Nikkita Oliver: Dare Me!

Welcome to The Art of Risk, a podcast exploring gutsy choices by colorful characters. I'm Naseem Sefi, and I'm Deborah Jarvis, and today we're interviewing Nikita Oliver. Nikita is a 30-year-old Seattle-based spoken word artist, teacher, attorney, and activist, particularly known for her work in the Black Lives Matter movement. She is the 2014 Seattle Poetry Grand Slam Champion.

She won the Seattle Artist Human Rights Award in 2015, and she has performed with Macklemore on Stephen Colbert's show, among many other honors. Nikita, welcome to The Art of Risk. Thank you for having me. The Art, let me just define risk for you, how we talk about it.

It is an intentional decision you make with a definite, possibly, negative outcome. That's not something impulsive, like, you know, double-dog dairy jump off the roof, but a kind of decision that will help you become the person you want to be, or to advance your vision of the world, so that's how we're defining risk. So with that in mind, how do you make major life decisions? Do you weigh things out, or what is that like for you?

You know, I've always tried to be a person who functions in Seattle, so I have, you know, a few core values that I go back to when I make decisions, but I also like to keep a close group of people around me who hold me accountable and call me out. It's really, for me, the work that I do has been about living in community, and acknowledging that movement forward by myself is not actually progress, and so I really hold myself to philosophies that entrench me and a body of people, and a body of people in particular who all feel accountable to each other and feel accountable to, not just humanity but creation as a whole, acknowledging that we humans have kind of lived this existence of human supremacy, and that in a lot of ways, especially when we come from western backgrounds, has done a lot of harm to other humans, but also really to the planet, and so when I think about risk and decision making, it's really about the group of people that I find myself in relationship with, and whether or not that decision is accountable to the whole of creation. And did that start when you were a child? Do you remember what the first big individual risk was that you took?

That is a really interesting question. I've always been a performer. I've always been involved in the arts, and I think art gives us the opportunity to make choices and mistakes to take risk, and kind of a safe environment where the artistic risk you take, you can decide whether or not you want to keep it or let it go. So I think being in the arts really, as a child, gave me the opportunity to think about risk taking in a different way.

In terms of an individual decision, I've always been someone who functions on a fairness principle. When something looks unfair, I have a very hard time digesting it, whether it's unfair towards me or unfair towards someone else, and there was a time in elementary school where I observed a teacher having a conversation with a student, and I just felt like the dialogue was unfair. I didn't know why, I didn't understand what was going on, and I decided to insert myself and voice my opinion about it, which actually didn't fare well for any of us. I definitely ended up inside for recess.

But I think that's the first time I remember taking an individual risk that aligns with the sort of philosophies I have now. I didn't have those then, but it's always been, for me, about fairness and equity and just feeling frustrated when a process doesn't look like it meets everybody's needs. So the principles that you're talking about, I know that you grew up southern Baptist and Methodist, and I'm wondering how many of those principles are based on Christianity? Or let me just say, being a follower of Jesus.

I appreciate that distinction a lot. Even though I don't go to church anymore and necessarily call myself a practicing Christian, my favorite chapter of the Bible has always been 1 Corinthians 13, and it's the love chapter. And for me, that particular chapter about what love looks like and what love does is really has always been a guiding point in how I manage my life, in addition to having a lot of love for the book of Esther and Deborah from Judges who literally stuck a stake through someone's head in order to pursue justice. Those are some interesting chapters I'll have together, right?

But for me, while I don't practice anymore in terms of the way I was raised, I do believe that the life of Christ and the truths I was given as a child are really important affirmations about the way that I desire to live my life. And I honestly, part of the reason I don't consider myself a Christian anymore is because I see those beliefs and a lot of other religions and in a lot of other spiritual conversations when we're willing to step outside of the way in which we required that story to be told and really look at the message and the philosophy that's undergirding that practice and why people participated in the first place. So that definitely has affirmed and grown the way that I look at the world, but I definitely have been blessed especially through the arts community and Seattle to engage folks who have different spiritual perspectives that have pushed me to consider the way that the world looks and a lot of other people's eyes that I wasn't challenged to think about in Indianapolis, Indiana and the middle of a city surrounded by cornfields. I want to read something that you wrote on your Facebook page which I found really moving.

The time to organize was yesterday. This is after the election results when Donald Trump becomes our president. Today we have no choice but to answer the call. I'm not hopeless.

