SoulShift S01 EP01 - SoulShift: Unveiling Community Wisdom and Radical Possibilities

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Introduction to SoulShift

Intro

JyObaX: Welcome to SoulShift Tranforming Radical Possibilities

My name is JyOba X and I am starting this podcast as a personal mission. It is an opportunity to share my journey with others. As I navigate this thing called life and the many aspects of it that I brought up to this point and that I am advancing forward.

Meet JyOba X: A Journey of Activism

JyObaX: So I am a community activist. I've been a grant maker in philanthropy. I founded a Black Queer Pride in Detroit, along with many others back in 1996. So I bring a lot of Experiences lived experiences to this conversation that I intend on having with y'all weekly and SoulShift is going to be the platform from which I do that.

This is a weekly podcast that inspires social change makers. To Dismantle Anti Blackness, Inequity, and Injustice. [00:01:00] Hosted by yours truly, JyOba X. This show explores the theory of community wisdom and its role in transforming radical possibility through solo episodes and thought-provoking interviews with wisdom practitioners, activists, and proximate leaders. The podcast gives listeners the tools, knowledge, and inspiration to create a just and fair society. So if you're passionate about social justice and believe in the power of community wisdom as defined by this podcast, then this podcast is for you and I welcome you aboard the journey and we'll do this together.

So go ahead, press follow and support and get the thumbs up early and frequently and bring others into this community as we grow it.

The Essence of SoulShifting

JyObaX: What is SoulShifting?

So in this space, soulshifting is going to be a verb, right? [00:02:00] It's active. My entire life, I've been active in things make every attempt not to be passive about how I approach my life.

And when I do I try to shake myself out of it. And that's shifting, that's agitating and and it goes to the very soul, the core of my being and to the being of activists in general for the things that we have a passion.

So soulshifting is about encouraging everyday people to power to make change from day to day survival strategies and tactics to benefit, not just ourselves and our family, but also our tribes and the villages that we support, right?

And when I say village, villages, the communities that we are representative of and that, that rear us and that define who we are.

So we'll explore, This theory of community wisdom that I've been working on for the last couple of years [00:03:00] and how it cultivates radical possibilities that can advance us forward to nurture a just and fair society, a society where everyone doesn't simply survive an oppressive system, but we thrive in defiance so here's the run of show.

Exploring Community Wisdom

JyObaX: What is the Theory of Community Wisdom?

This episode is going to define community wisdom and its key components. I'll share radical possibilities. I've personally experienced through community wisdom to help define it and examine it. Do research on it will also contextualize the concept of wisdom practitioners. Wisdom practitioners is the name that I've given individuals that serve as repositories of community wisdom, right?

And not just individuals, but socio cultural institutions as well that are representative within oppressed communities... [00:04:00] we'll talk about some of those wisdom practitioners, key traits and their positionality as non, knowledge repositories within those communities or their communities.

And lastly, I'll offer some radical possibilities for us to consider into futurity with some ideas and just some thoughts on personally where I would like to take soulshifting in terms of thinking about these radical possibilities and the promise that comes from exploring and Executing radical possibilities, right?

Once you identify a radical possibility, I don't think there are a lot of people that have the sense of advancing those radical possibilities into a radical promise is what I call it. And to me, that's magic. That's conjuring magic, right? And that gets into a lot of my spiritual journey for the sake of this podcast and for the journey that I'm going to share with y'all in this [00:05:00] podcast, moving forward I'm currently seeking to get initiated into IFA.

Last year I was initiated into Palo went to Cuba with my godfather, got initiated into Palo. So right now I am deep into West African spiritual traditions. My journey as an activist has always been connected to this journey, and I've been connected to people, individuals, and people that I respect dearly that have always kept my ancestors and this journey top of mind.

And once I moved to Arizona from Detroit it was time for me to move forward in advancing, being more serious in bringing, doing that work. So I'm going to incorporate some spirituality into this podcast. I welcome other spiritual journeys to also be engaged in this because I think as individuals spirituality, spiritual leanings is all personal.

I grew up in a missionary Baptist church. So I [00:06:00] understand the value and the worth that religious institutions bring as a tool to bring people to spirit and to spirituality and totally respect that as well. I also tend to be political. I'm a social justice activist, so we'll touch on a lot of different things here in this space.

Current politics as it relates to, Pertains to SoulShift's mission and to radical possibilities. And and we'll do it from the lens of oppressed communities. I represent black communities. I represent queer communities and the intersection thereof. Everybody brings their intersectional self to this soulshifting space.

