The Waging Peace Podcast
Introducing the Waging Peace Podcast, where Diana Oestreich dives headfirst into finding the unsung heroes of change, rebels against the status quo, and visionaries shaping a world that refuses to settle.
Discover your power, ignite your passion, and redefine what it means to wage peace and make a damn difference in this world.
Join the revolution as we learn how to transform our communities with justice, equality, and unwavering connection.
Are you ready to shake things up? Welcome to the edgier side of peacemaking.
The Waging Peace Podcast
Discovering Identity and Justice Through Poetry with Activist Drew Jackson
Let's journey into the world of street level poetry and activism with the phenomenal poet, Drew Jackson. From his humble beginnings in South Jersey, we follow his path through writing hip hop lyrics, pastoring and into the realm of poetry.
What does it mean to be a black man in America? Drew's work unpacks this weighty question, exploring themes of identity, justice, and the power held within our very names.
We dive into Drew's powerful poems, each one a testament to his belief in the conversation between scriptures and racial violence, Jesus and the death penalty, being a dreamer while watching injustice unfold on the news. The potency of his words will make you rethink the violence we accept from racism and the importance of standing up for those on death row. It's a provocative look at the intersection of faith and justice, providing a much-needed floodlight illuminating the marginalized and oppressed.
But it's not all heavy topics and deep dives; there's joy to be found in the small acts of justice that make a difference in our communities. Drew enlightens us about his volunteer experiences in a Catholic Worker community, and the transformative power of showing up for one another. His stories remind us all of what could happen if Love and God stepped into our headlines and got their way. This episode isn't just a discussion—it's a call to action. So come along and join us as we watch poetry lead us to notice the pain in our headlines and take action in the streets.
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You are listening to Waging Peace, the podcast that hosts hopeful conversations with peacemakers and world changers about how we can take action to make our communities more just, equal and connected. I'm your host, diana Ostrich. I'm so glad you're here with me. Buckle up, because these episodes are going to change you in all the best ways.
Speaker 2:My family and I my wife Janae and I and we have twin girls, who are eight, going online.
Speaker 1:Twin girls.
Speaker 2:Yeah, identical twins, so pretty wild. We are here in New York. We just moved to Brooklyn actually the beginning of the year, but we've been in New York since 2018 and moved here to Planted Church. So we started a church community in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, pasted there for about six years and then just recently transitioned out of pastoring that and started working full-time with the Center for Action and Contemplation.
Speaker 1:That's a really long, long phrase, but for us normal folks we would call it Richard Roars place, like where he sits and contemplates and teaches.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so yeah, been doing work with them. I just came on full-time staff with them, but I was on the board for several years with them and I write poetry.
Speaker 1:All right. So one of the things I just really love about it is like you're this very hip, cool. Everybody can't see you professional and you're like and I write poetry? Yeah, you do, but people who haven't gotten to read your poetry, there's poetry and there's stuff that is like power to the people, like someone lays it down and it's just kind of quiet, you know, and I feel like some of your poetry just stands, it takes what's happening in the world and then it flips it and says what we most think, but then lets the truth that, like justice is intersecting in our lives right now, like if we're willing to see it, if we're willing to see the injustice, we're willing to see what needs to come. When people hear poetry I'm like there's a lot of kinds. Drew Jackson.
Speaker 2:Well, it's you know, if someone says I do music, it's similar. It's like there are a lot of kinds of music. There's a lot of range to that.
Speaker 1:Where do you feel like you're looking when you're writing poetry?
Speaker 2:Where do I feel like I'm looking?
Speaker 2:That's a really good question, oh, and I feel like I could answer it in a couple of different ways, because, on one hand, I feel like I am looking very far, sort of like out toward the horizon, out toward like what could be, you know, but also like doing that from a place of trying to stand within the real sort of stuff of the world, the real pain of the world, the real injustice.
Speaker 2:In the first in these two collections of poetry that I wrote, I'm very sort of like writing as only I can, as a black man, navigating the landscape of American empire and, you know, as someone who has grown up in that and who has had to learn how to navigate it, who's still learning how to navigate it and doing so in a way that is following the way of Jesus and trying to decipher what that means in this context, but also as a dreamer, as a dreamer of what it could look like and what it feels like and tastes like and smells like when the reign of God pierces this thing that we're all living in, when it intersects right, and so when we get to glimpse justice and peace, god's shalom.