I'm not hopeful. I choose to rage and wage love passionately. It is time our infatuation with justice and equity becomes passion. At the core of passion is the willingness to suffer until passion is fully brought to fruition.

We are already suffering. What does it mean to wage love? What do you risk when you wage love? As a person of color my experience of waging love has to look different than what someone else's looks like especially if they're white or male or like I grew up being Christian coming from the dominant religion in the country means that I have privilege.

So I wage love differently because of where I'm at. I think for me it comes in the form of being honest, acknowledging the different places in my identity where I am both privileged and oppressed and it means being accountable. And doing things that otherwise do not necessarily feel comfortable. But also being willing to just sit in relationship with people.

I think that's the hard part for us. A lot of us are great at waging and raging. We're not very good at the loving part. We don't sit in a accountable relationship with people too often.

We don't want to be called out and we certainly don't want to sacrifice anything. And as an incredibly highly educated person I could in a lot of ways totally remove myself from the struggle. If I wanted to it doesn't mean that I wouldn't still deal with some of the outcomes of racism and sexism and capitalism. But it means I've been afforded the opportunity to tap out in a lot of ways.

And waging and raging love really for me means staying plugged in and engaging in those relationships in an accountable way. And when the opportunity to take more than I need or more than I deserve comes. I either give that to someone else to redistribute it or I forego it because it doesn't benefit us as a community as a whole when I live in that kind of individualism. The waging and the raging is very dramatic but it's the engaging and staying engaged.

That's really the hard part. So a lot of the things that you've described and that I know about you seem very risky to the average person and I'm just wondering if any of it felt that way to you. Honestly, a lot of it is just about living and being present. I wish more people just lived and were present with people.

I think a lot of people see that same thing in my life and really this is just the way I've kind of always lived my life. But I've been fortunate enough to have comrades in community who also live their life the same way. And so I think it makes the sacrifice and the risk feel less like sacrifice and risk because ultimately we're in really strong dynamic relationship with each other, which allows me to really envision a world where we don't live under the constant tyranny of oppression. I could see what it looks like in the eyes of people I call my family and in our relationship together that it is possible to have a better world.

So honestly, while there are some risky choices that we make, it seems so worth it to know that in the long run we're building together a place where seven generations from now, hopefully people can live happier and healthier and more sustainably. But that's not going to happen without risk. Well, how risky did the spoken poetry feel to you compared to going to Standing Rock? Some people would rather die, right?

Absolutely. But she was a performer. I think it came naturally to her. Some of it came naturally.

Honestly, I never thought I'd be a spoken word, performance, anything. That didn't exist in my mind as a kid. As far as I was concerned, you play instruments, you're saying you do music theater. That's about as far as my conception of art went.

And then I was teaching at a school in the South Side of Seattle. And I had this rule in my classroom that I'll never ask you to do something that I have not also done or will not do first. And so I was able to be a part of the role of accountability as a teacher. And one of my students as we were preparing for one of the used to speak Seattle Slams said to me, you know, Mr.

Keita, you've never slammed before. And I was like, that's true. You're right. I haven't.

And they said, well, we don't have to slam then since you haven't done it. And I said, okay, I see your game. This is good. This is good.

So literally that night I went to a slam with a friend and one. I don't even know how I won. And then continued to win up through the prelims in Seattle for the World Poetry Slam and got to go to Minneapolis, Minnesota, where I did not do very well, which is fine. The power of a story turned into realizing what a tool spoken word poetry is and performance poetry is for conversation with young folks for a platform for a voice and for being ultimately being hard work.

I could tell somebody racism is bad and, you know, here's all the things about it. But when I tell it to you in a story, when I share a poem with you, and even when that poem is vulnerable and risky and maybe puts me on display in a way that given a lecture would not, I find that people are way more responsive. I think about it later and they're more likely to consider what role they play in the perpetuation of racism in the space that we're in because now they know somebody's personal story. You don't have to be defensive when you're telling your story.

You're not necessarily trying to change somebody else's mind, right? And that's, I think we're hardwired to connect through story and remember stories. I think the other great thing is you take story with you. I could tell someone all the facts in the world and a lecture, and I'm sure every teacher has experienced this, where the students walk away and don't remember any facts that you gave them.

But they might remember whatever story or video or song you shared in that lecture. And that is something that actually is carried with people. And even when we think about the people that we love who aren't with us anymore, we carry them with us in story. I don't give you a list of facts about people that I love.

