold accountability in so many different ways. You know what I'm saying? Tell me a little bit about H.O.L.L.A., the organization that you co-founded. How Our Lives Link all together. And what I love about it is the healing justice work. And what I love about it is these collaborations. It's in the name, how we all link all together. Tell me a little bit about H.O.L.L.A..

Cory: H.O.L.L.A., shout out to the legacy. Shout out to Alex Aros. D. Marissa Blackard, Butter Lab. H.O.L.L.A. started in prison, like I was saying, it started from being Children's of the Prison Rights Movement. So brothers and sisters all across the country was pushed in the prisons in the late sixties, seventies. And they continue organizing in prison all around the country. New York was the political and cultural center of that power movement that got translated into the prison. And Attica rebellion was some reflections of it, but there was many formations developed from that. And one of the formations in Green Haven was the Green Haven think tank. And it was a study group. And they did tons of work working with the Quakers, working with many people, working with Kenneth Clark, who did the doll study and Mimi Clark working with them.

And did a research project mapping out that 85%, it's called the Non-Traditional Approach to Criminal and Social Justice. And it was done from the seventies into the eighties, and it was the first study really to ever simultaneously study the criminal justice system, race and geography. And it was done by people in prison. And it mapped out in the early seventies that 75%, I mean that black and brown people made up 28% in New York City, but they made up 85% of the prison system. And that 75% of the whole prison system came from seven neighborhoods in New York City.

It changes, but the ones we highlight the most is Brownsville, Best Side, East New York, South Side, Jamaica, Queens, South Bronx, Lower East Side and Crown Heights and Central Harlem. So to fast forward that story because a lot into who the Green Haven Think Tank is, but they built many programs. They built many programs and one of the programs that continued they built was a youth cadre. And they all built different programs. The Liberation Study Group, the Resurrection Study Group, the Coincia Study Group and these study groups and these youth cadres continue to build throughout the prisons from the seventies to eighties all the way to we came into prisons in 2000.

And H.O.L.L.A. became one of those resurrection cadres that take on the analysis of the non-traditional approach that got a basic question. And to answer those basic question through three parts, the historical perspective that explains how we went from plantation to becoming the majority of the prison system. The direct relationship that talks about how systems of oppression continue to keep flooding us into the prison system and how 75% of the prison system come from our neighborhoods and then the program, the third part is the program components. How we could build programs to fight against that system and resurrect our communities.

Chris: Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate that breakdown. How does Healing Justice really become the core of really what you're doing within H.O.L.L.A. and in communities as you see is showing up? Tell me a little bit about Healing Justice.

Cory: Yeah. Healing Justice. Shout out to our big brother Dr. Sean Ginwright and Mama Nedra because we come to Healing Justice through them as one major lens. And from them we get to what we call now the Godmother of Healing Justice Cara Page. So Dr. Sean Ginwright studying black Youth Rising, talk about studying and going to meetings and seeing the work that Cara Page and the Kindred Southern Healing Justice Collector was doing, talking about healing justice. And then studying Kindred the Healing Justice Collective and building a relationship with Dr. Sean Ginwright over time. And then later over time, building a relationship with Cara page. And then reconnecting to the non-traditional approach to criminal and social justice, the work that we was doing in prison because we wasn't calling the Healing Justice.

But the three components and particular the three parts to the analysis and particularly the third part, the three program components that's wrapped around with the 5 Rs of resurrection. Those things are pretty much the analysis of your self transformation along with community and along with systems. So those three things are like the foundation of our healing justice work. And then us, with the NTA, it's a youth cadre movement work. So healing justice for us is always in grassroot movement work. It's about building cadres of youth leadership.

And it's thinking about radical healing processes. In Kemet or Ancient Africa, we would call it initiations, secret societies. And what we really talk about from radical healing and healing justice, thinking about Cara Page is talking about going back into your tissues, your cellular memory, your genetic memory. Reminding yourself that we come from the earth that our Southerness, our Blackness, that our queerness, that our feminine energies. That our ancient cosmologies, that our original culture is our healing. And some of that is going back to all of it, you got to go back to, after Attica, you got to go to Attica, you got to go to the black power movement, you got to go to Ella Baker, you got to go to, you know, Robert Williams. You got to go to Ida B. Wells, Frederick Douglas, Harriet Tubman, Prosper, the Haiti Revolution, Yaya Ashanti y.