Speaker 2:You know, how do we have eyes to see it, and I think poetry is one of the gifts that has been given to us, to you know. Help, slow us down so that we can actually see the mustard seeds of, you know, the kingdom of God creeping in in those sort of pockets, in little places that we might not notice. And so, yeah, I think that's how I would answer that I could say more, but yeah, no, I think that's beautiful and I think there's this place.
Speaker 1:So so I really believe in activating justice and instigating joy, and this only comes from wage war. I'm like nobody cares about peace until you see what war takes from us, and I think that we we very much. The empire is a warring empire out of our like. Over 250 plus years as a country, we have not been at war for I think it's estimated 18 years, maybe 20. We've had a peacetime. So, as a peacemaker, I think that you hit on this part that, like Jesus is, is the peacemaker.
Speaker 1:He's like announcing that. But how do we see it and how do we even want it in a place that doesn't tell us it's possible and tells us that we can't even be that because we're not even supposed to be. Like who can even dream that? And so you know, cornel West thing that like justice is what love looks like in public, and in my mind that's God Like if I see love in public like that's it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I think your poetry is helping us taste like what's what isn't here, the injustice. So I guess I kind of wanted to start with the first question. I've been really curious to ask you because like nobody wants to talk about peace, right, because it's like just an overused word.
Speaker 1:But yeah we all want it right. So I guess my question for you is when was the first time that you remember experiencing or seeing or noticing like the need for justice or like an injustice, like what's your first memory of that and like how did that change you?
Speaker 2:That's good. That is a a complex answer for me because it's connected to history. So for me, I grew up in South Jersey, just across the bridge from Philly. My dad was born in Harlem. My mom was born in Philly but moved to South Jersey, raised us. I have three older brothers. There's four of us, four boys.
Speaker 2:We grew up on a street where we were one of two black families on the street and it was like, as I'm young, I'm trying to figure out what all that means, and playing with my friends on the street and having different interactions that I can run down the list and tell you about these. It actually wasn't one of the typical interactions that oh, something's off here. It was actually a series of just my friends would talk about where their families are from, their ancestry, and it was always curious to me. As to my different friends, they would talk about their Irish heritage or this heritage or that and there was this sort of like pride in it and then they would ask me where's your family from? And I would have no idea.
Speaker 2:That sort of got me curious as to like why is it that as a black American, I can't trace my story back to a particular place, like I know my grandfather's from South Carolina why can't I go back further than that? And I think that was the sort of first thing where I was like this isn't just me, this is us. It was the first feeling that I had of like something about this whole story that we're living in. It's not right, something's not right there. And so I think that was actually the first time that it was just that feeling of it wasn't like a particular thing that happened. That was like there's this great injustice, but it was like there's something about this larger story that we're all living in that's not matching up right. Starting to put the pieces together, it was like, oh, this is the thing right. I think it was that moment that really kind of did something to me.
Speaker 1:How old were you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, I was. I mean, I was probably in like second grade.
Speaker 1:Okay, that is really profound. When did you start writing poetry?
Speaker 2:I started writing hip hop lyrics first, and that was my yeah, you did, that was my poetry.
Speaker 2:I guess I started in college really as a just a. I needed something to do as I started writing. But I was always someone who was drawn to word play and lyricism. And just growing up, like I said, with three older brothers my oldest brother's 10 years older than me, and so I would ride in the back of his car. He's playing all sorts of different stuff, right, and I'm like just listening, but I'm fascinated by the words and the rhyme scheme and how you can make them fit together to tell a story and all of those sorts of things. And so I started really writing in college and then that over time I started to morph into like formal poetry.
Speaker 1:I'm glad you started, because there is that thing where your ear can hear these words and you're just like caught by it and you're like I want to do it, or at least like take what they're doing and like mix it up a little bit, so I have a favorite poem that you wrote.
Speaker 2:Would you be willing?
Speaker 1:to read it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:All right, it's called Like a King.
Speaker 2:I think you're the first person that's asked me to read this one.
Speaker 1:For our listeners who didn't get our a gab on the front end. I am located in Minnesota. Many people will know that Minneapolis is where George Floyd was murdered, and so this is part of where I live Like. This is our story and it isn't over. This poem just connects to the place that I live, the place where I'm raising my sons. But brace yourselves, folks, because this is a powerful poem.