I tell you stories about people that I love. And I think that's really the impactful thing is people can then walk away and take a piece of you with them. That's the risky part for me, is knowing that when I tell people my stories, and a lot of ways sometimes they're vulnerable ones or they're out of places of hurt, then people get to walk away with it. And you don't control what happens with a story after someone walks away with it.

I also think that's the power of it. And part of the problem with what we're dealing with now in our society is it's a control issue. Power has transitioned from power to authority. And so that authority turns into oppression, whereas when I just give you a piece of my story, a piece of myself and I don't get to control what you do with it.

We start changing those power dynamics. And people have choice and agency again. And I think that is a really powerful part of why I continue being a storyteller. And oftentimes, oftentimes, I'm kind of in awe of like, how did my life end up like this?

Like I went to law school and go to poetry school, but here I am. Well, forgive me for not remembering the name of the poem. But the one that you performed, I think it was on the UW campus. And the story that you tell in the poem about the white student with the bluest eyes that wore his honesty like a badge.

I will never forget that. I want to go back to something that you said because for many of our guests on this show, the riskiest thing to them has been the emotional risks that they've taken in relationships. And for you, it sounds like it's just who you are and you breathe through it and it doesn't feel so risky to you or you've navigated the risk because that's how you are and who you are. But I wonder about different kinds of risks, like professional risks, like going to law school and not practicing law or getting another graduate degree or any physical risks.

I don't know if you were in physical risk at Standing Rock. Is there a particular kind of risk that feels scariest to you? You definitely hit the nail in the head. Going to law school and not practicing law is definitely a risk that I take a lot of heat for sometimes.

In the sense that people often say, well, now you have this privilege and you're not using it. And I do use it not traditionally, but I often feel the pressure to conform to what it looks like to be a lawyer. And part of the reason there's a mold for that is because it preserves the system. And so the risk in not practicing law in a traditional way weighs on me a lot because I do get opportunities to just go be a lawyer and sit in an office and do research.

And I could be good at that. But I also know that the way in which I use law is not the way that most law students can use law. And so I take that risk professionally, accepting that there's going to be outcomes for that. And I don't know what those could be.

They could be anything from, I never get certain jobs or I never make enough money or maybe I get disbarred someday. Those are all outcomes that could occur. And while they seem risky, there's a level at which they also don't scare me. And I go back to that literally comes from the community of people that I find myself in who are also willing to take similar professional risk.

And willing to call each other out when we're like, oh, that job you're about to take, that's kind of faulty. That doesn't look good for our community or that doesn't benefit us as a whole. Those are the things that affirm that decision for me. In terms of physical risk, I think anytime you put yourself in the streets, you put yourself at physical risk.

I remember when Black Lives Matter in Seattle really started to reach its climax here, November 24th, 2014. I had sat in the UW Law School, both in classrooms and in the Law Review Suite with my headphones in all day. I was waiting. I was like, when are they going to tell us whether or not they're going to file these charges?

Well, this man be indicted. And when we found out the news, my roommate and I at the time are sitting in the Law Review Suite just sobbing. And people are walking by us like, what's wrong? Why are y'all upset?

And we'd be like, oh, okay. And for me, my entire belief in the justice system and what I was even doing in law school was completely shaken. It was the reality that we learn all these rules that talk about justice and talk about equality and fairness. And those outcomes don't seem to occur for certain groups of people.

So that night, we went to 23rd and Sherry where a lot of people had congregated. And that was the first night of major protest in Seattle. It was also the first time the outside of May Day that I had seen the police really escalate against people who were protesting, who were exercising the first amendment rights. I mean, there's pepper spray and tear gas and a lot of physical assault with their bikes.

And these were peaceful protests. They weren't destroying any property. And I try very hard to understand that people are coming from different positions, like different levels of rage, different levels of access. But this first night of protest was literally people just marching.

First amendment, first amendment, just marching. And the police became aggressive very quickly and it escalated very quickly. And so I realized that night that no matter what we did, if we continued to march like we were, and every BLM protest in this city was incredibly peaceful by dictionary definition. And every time the police escalated, we would come out and they would have three to one police out dressed in riot gear and sticks.

The intimidation factor off top was major. And so we just kind of accepted that by being out there, that was the risk. And I was serving with my roommate as a legal observer. Our job was to observe what the police were doing and what their interactions were with protesters and to provide legal services with the National Lawyers Guild.