And I welcome you to do so and we will honor and respect it as much as we can. 'cause sometimes we do make mistakes, right? But forgiveness is a part of spirituality, and we learn from making those mistakes. I'm putting that out there because I'm not looking to make mistakes or disrespect anybody, and I'm not looking to be disrespected, but I am looking [00:07:00] to learn.

And hopefully you are joining SoulShift. So that you can learn and have provided tools in a community so that you can transform the radical possibilities that are happening in your life as well.

So let's define community wisdom. Simply put, community wisdom is the practice of knowing and doing, providing a collective purpose to our lived experiences.

In theory, community wisdom is the synthesis of lived experiences that continuously evolves as communal knowledge through resilience and agency within a marginalized group of people persevering the oppression of power and privilege. The key components that make up community wisdom are, it's just a couple, there are many more.

For our cases today, we're going to talk about community resilience and collective [00:08:00] agency.

Defining Key Components: Community Resilience

JyObaX: Key Component Number 1: Community Resilience

So the first of the key components that I'm going to talk about is community resilience.

What is community resilience? Once you can identify the guideposts or the parameters of what makes a community and what's defining a community within this larger concept there are different formations of social memory that tend to define the strength of that community resilience.

Slave communities there was a certain amount of resilience within different slave communities that were particularly to the plantations from which they resided. There was certain cultures and values that were created so enslaved black people in the United States could endure the really violent system of slavery that was deployed upon our ancestors.

So there's social memory that's handed down from those experiences through our ancestors to us today, that we still tap, [00:09:00] even when we don't know that we're tapping them, we still tap them. So that's social memory and the formation thereof in communities oppressed by systems like, African Americans, black people here in the United States.

Kinship networks when you're an activist and you are doing community organizing, you come across different sub communities within community that have their own ecosystems and values and people who are leaders within those kinship networks and ways those kinship networks are supporting each other.

When I was working in black queer community in Detroit and I co founded Hotter Than July. One of the first black gay prides in the country back in 1996. I had to literally identify and engage with a lot of different kinship networks that took a lot of time and energy, but hey, I was in my 20s, I had the energy to do it. And plus it was fun because I [00:10:00] was learning myself as I was learning community and I was building ties and relationships to those kinship networks and it allowed me to be able to build up enough trust so that community would be able to receive the message from me about the importance of us. Creating and establishing collective solidarity within black queer community within Detroit. So kinship networks is another key component of community resilience within community wisdom. And then lastly around community resilience, I just want to touch base on that it's grounded in the ongoing pursuit of comfort and joy within those oppressive systems. It's that one trait that makes it so You can both survive and thrive within an oppressive system. And probably be delved more deeply into it when you look at other oppressed communities across the [00:11:00] globe. But in particular, my examination of community wisdom is really from a black queer theoretical standpoint so I'm operating within the belly of the beast within the United States.

Defining Key Components: Collective Agency

JyObaX: Key Component Number 2: CollectivAgency

next We'll talk about collective agency, which is the adaptive response to collective adversity. That's important. And the key word in there is adaptive collective agency is the adaptive response to collective adversity. Key example, back in 1996, when black queer, black LGBT pride, black same gender loving pride was founded in Detroit the catalytic an event that was happening at the time was HIV and AIDS. It, had a devastating, deadly impact on black gay men in Detroit at the time. And when I say black gay men, I also mean men who sleep with men, black same gender loving men. [00:12:00] It impacted all of us to the point where we needed to create safe spaces so that we could convene. Amongst ourselves to receive life saving information and data about how we can both avoid the disease, protect ourselves, and protect our loved ones. Collective agency, it's an active ingredient. It's active movement building. It's memory continuity. To a sense that when I researched community wisdom in black, queer Detroit, I learned that collective agency was something that was being cultivated for decades before I even came out in 1991.

And it took me until I relocated and left Detroit to be able to realize that. What we founded in 1996 was grounded in a lot of community activism work by strong black men and black women who were doing the work and the labor to create safe space [00:13:00] for black queer people in Detroit. Because the main thing was racism within the queer community that we had to protect ourselves from harm. So just a few things there on how social memory and memory continuity connects to active movement building. Collective agency, prioritizes the whole through collective works.

So I touched based on that when I touched on adaptive response and to collective adversity and active movement building. All of that is grounded in collective works, outcomes, and shared resources and all of that is indicative of how we'll define collective agency when we talk about community wisdom in this SoulShift podcast space.

Radical Possibilities and Their Impact

JyObaX: So radical possibilities. You hear why does possibilities have to be radical? First of all, I like the word radical. It's disruptive in nature and it [00:14:00] shifts our thinking, Out of the box as opposed to status quo. Radical possibilities is something that I think African Americans slash black people, however you want to refer to us, I think it's something that we practice continuously because we just have to.