Speaker 2:This poem is called Like a King and it's written in reflection on Luke, chapter 22, verses 63 through 65, like a King. They mocked George Floyd spreading a meme throughout the LAPD that read you take my breath away, a funny Valentine, I guess. They mocked Eric Garner on a TV screen live behind a news reporter minding a chokehold, mouthing I can't breathe. They mocked the chokehold of Elijah McLean smiling while standing in front of his memorial. She wore a T-shirt mocking the beating of Rodney. That read LAPD we treat you like a king. Later she became Philly's commissioner of police.
Speaker 1:Can you tell me about it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know this. This collection is a road in conversation with the gospel of Luke and you know this particular poem is reflecting on that passage where they, you know the, the Roman soldiers, dress Jesus up in royal attire quote unquote but they, they mock him and they beat him, you know, as if he is the, the king of the Jews. But as I was reading that, there were just so many like different parallels in my mind, thinking about how what we see in Jesus is, if we have the eyes to see, you know, we see in the crucifixion of Jesus. We also see in, you know, the murders and the lynchings of black people in the United States, particularly at the hands of police, the experience of police brutality and the ways that it's mock these instances of these brutal murders that take place. Yet there's this mocking and there's this jesting and there's this as if to communicate that we don't really take this seriously, that you're not really a human being.
Speaker 2:I think that's where the poem came out of just sitting, sitting with all of that. Also, there's double play of it all, as they're mocking kingliness of Jesus. The reality is it's like we know who Jesus is and you know, part of my writing of this poem is to say, like, as you, as you're mocking the humanity of George Floyd and Elijah McClain, right and Rodney King, it's like the truth of the matter is they are human beings created in the image of God, god's offspring who have God's DNA.
Speaker 2:Therefore, they are they are they are of royal stock and you don't even know what you do and like they are kings.
Speaker 1:We have this divine yes dignity in us that nobody can deny, until it's a police officer. And then it becomes a hemming and hawing situation and as a soldier who has waged war, like there is no question what killing looks like, like nobody's like not I don't know was that a killing or not like we're trained to do it on command and we're trained to see it and to avoid it. And so as a as a former soldier, watching that, I'm like there is no denying what is happening and who is doing it. And then also I'm raising a black son and a white son and I also come from law enforcement is in my family and so everything's clear in a battlefield somehow in my own country. I'm like how does this murder which the world watched, how does this become a conversation? Because it's clear.
Speaker 1:It's clear when murder is happening and there is no denying the dignity and Jesus has never he's interrupted every act of violence. There's no way we can deny who Jesus is or would be doing in these things. And we're talking, recording this, just the same week that Tamir Rice could be celebrating his 21st birthday, and I don't I mean there's so many names, but I feel like Tamir Rice. Maybe people don't know his name as much as George Floyd, but I think it's significant that he should be turning 21 this week and we're reading this poem. And my son was six when Tamir Rice was killed and he was the first elementary schooler that had been killed on a playground by a police officer and they were acquitted was he 12 when he was killed he was 12 I my memory says he's 12, but he was in elementary school.
Speaker 1:He he was in fifth grade and I had an elementary school. Both my sons were in elementary school and I remember thinking like this, like this will change everything, because America doesn't let their elementary schoolers get killed without, like absolutely walking in the streets and changing it forever. And that's so. I don't know, that's when I knew like it's forever changed what I believe is possible. When I saw that I was like, oh no, um, if a country allows this, then I like whatever I had was gone as far as hope for that um.
Speaker 1:But I feel like your poetry can be truthful and the truth somehow brings a little bit of hope back in my chest, because so much of my, like my story is connected with violence and death and that's where I really came alive, to Jesus, like I always call it desert baptism, like whatever I thought I was being loyal to my god, my country that told me to kill, told me to separate, that stuff died. So I guess I find death and facing it kind of like this um resurrection place where finally we get free to live, and you write quite a few poems, uh that are titled uh, death row. Would you be willing to kind of dive into that?
Speaker 2:sure.
Speaker 2:So there's four of them. They're not very long, I can read them. All of these poems are I'm writing them reflecting on Jesus on death row being, you know, past back and forth, trial after trial and all of those sorts of things. And so this is uh. The first one is called death row trial number one and there's a uh.
Speaker 2:This poem has an epigraph from the equal justice initiative, which says the intense pressure to obtain a death sentence and the political stakes for police, prosecutors and even judges can cause serious legal errors that contribute to wrongful convictions and death sentences. Death row trial number one holds question after question to get the innocent to position himself as guilty. Death row trial number two. This poem has an epigraph from the historical society of the new york courts, the petty court, which says the court had jurisdiction in debt and trespass where the amount did not exceed 40 shillings. We in this petty court have no real power, at least not to bring down the magnitude of the conviction we seek out of our jurisdiction. We bring in the big guns, the same ones who have beaten us, into submission. Let's trump up the charges perverting the nation, tax evasion, proclaiming himself king, by which we mean he is seeking to spark a rebellion. The hellion that he is. Just ask jade edgar hoover. He knows this trick well.