And so for me as a law student, that really affirmed and continued to push my ideals around what is a non-traditional lawyer look like. And what does it look like to get this privilege and really flip it on its head, which is risky. Because when you flip something on its head that's such an age-old tradition, people get uncomfortable. They're like, oh, you're messing with my job, you're messing with my money, you're messing with my opportunity.

And for me, that's where the most risk comes from. Is the ways when other people begin to feel defensive, by simply the way I choose to live my life and engage the world, that tends to come with consequences. And I accept those. I really want to see the world change.

I want to see things be better. And the revolutionaries who I adore the most that I think about most often are the sort of people who, even though they acknowledge the risk, they took those chances. And that's why I've had the opportunities I've had. So I owe seven generations after me that same willingness to take those same risks.

I heard that they have three simple rules. You can tell me if this is true or not in the BLM movement. And one is lead with love, two is low ego, high impact, and three is move at the speed of trust. I love that.

And as I learned that, I thought this sounds like Nikita. It sounds like you could have authored that, or it sounds like the way you move through the world. Does it resonate with you? Oh, that absolutely resonates with me.

Absolutely. All three of those things I think are what guides the sorts of relationships I'm in and the kind of work that I'm in. So I think that just helps me know I'm moving at the right speed. In a lot of ways, my life is I'm present in a moment.

There's an emotion or pain. And I'm like, I need to do something. And then we just take the risk of doing it. And you really never know when you do that who it's going to inspire or what movement it's going to turn into.

And those three women's work encourages me to keep up this fight because we don't know what our day to day just doing what we need to do. We'll actually turn into. Did you start boxing in reaction to that? I was boxing before that.

That's another risk that to be honest, I still am processing every single time I choose to get in the ring. Boxing for me has really been about discovering my own physical agency and power. As a woman, as a woman of color, and even growing up in a Christian tradition that has viewed women's bodies a particular way, I really have not had a value for my own body. And so I started boxing a few years ago at a gym owned by Tricia Arcaro.

She's an incredible woman, pro boxer, played rugby. And she has set up a space that is just very open and inviting for vulnerability because to be a good boxer, you really have to be willing to take hits to take a hit. You've got to be vulnerable. And so I'm glad I started boxing before.

Black Lives Matter really started to take root in Seattle because it has given me a grounding in self and an understanding of rage that I didn't have before. I think rage as an experience for a lot of people can be uncontrollable. It's like when I see my students in the classroom and something happens and they start to rage out often times because they don't understand what they're feeling. And so as a teacher who's a strong and formed practice, as I asked myself, what just sparked you?

Boxing has really helped me to understand that. And in moments with police officers when they would be very aggressive, boxing has helped me learn how to be very grounded. And understand my body, understand my flight or fight response. And even understand where that rage and that anger comes from.

So it can be made useful. You can't bite blind in the ring. I think people watch boxing matches and they think boxers are just going for it. But there's actually a lot of control and a lot of thought that goes into thinking about that.

And so every time I get in the ring of the wrist, I can't tell you how many times I've cried after sparring, not because it hurts to get hit. But because it hurts to get hit because you carry so many punches with you on a regular basis, you take your whole self into the ring. And often you're not fighting the other person as much as you feel. Sometimes you're just really fighting yourself.

And so I've learned a lot from boxing about myself that has informed literally every aspect of my life. And then also as a woman just really encouraged me to have value for myself and my body in a way that I don't think I could have learned in any other setting. It's interesting to hear you talk about boxing as being vulnerable. Because that's like the paradox of it.

It seems like, no, no, that's about defense. You don't want to get hit. You want to hit. But opening yourself up and how it's informed all of your life.

So let me ask you about mentors then. Do you have mentors in your life and what do they look like? I've had a few mentors in my life. They've looked very different over the years.

I moved to Seattle in 2004 to go to Seattle Public University. And at the time a lot of my mentors were pastors or people who I went to church with. And maybe to some of my mother's chagrin. As I kind of discovered the world around me and the wealth of people there I learned from.

My mentors have slowly become other artists, people from other traditions. And even my students. I really see the value in learning from young people. Yeah, I come into the classroom with an agenda and ideas.

But they see the world in a sort of unshaped manner. You know, I've been taught to look at a chair as a chair. Whereas a young person might just look at a chair as a step stool. We don't even sit in that or it's a table or I don't know what other incredible thing that they'll come up with.

And so I really see young people both as people that we learned from and people that we engage in learning. My current mentors are sometimes few and far. And I think sometimes it has to do with the sort of risk that I do take. And kind of my public persona.