So there are so many layers in our tissues and when we go, when we talk about a radical healing process, when we talk about initiation, we talk about what ecology, what cosmology, what learned lessons, what elders, what spirit you have to reawaken the genetic memory and the whole processor reawaking the genetic memory. And in our current context, we're in war. The African Maya Alpha is real and we say some people talk about 400 years but the more genetic memory we get back, we can go at least to like 5,000 years. We can go to at least to where people started coming into Kemet to Egypt. And how, from the Syrians to the Hicksons, to the Persians to, to Greek, to Rome, to Islam and then to 1492.

We talk a lot about 1492, but we lost a lot of our cosmology through all of those things. We lost our lands. We lost our sacred lands. We lost our connection to elements. We lost a lot of our science. You think about Rome and Greek, the Roman Empire, which later became the Catholic church. The Vatican. The Vatican Empire. The Roman Empire. The Greek Alexander, the Alexander Library, the Kemet Library.

Chris: Kemet Library, I was about to say.

Cory: Out of our books is locked up. And these people got armies at the Vatican, at the Washington Library of Congress. They got armies in Germany who got a lot of stuff in France. They got armies protecting our secret societies. So we're playing with baby wisdom, we talk about, the stuff we did in the sixties, seventies right now. And that's important to get our genetic memory back, but it's more genetic memory to get back. And that's why it's a decolonizing process and the more memory your space, your ecology, the way you journey, the way your relationship, the way you studied, the way you connected the elders, you connected the ancestors. And I'll close by saying that, it's about abolition. In our newest form, it is some of our feminists analysis that brought it back to us from the south. It's thinking about, like Dr. Sean Ginwright. It is thinking about the process, the rituals, the care, the vulnerability that goes into the rituals, the teachings. But it's also a call to your genetic tissues because you can keep getting more of that and tightening those rituals up and pulling different rituals of water cosmologies, of nature cosmologies, of minerals cosmologies, the goddess and vulnerability, the goddess and remembering, the goddess and relationship and the goddess of grassroot movement building. That's about resurrecting the consciousness of our people.

Chris: Give thanks. Absolutely. Give thanks. Thank you for that Cory. I just want to pause for a moment and just understand and give respect to all of that knowledge and all of that connection that you just dropped right there. So, thank you. And I think what comes to mind for me, because you show up so powerfully and your team at H.O.L.L.A. shows up so powerfully in community. How are young people responding to this type of work right now in 2023? When you're talking about the youth cadres? Tell me a little bit about the young people and how they are really letting this sink into who they are as we're talking about linkages to the past. They must really be dropping some game themselves in some beautiful 2023 ways.

Cory: Yeah, man. It's evidence. I came through the cadre. I got locked up involved in a homicide. Everybody who came through the cadre in prison, we was like, we was seriously, seriously going in the wrong way. We was getting tricked by white supremacy and by the tricks that we internalized from white supremacy. And we thought it was cool. So it's been working, it's always been working. When we think about the Black Panthers and the Black Liberation Army, these are people that was street identified folks that resurrected and started serving their community. Community specific approaches, initiations, radical healing process always worked for us. And as we talk about 2023, one of our main programs, how I got four programs to kind of like, within this nonprofit structure to fulfill some of our work. And the main program is our 24 month legacy curriculum. Which is a 24 month healing center youth organizing training where we take in young people and 24 months ain't enough. And it's nonprofit structure. People we had to fight to even explain why we doing 24 months because programs are six weeks.