Speaker 2:Death row trial number three. Certain judges are known for their harshness, and this one was particularly draconian a hanging judge. Go ask my headless cousin. I can only think of my mother, whose son now stands before the tyrant who took the life of her precious nephew. We lep together in the womb. I will likely see him again soon, so much on my mind I can hardly form a word. This last one is death row trial number four. And this has an epigraph from Brian Stevenson which he says the death penalty is not about whether people deserve to die for the crimes they commit. The real question of capital punishment in this country is do we deserve to kill? We know the powers will fold if we put enough pressure on them. In the end, the goal is simple Keep the people subdued Placation one of their primary tools. What if they kill because we let them? What if they are just giving us what we want? What if this is what we want?
Speaker 1:Yikes, the echo of that is so good. Everybody's an activist. We're active for the things that we care about, and one of the things that I have been pretty committed to and learning about is abolishing the death penalty and like this is just really simple to me, like the problem is dying and killing and death and we have two more people.
Speaker 1:The problem is dying and killing and death, and we have too much of it.
Speaker 1:So this is one that and also Jesus says that whole thing like we're supposed to be caring for, like the widow, the orphan, you know, those in prison, those in and I was like, oh, so I kind of did a check and I was like if nobody, if I don't know anybody's name who's on death row, then they certainly cannot be being cared for by me.
Speaker 1:So I have a pen pal and we've been writing for like three years, and so I feel like your poems connect this. You know the Jesus who, like people, have been studying and knowing and then putting him at the intersection of literally being an innocent and also someone being condemned to die for this state. I feel like it connects these things that should be connected, which is our faith, with the actual people we live with so well, because abolishing the death penalty, like we think we can do it in our lifetime, and I'm like, if there's one thing of all, the different ways to try to involve your kids, in injustice and actually instigating joy, writing to somebody who has been given that same sentence you know and who's living with that.
Speaker 1:And then I know at points my kids have called because you can always call and beg for mercy and say, you know, like we believe their life is worthy not perfect, but worthy. So I feel like having a poem written about this, like our neighbors and our fellow citizens who are on death row is just a connector piece that needs some connection.
Speaker 1:And somehow you do it around. You know like this familiar figure, and then try to like, connect it to like no, this is like, what are we allowing? And then how do we show up to care for each other in the middle of it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, no, I think that's it. Like, what you just said is kind of threads the needle for me of like how do we show up for people? And it begins by seeing them. And I love what you were talking about, like how can I, even, how can I be caring for people if I don't know their names? And I have there's another poem that is about the two men who are crucified with Jesus, and because to me it's like a very similar thing, right, it's like we don't, we don't actually know what their names are, but I do love that like within church history, they have names.
Speaker 1:I didn't know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they have names and their names are dismissing guestess and yeah, I just I'm going to read this poem because I feel like it connects into what we're saying. It goes like this it says I will not criminalize these two. I do not know their crimes. I do know they did not deserve to die and to die nameless at the hands of the state, state to poles lowered into the ground. I do know the state has a reputation of crucifying the innocent. I do know that the word translated, robber, actually means rebel. Their story turned into an allegory about deathbed confession.
Speaker 1:Oh good, and you know one of the things that I've committed to when you're here often, like the moms when they lose, their sons to police violence or lynching which are like this. They always say like say his name.
Speaker 1:And as a mom, I'm like, and we know the power of like names, and so that's something that I'll always say to mirror his name and celebrate for his mom. And so the fact that you're saying you're putting names to two people who have been nameless Besides Jesus, I feel like that is putting the dignity back into them, you know. So thank you for doing that, and I wanted to ask you before we wrap up and go. I'm big on, I think, everybody like we're all at the peacemaking table, like we're all here and we get to do small things. It doesn't have to be you don't have to be an author or a poet or a pastor, I'm like, but where we live is where we stand and use the ways that we show up for each other.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to ask you like two things, so like just personally, like where are you seeing whether you're reading or listening something that is like doing justice, or someplace that you're seeing like a peak of justice happening? I guess is my first question. And then, like what's one thing that you think that anybody who's listening, and anybody with their kids, if they're old, if they're young, wherever you're at, like what's one thing that we can do to take action to really put Because I do, I'm kind of stuck on joy. I think it's part of our human dignity.