My willingness to engage tough issues and to say things that need to be said. I think sometimes can frighten or push away elders. And I also think that's a growing edge in general and a lot of movements is how do elders and young organizers find ways to share our knowledge because I firmly believe my elders carry and hold stories that I absolutely need to be an effective organizer. But also like I get Facebook.

So I kind of get Facebook. You know what? I appreciate you asking that's actually an area I'm really struggling with. And I also feel like sometimes it's a risky area to I've been I have a community of folks that I allow in my life at the same time.

There's there's been a fear of what it looks like to have elders in my life just because I experienced some pretty especially when I left the church. Some negative outcomes from elders when they when you when you choose to step away from something that they see as the only way the only truth the only light and you decide to experience something different that sometimes comes with repercussions that can really make you frighten to be in those kinds of relationships again. So I think I'm at a point in my life where I'm actually exploring what does it look like to have elder mentors again. That's interesting you talk about mentors in general as being older and I think that is the understanding of most people.

And for me my growing edge around mentors has been to allow younger people to mentor me and to allow millennials and their way of moving through the world as being a source of spiritual and emotional wisdom. So I'm on the other side of that growing though you know it's such a mentorship is such an interesting conversation you know and I don't know if we've all been at least having grown up here on Turtle Island and what we call the United States. I think the way in which we've been taught about elders and mentors and relationships have been very transactionary and so I think as we begin to delve into like building sustainable communities and we grapple with those not wanting those transactionary relationships anymore. We really have to ask those hard questions about like who are our mentors and a mentor can really be anyone right.

The goal is to how do we grow ourselves mentally physically spiritually and that happens in so many different types of relationships and my students they challenge me all the time. They're great to call me out and I love it. Are they middle school students for the most part? So I started working with elementary schoolers and then over the course of my career here in Seattle I've moved to working primarily with sixth grade through freshman and college.

I used to be very afraid of middle schoolers. Middle school seems like the dark abyss of like our arms and our limbs don't move the right school. And then I was working for writers in the schools and they were like we're going to put you with sixth graders at Washington Middle School and I was like oh no. But they ended up the experience has probably been one of the most formative in my teaching artist practice because sixth graders still have that sort of elementary energy but they're transitioning so they still think like poop is kind of funny but they also kind of don't want to laugh about it and then you know as a teacher if I don't like kind of laugh with them then they start to get the vibe that was awkward and so they have really helped me think about the ways in which we set up our context and relationships with each other.

They take risk all the time. They have to. You know I'm sure you know the saying when the student is ready the teacher will appear. Right.

Okay so in my own life I found that when the student is really ready everyone becomes the teacher and it sounds like that's what you're talking about being with these sixth grade kids and you know like what you know you're 30 something and these are sixth graders but wow what an amazing experience for you. I'm wondering if there are any risks that you wish you had taken in your past life or these. I wonder if moments that you've had looking back on your 30 years. I don't know if there's any risk I wish I had taken.

I think specifically back to in 2013 I was living in New York City. I was working for the Center for Constitutional Rights. It was when George Zimmerman was acquitted in the case of the murder of Trayvon Martin and it was a very hard summer for me. I just finished my first year of law school and all I could think was why in the world am I still in law school.

This is crazy. You know the law is not working. I don't even like this. I don't feel good at this.

School has always been very hard for me. I had to work very hard to get through it. It always comes as a surprise to people because I got very good grades. In college I was a person who stayed up till 2.30 every morning trying to read as much as possible just so I could go to class and gain as much as possible.

I had a real zeal in undergraduate for learning. Then I got to law school and I felt so out of place. There was a constant fighting to be present and a constant fighting to have my story be a part of the overarching narrative that when I got to that summer I was done. Here I am and one of the greatest cities in the world and also one of the dirtiest cities in the world which I kind of liked and I was not in the position to take full advantage of that space.

I try not to live in too much regret because I think you do what you can where you are and then if you're a reflective person you'll gain that lesson. I think what I gained from looking at that summer in particular and wishing I had maybe taken more risk and invested more is that I really want to have a practice of being present. I think that's when we take the most valuable risk. It's when we're willing to be present and the moment that we're in and grapple with those hard questions right there and make those decisions in that moment and to do so with some principles and some philosophies I think we can really take the risk that actually make a difference.