And we do an intense study over those 24 months each day. So like, we meet three times a week now. But to give a little more context before going into what I see, is 24 months the first process is called the Nat Turn of Revolutionary training. And it's all internal. We don't go outside much. We're just studying, building relationships, doing rituals, sharing our stories, sharing who we are, learning how to talk about who we are, thinking about organizing, formulating from our stories who we are, what's going on, our issues, what we want to organize against. Now we're in the second phase, which is the Ela Baker sustainability and transformation process. And while we do all of the stuff we was doing internally in Nat Turner, we now turn that into organizing campaign. And our young people are thinking about organizing around African center education because they're saying at homes and schools and grassroots organizations, nobody is talking about African centered education.

And talking about it in a serious theoretical way and practical way and pedagogical way. But we got young people that's 10 to 24. We got about 12 young people that's going through this process. And one of our young people is going to be at the panel and beyond the bar. So this is a national panel.

Chris: That's what's up.

Cory: She's young in the game. It's going to be a lot of seasoned vets. Everybody around the country is coming, talking about the tensions, the contradictions and what's next for healing justice, transforming justice, restorative justice. And I could speak about it, Alex Aaro. But we're putting up our youth cadre so that's how a lot of them are bringing stuff. They're organizing these school, setting up curriculum meetings. They're asking their teachers, do they know about Ela Baker? Why do we learn about this? They're teaching their brothers and sisters and mothers at home and telling them what they learning and asking them questions and bringing them to events, teaching them about stuff. They connected with elders, former political prisoners, volunteering, bringing water to their house. Learning with them, sharing ideas with them.

They love this. They come three days a week for five hours after school. So we meet every day, four to nine. So we have hard conversations. They're young, we laugh, we get mad, we get on each other nerves, we are a family. Mothers come in with us. We got people mothers who come to the session. So my mother come to session and be chilling in the circle. They talk about how they wish their friends and their family could be a part of it. But they also know it's serious. So they talk about how some of their friends and stuff is not ready for it too.

Chris: That must be amazing for you to see as a youngster who is battling a lot of these white supremacist tricks, as you say, and the evolution of understanding the power of healing work. And as you lift up, it's always been there for eons and eons and eons. Do you feel at this time doing the work you do, that it is almost liberating in a way in which it's so transformative for you? Like how do you reconcile that as like, this is your job, Cory, this is your job, but this is your lifestyle too. How amazing is that? I really love to pose that question to everybody to do this work. Man it's amazing, isn't it?

Cory: It's amazing and like today I'm understanding more of my genetic memory and our original instructions and as an African indigenous person, even though I was born in Mississippi, New York and urban spaces, a lot of times, so let me just say this because a lot of times in transforming justice and restorative justice and even the healing justice, we don't say that black people are indigenous. Like I said, I could take this so far. We are some of the first, if not the first matriarchal societies. We had probably first 50 matriarchal societies.

So I think it's super important to understand our indigeneity. And ops work and then after so many years of fighting, fake psychologists and people studying the social sciences about Egypt being black. The Metropolitan Museum finally did an exhibit last year saying that the civilizations of humanity come from Africa. And we're always saying this is the seventies. So I think what it says that our original instructions, our original culture is the build civilizations, the build nations, is the build it is. From that we had science, we had math, we had pyramids, we understood pie, we understood the stars. That's why when we say myths, myths mean we understand the science so much that we could turn into a riddle.

That's always going to be true. That mean we already master where the star is. We already know the pie, the math, we turned it into a myth now. So if you understand our science and science and myth is the same thing. So white supremacy separate our science and our myths but to get a myth to make a rap that mean you got to really know what you're talking about.  To make a poem that's fire about the work. I mean, you got to really know. You don't get to the myth without already doing the science. So I say that to say that I enjoy being black and being responsible for healing myself, healing my family, healing the community. It's not about a paycheck. I don't need TA services. Most of the work we do, we don't get paid for the nonprofit. This is about resurrecting our families.

A lot of the stuff I do, like you're telling my moms, you got to watch this movie. Let's go study. Telling my wife. Like I told you before, we jumped on, I was studying all day. Just cause, it ain't for my dissertation, ain't for like no panel. It's just like how we be as people in a world full of lies to get back to my truth. So I think there's a lot of days that's hard. Dr. G talk about flow.

Chris: That's right.