Speaker 1:I think God's given us a dignity like not just to survive, but like people deserve to thrive, like you deserve. That's what I want for my kids, your kids across the world. I'm like, yeah, clean water and food is good, but like that cannot be, that is not the dream and that's not what we deserve. Like I think joy is our birthright. So where is someplace you're seeing like a peak of justice happening? And then, what's like one action you think people can do to like instigate joy to be serving that?
Speaker 2:up where we live.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first thing that comes to mind for me in terms of justice is you know where I live, and I think this is true in so many of our cities right now. But just the housing crisis in New York is wild, and so there's an organization that our church used to partner with when I was pastoring there, that they have, for the past 50 or so years, been working to their whole mission is to keep people in their homes. So when we look at the housing crisis, there is all of the work that's being done, sort of once people are already out of their homes and are living on the streets to try and get them in a shelter, get them housing or try to get, and so that's like part of the work. But they're like we want to do work on the front end so that people who because it's much harder to get people back into housing once they've been pushed out and so if we can do the work to help keep people in their homes, then that's exponentially better.
Speaker 2:So, just seeing some of the work that they've been doing around tenants' rights because that's been a huge thing of like tenants not knowing when they're being treated unjustly by landlords, not knowing the rights that they have. So doing work around tenants' rights, just showing up for people when they have eviction hearings, trying to rally people year after year to show up to the rent guidelines board meetings so that there's not these crazy increases in rent. So they're advocating for rent freezes for people and all of those. And so just to know that like that work is happening and to see people rallying around that work, to me it's like that is what it looks like to be a neighbor, to love your neighbor.
Speaker 1:I totally love that and the housing crisis. It's true in my city too, and I'm part of a community. I volunteer the community that's a Catholic worker community, although none of them are Catholic but they've got like four houses, just regular houses that offer shelter and advocacy, hospitality and advocacy for families and so who are experiencing being unsheltered. But the wild thing is they aren't a nonprofit like. They just don't take anything. They're just like. This is just volunteers, this is just funding and yet being part of their community and watching how many families just come and stay and then how they through mostly relationship, they're like we don't have a lot of resources, but we're big in relationship.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So me and my kids, we'd come and just make dinner once. We hang out, play games. But I'm like watching what relationship and showing up can do and seeing these families later in the community Everybody's like, because anybody is like two events away from being unsheltered yeah, all of us are. And so I met this guy the other day on a film set, which is a long story but I was like, how are you doing? Find out we're from the same place and then find out that he, he's like yeah, I was a college student and I stayed at Loves and Fishes.
Speaker 1:I was, I was homeless, he's like, but they really just invested in me and now I, like you know, have a master's degree and I was like this is the success we're talking about. Like this guy always had like limitless potential. He needed a soft spot to land and he needed people to like care for him. So I think like, oh, that's sparking my joy. I'm just like man, like this is where we just show up and we don't. Yes, the government should do it, but as we're petitioning them like, we're just going to keep doing it for each other.
Speaker 2:Keep doing it, Showing up for each other, and I love that. You know the Catholic worker started in my old neighborhood.
Speaker 1:You're kidding me, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that's where. That's that's where I was, dorothy Day's neighborhood right.
Speaker 1:She was right there, and so you know, you know Dorothy Day's thing. Like every time I walk in that little house there's like this really badass photo of her. You know her. Their whole thing was like we think, because of this love that we've been given, this limitless love of God, that we're supposed to build a new society within the show of the old.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm like, and we're just going to do it, Like we're just going to like welcome people, make some meals, play some games, like believe in them, and then just keeping friends years after you know.
Speaker 2:It's like I mean, what else do we think? You know, the kingdom of God is but to but to create this radically new society right under the nose of the empire. It's like that's what it is.
Speaker 1:Right. So I'm just like, what's worth it, right? Like we only get this little blink on earth. And I also feel like your kids are kind of young. But I also feel like there's this thing where, like I think your parenting shows you where you've come from, but also where you most want to go. So I'm like, oh man, I want my kids to think this stuff is normal to see any kid they're playing with and, yeah, he might be unsheltered or maybe not, but like this is a normal part of life and this is the dignity of us all, like in different moments, and we're all going to be in it with us together.