When you're working in an oppressive system, those radical possibilities become lifelines. For hope and that things will get better for some people, a radical possibility is the Bible or the Quran for others it's social justice work, working within community like wisdom practitioners. I think it all works.

 I tend to be tuned into Afro-futurism. I've always been into sci fi, fascinated by sci fi, love Star Trek, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, all of it, advancing societies, and flying in space, exploring the unknown, and all of that brings about possibility and to achieve those possibilities means that we need to make changes and we need to [00:15:00] evolve and we need to grow and we need to learn. We need to shift into a new way of being so that we can engage those possibilities to both engage them and pursue them. So radical possibilities are really important and a big concept that of course. It's what SoulShift is based off of. Transforming radical possibilities into promise.

Radical possibilities that Transcended into Radical Promises

A few examples of radical possibilities. I'm a Gen X er. I'm a proud Gen X er. Grew up in the 70s and the 80s and, leaned into it in the nineties when I came out in 91. But I'm pretty much in the eighties, baby. That was my high school in my formative years.

Rock and roll and disco, who would have thunk that hip hop would have become international global. And larger than both disco and rock and roll. I would argue probably combined. I've been watching hip hop videos from Southeast Asia. [00:16:00] India from Indonesia. There are hip hop artists in the Muslim world. Hip hop is a global phenomenon and you know what? It's based in blackness. In the eighties I would have never thought that hip hop would have overcome rock and roll. As the identifying culture for American cultural standards so for me, the fact that hip hop is a global phenomenon to the level that it is, In the 80s, that was a radical possibility that ended up becoming a promise in in the 2000s creating iconic people, representative of an iconic people's struggles of surviving and thriving in a system like here in the United States.

Example number two, Black Panthers and school lunches. We probably would have had [00:17:00] school lunches at some point, maybe. I don't know. Politically, it doesn't feel like it. They don't really want us to even have school books, let alone school lunches. So who knows if school lunches would have existed at some point in time. But school lunches was founded on the fact that Black Panthers were doing it to protect and serve the communities that they were representative of. So the fact that we have school lunches today Is grounded in the work of the Black Panthers. Barack Obama was a radical possibility.

Nobody thought that man was going to become president of the United States. And yep, there was a, an awkward chance that it would be a possibility, but hey Jesse Jackson had a certain amount of hope that he could actually become president of the United States back in the day when he ran for president. I remember my grandparents and aunties and uncles really Admired how Jesse Jackson operated and that he came from the civil rights movement and that he was making a run for the [00:18:00] presidency and that he was shifting the soul of people politically here in the United States, which I think was probably necessary for Barack Obama to come with this message of hope. More refined and cleaned up and more, I would argue, presentable and approachable for people to view this black man, as president of these here United States of America. And not only did a black man become president of the United States, but A black man with the name of Barack Obama.

That's all I have to say there's a whole bunch of radical possibilities just in him becoming president with the name that he was birthed with. And now he's the 44th president of these here United States. And the fact that he was president is still Shifting the souls of many within American culture today. It's probably foundational to why we are in the [00:19:00] position that we are politically, but you know what, that's a whole nother podcast and we can get into that and and I'll create some other forms by the way, so that we can have these conversations.

Make sure you go look, go to so shift on Instagram it'll be at SoulShift TRP, TRP stands for Transforming Radical Possibilities, and then on Facebook and Twitter will be at SoulShift. And then eventually there will be a Patreon page where I can bring y'all more closely together. And we can create other networks where other soulshifters who want to SoulShift together and do some thought leadership and some bonding and some strategizing about how to make soulshifting a thing for everybody. I'll create spaces for that as well. So I welcome your thoughts and ideas on the best way to do that so that we can build this community in a way so that Everybody, inclusive of everybody, not just black people, but [00:20:00] on those who love black people and those who want to see black people thrive within oppressed systems are all welcomed.

All of our movements within black social movements have been supported by more than just black people and we needed that in order for those black social movements to thrive as well. Again, another podcast episode that'll be on the horizon. So those are a few radical possibilities just to give y'all some examples of what they are, just in case you were thinking about what's a radical possibility.

We're going to get this thing refined and each episode will get better and better. Visit SoulShift podcast. com for additional information about the episodes and for upcoming special events. We'll be doing some of those as well. And if you want to learn more about JyObaX, you can also visit www. jyobax.com to learn more about my mission, my journey, and what I'm doing.

Peace and blessings, [00:21:00] everybody. I look forward to seeing y'all next week.