Cory: I think when your life is about pan-African, your life is about ancestors and spirit that is the flow. And I think a lot of our families, a lot of the white supremacist structure, those things don't be in that. So it's a balance. It's hard. But I think the flow for me and why it don't feel like work, even though it's work is that I hear ancestors invisible is important. I think we put a lot of energy on the visible, what our actions are, how we behave, how somebody else behave. I mean, how much things I'm doing too much. But I think part of what I'm learning is like the invisible, the things that you say to yourself but you can't see. The things that you think about, but you don't think about that deep. But it's a thought that go past you for the day. The reason why you came in contact with somebody. The reason why you turn right and then turn left. It's so much invisible that it's moving with us every day. That I think those things are like what I'm trying to focus on. And sometimes it's hard because everybody don't be thinking about the invisible.

Chris: Hundred percent.

Cory: That's the struggle. That is the flow. And one last thing I would say, definitely, like I said, since we've been in war anywhere from 400, 500 years to 5,000 years if not more, black people and understanding your indigeneity, it's important to understand that there's struggle and flow, that flow and struggle is the same in some places. And part of the spiritual and the political work, which is really spiritual. That's why I said the invisible is important because this is definitely a struggle. We're in struggle, we're in war. And Frederick Douglass said there's no progress without struggling. And when you work out and when you study and when you go into healing circles, when you go into the struggle, there's often more stuff in there for you that you got to find, that you're going to have before you enter the struggle. So you got to constantly be in struggle with the flow.

Chris: Yeah. That gives that, that balance. I feel it. I know the yin and yang. In my culture, we always think about balance when it's unbalanced, we feel it in our energy, we feel it in our vibration. You know what I mean? So shout out to your mom too and I appreciate you, I appreciate the both of y'all. Yeah.

Cory: Shout out the mother Greene. She's trying to be quiet for us now.

Chris: Yeah. It's all good. I appreciate your mother Greene. Cory, man, as you think about healing work in the next five years, what do you see healing work continued to evolve to and what you foresee?

Cory: I think a lot of it we got to remember, like I said, black people are indigenous. Some of the first indigenous people. And this is a way to get it away from whiteness but also to recent it in multiple standpoint. So we got a lot of us, all of us healing justice, transformed justice, restorative justice, a lot of that comes from African indigenous cosmologies. Whether you're talking about the mounds of America, whether you're talking about the pyramids and the Amhec and Mako in Guatemala, whether you talking about Kemet, Nubia, Samaria, China, India, Buddha, even the yin and the yang, a lot of the ancient and South China even a lot of that come back to the Kush formation. So we got to say when we're talking about people who understood science and civilization. And a lot of these people would say are the same people that traveled all around the world building the same science, same culture.

So I think that's super important. That's how we get out of a lot of traps. A lot of decolonizing traps and a lot of different formations of how this work could look and should look. Another thing I see is that more youth cadres and youth formations I would even go back to Sean. I know Sean got older. So even Sean, Sean was in leadership excellence, Youth Rising. We need more formations of radical healing process design for youth with expertise, with scientific wisdom and leadership and cadre buildings of teams of people who've been doing this, that can give it to our young people on a consistent basis all the time. Yeah. And in a way that's intergenerational, where we are putting them in leadership. Not just giving them training for something, but the training got to be rigorous and enough that we are moving them into leadership.

So we need radical process that are pipeline, intergenerational pipelines. Because that's what the matriarchal systems was about. They always had the youth and the elders and the children and it was direct pipeline to the legacies, to the oral histories, to the scientists. I think, another thing I see it going, is like I said, being more community specific. Now they got to be led by everyday local people. We can't just build organizations and build podcasts and panels where people like me, like I definitely come from the [35:54 shh] and I definitely got, you know, but I'm definitely a certain version of coming from the [35:59 shh] and I'm mostly doing a lot of organizing work. But it's important that my mother, that my family, that my auntie, I just came from Mississippi, shout out to Mississippi, auntie Bird, auntie Pat. It's important that the local people, they be like, Cory, you got a PhD. They be thinking, I'm like saying crazy. I'm like, nah. Like how do we bring that PhD wisdom that ain't really nothing, that they stole from us. How do we make sure that our people know that acupuncture science, these things come from us comes from us.