Speaker 1:You know, so I think it's what we want to most show our kids. Yeah what's possible, you know. So I don't know. So I've been just so, I've just loved getting to talk to you and I love what you're doing. And before I tell everybody where to go get your book, I guess what's one thing that is just like giving you joy right now that you feel like is instigating joy, like something personally for me personally yeah like just where you sit where you stand. It could be like maybe your birdwatcher, I don't know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I see, you know the yesterday, where we're driving home from I think the oh yeah, my, my daughters, were at a friend's place and, you know, hung out there all day.
Speaker 2:We picked them up, we're driving back to Brooklyn and just like we love music, so just playing music in the car and like they're, they're just singing and they're just free and they're just, you know, there's this, this, these small moments like that where I, just you, just experience, um, just like I don't know, these moments that feel like freedom, where and the girls are just kind of caught up and then we're all just singing together and it's just like I don't know that that moment and moments like that for me are. I just find immense joy in those small moments because it's like and I think it gets to this broader question of like, what are the? When I think about instigating joy, the question for me is like what are the, what are the conditions that allow for the, the seed of joy that is present everywhere, to to flourish? What are, what are the conditions and how? How can we help to create those conditions, wherever we're at?
Speaker 1:right, because you're describing that moment with your girls and I feel like there are these moments that feel like a bubble, like it's so big that it's sticky, and you think like that's what, I'm loving it, but like, how does the next person get to feel that too?
Speaker 1:yeah, yeah you know, like I want every kid to get to belt it out because they're feeling like so good, yeah, you know. So I think that's a really beautiful way to experience joy. And also like how does that get bigger? You know, for the next person? Because I, I don't think we're alive just to slog it out. I'm just like that. I don't want.
Speaker 1:Like I don't want that for me, I don't want that for my kids, I don't want that for anybody you know um, and those pockets are there and to just be able to make more of them, and so I'm just grateful for you as an artist and as a human being, um just using, using what you see and who you are and what you want um to connect more of I. I truly think it is justice when we see what love should be and we get called to what love could be, I feel like that's justice and it ends up in joy.
Speaker 2:So um, it reminds me of that the poem from Mary Oliver and that last line, her poem don't hesitate when she says joy is never meant to be a crumb. I just, I love that and but.
Speaker 1:But if you're talking about joy, I think people are like woo and I'm like no joy is bad ass, because joy is not happiness yes like somebody, somebody kind of was like digging at me about it and I was like I was like no, I'm like I can be happy that my kids are going to bed with full bellies at night, totally happy. But I cannot experience joy until I know every kid in my city is in bed and like I'll work till, I'll work for that till the day I die and that'll be a 10 for me, because I'm like I can't feel joy unless I know that every kid's got it. So I'm like joy is a yes and it's a yes you know, to do either or wouldn't work for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't think it works for us. I don't think anybody can really feel great when they know that the, the person next to them, doesn't have something that they deeply need or value. So, um, I don't know. I just want to say thank you for being here and thank you everybody. Uh, touch the earth. This is your second it is yeah, correct, um, and where can everybody grab it?
Speaker 2:um, you can grab it wherever you get your books um. I'm always a proponent of supporting independent bookstores. If you can, um you know. So just if you have a local bookstore um, go and see if they have it. If they don't ask them, they'll get it for you um, but yeah, otherwise you can get it online, um through the publisher at idp, uh, bookshoporg, anywhere you know you get your books and then where?
Speaker 1:where can people follow you or um, keep up with with your poems?
Speaker 2:um. Mostly you can find me on instagram at djx and poetics um.
Speaker 1:I feel like that. That is a little bit of a of a hip hop name like you could branch out. You could like do your uh, do your young self, your old self hey, you know it's funny.
Speaker 2:My wife literally asked me about that the other day. She's like do you think you could still like, do you think you still have it and you still like write like lyrics?
Speaker 1:I was like yeah, you maybe wait wait until your kids are like teenagers and like you're want to like throw down cool so hard.
Speaker 2:I'll do it that's great, I love it.
Speaker 1:I can't wait. Well, um, thank you so much for writing. Thank you for continuing to push for more, um more of us to get a chance to see, see justice and experience joy for our neighbors thank you all right, take care.
Speaker 1:All right, you've listened to the entire episode. Big high five and a hug. Know someone who needs to be reminded that they matter? Share this episode and leave a review on apple podcast and spotify, because we need to find our people and our people need to find us. We're a community of courage activators shouting for you to pull up your seat at the peacemaking table, because you are exactly what our world needs. See you next time.