That resurrection come from us. We don't need a peacemaking restorative justice training the healing amongst ourselves. We don't need to go to the criminal justice system and get some alternative restorative justice that's like this come from us. So we as leaders for one, got to do more healing with our families. That's kinda what I'm saying. We got to build the panels and if we're going to be on the panels and we're going to be in organizations and we're going to be doing leadership with our staff. You got to do that twice, almost three times with your family because most of our families are big. Some of them are on this side of the water, other sides of the water, some of them in the same beef we see in the movement. Sisters don't talk to each other.

Young people don't know their culture. People relying on the system all the time. That's in our family. My family I know that. So we need to build that up in our family structure. Whatever, we learn from schools, from nonprofits, we got to give it back to the people. And the last thing that we do and we got to do is we got to stop relying on funding. We got to stop relying on philanthropy. And I think that's a lot of reason why a lot of our work go through these concepts, restorative justice, different changes because races, white supremacy, philanthropy don't really want you talking about the war. Don't really want you talking about white supremacy. Don't want you talk about the historical archeological personal, political, spiritual evidence that is scholarly. But we going to give it to you with emotions too.

So we can give you the books of how racist and sexist you are, but let us also give you the personal stories. Let's give you the archeological stories. They don't really want all of that. They want elevator pitches, they want us to frame things in certain ways. They want us to walk into meetings in certain formations. And we are literally in the invisible in our ancestors justice, which a lot of us need to start talking about that with healing justice transformed. What about the ancestor justice and our ancestor justice, like all those things we're saying to ourselves like damn I should have said that. That's your ancestors. And said like, yo, that was harder. Like at least I got the money, but I don't like the way they talk to me. When we say, I'm going to say this, but I'm going to really do that. All the ancestors is with you champ. All the sacrifice is with you. All of our people that are trying to like get our truth out. The reason why we lost our memory is with you.

So I think a lot about ancestor justice, about the invisible. So I will honor people, tell people like, and I think that's important with our healing with philanthropy and also with our healing with our family, but definitely with philanthropy that we have to stay true to what works, the most potent version of our medicine. And we got to be truthfully about how racist philanthropy is and stopping the most potent version of our medicines. And also how we got us fighting each other. And even if it is not a lot of people interpersonally are fighting each other across the movement, but there's also, ideological fights and there's also people depending on how much you know about funding, how much access you have to funding tools. All of that's a fight for us to get more access to those things and really to lock somebody else out. So all of these methods of white supremacist structures of not only moving us away from our science, but the elevator pitches, the FRPs and the dynamics that it creates. It limits community specific approaches. And we must take a stand on that.

Chris: It's all types of isms. Appreciations Big Brother Cory, Dr. Cory Greene, y'all. Thank you so much for spending some time with us. I could really talk to you for two hours, but I know it's late in the evening in New York and y'all got program right now as we speak until nine o'clock. So thank you so much and appreciations of your time, your work, your spirit, your love, brother. I give thanks to you and all that you do and the team and the family at H.O.L.L.A. too.

Cory: Yeah. I just want to give thanks to you man personally. I love your energy. We were just talking about the five Rs of reconciliation and one of the things that we all must do is apologize to ourselves and to our communities. And show up in front of our communities as a model that we're ready for atonement and we're ready to push us forward. And your vibe and your humbleness even in the emails is energy of that resurrection that makes people want to show up. So I'm of service to you. Just because the way you showed up and anytime we show up that way, we should service each. Shout out to Dr. G. And Mara and the whole flourish agenda family because they are our teacher and hopefully we teach and we grow and we honor the legacy in a good way for them too.

Chris: Indeed. A hundred percent. And as we close out, we give thanks to our ancestors and our elders and everyone who built this space for us. So Cory and I and everybody listening, we're doing this good work can continue to be here, advocate and be better for us, our families and our communities, y'all. So thank you so much for listening to the Karma Chronicles podcast. This was a special one for me and for us at Flores Agenda. And Corey, thank you again. One, love my brother.

Cory: Peace.