I feel like that summer really taught me that lesson to be present to make the most of the moment even when the moment is really hard. Being present has allowed myself and I think that people that I'm in community with to really gain some valuable life lessons in the process and to think about how we honor each other's lives and so I don't know if there's any risk I wish I would take but. So did it feel risky to you to go to SPU? That space that I was in an SPU played a major role in how I radicalized.

Being one of very few black students who also had a lot of questions about faith and also later in life growing to identify as queer. You know that I asked a lot of questions that made people uncomfortable and also made me uncomfortable. That's not great when people look at you like you're crazy in class but that really has played a role in who and why I am the way that I am is going to a school where I those questions for me were obvious even if they weren't obvious to anyone else. So that's probably one of the most formative risk I've ever taken even though I think choosing to engage the church differently and to become more spiritual and less religious has been one of the hardest decisions I've ever made but also a risk.

I didn't know how my family would react to that. I didn't know how my mom who's very religious would react to that and to be honest we've got a ton of arguments over the years but I'll never forget the day my mom called me and said I'm reading the autobiography of Malcolm X. I'm wondering if we could talk about it. So realizing those risks over time can't have really good outcomes when it's with relationships that there are trust that there is trust in it changes things and now my mom and I tell my mom I'm going back to Standing Rock.

Yeah she worries but she doesn't second guess it. She's willing to take those risks with me and I think that's the hardest part for me about taking risk is acknowledging that some of the risks I take are not just risk I'm taking for myself. I'm actually taking risk on behalf of other people's emotions and vulnerability and story and that's when I start to feel the weight of that risk because it's not just about me. I don't know how any of us really know what risks we're going to take.

What I do tell myself is I commit to taking a sacrifice. I commit to sacrifice. I think a lot of people are already suffering. I feel that on a regular basis and when I look at the context we live in right now and we're not all willing to take some risks that are of ourselves but also aren't about ourselves.

We're going to stay in this position that we're going to get worse for a lot of people and so I guess to answer your question is I don't know what big risk I'm going to take next but what I do know is I'm willing to take risk to see people be cared for and to see us really stand in solidarity against these things that I think so many folks are suddenly starting to realize and wake up and go oh crap we may not be in a very good position right now if this is the kind of election that we just had and so really wanting to commit myself not just to be in present but to knowing that I'm no more valuable than anyone else if I'm not willing to give something up for our human family and the creation that we're part of and then how can I expect that from anyone else? I'm wondering if you would read your poem Harambe. I wrote this poem after Harambe the gorilla was shot at a zoo. It was in Cincinnati and I wrote it because I couldn't help but see the striking similarities between the work that I've been involved in but also the storyline that gets told and if people are familiar with the way in which black bodies are often talked about or the way in which people who've been the victims of police terrorism are talked about often as if we're animals and so I couldn't help but be struck by that incident so this poem is called Harambe.

Next to you hashtag Harambe a 17 year old rare gorilla and captivity incarcerated prior to his death or murder or accident or misunderstanding at the Cincinnati Zoo or jail or facility we humans specifically black brown native poor refugee women queer muslim et cetera get it but I won't lie it's too damn hard to warn you there's a lot of competition these days. I'm sure you have not heard of the oppression olympics are the humans who mourn mambles selectively or the 900 refugees who drowned in the Mediterranean see the same week you and that child had your unfortunate meeting this is not your fault. It's hard to get good news when you are locked in a cage. It is hard to care about these damn human supremacists watching over you while refusing to change their way is they use you for capital gains and shoot you when your existence gets in their way believe me.

We, Trayvon, Jordan, Sean, Sandra, Rekia, Eric, Tamir the list goes on and on we get it. I'm sorry you were shot Harambe removing your body your too big body too black body too scary body too much animal body you're too useful dead or alive body. I'm sorry you didn't have someone to tell you to put your hands up where they could see them to scream hands up don't shoot after your execution. I'm sorry I cannot promise you safety raise hands surrender is not a surefire way to survive I'm sorry you were made a hashtag but welcome to the interwebs this is the place where trauma goes to rise to the top of our timelines I'm sorry you were made a target I do not think you intended to hurt him in fact I think you guarded him because black on black protection is realer than black on black crime but they'll never tell that story.

I'm sorry stray bullets have no names you just stood too close to little black body these days no black thing is safe everyone wants to blame the parents but never the ones who built the cage I'm mostly sorry I cannot mourn you cannot challenge the system that hunts you tracks you cages you makes money out of your flesh even kills you if those amounts are better I am so sorry but it is the first time we were not the biggest target in the cage and the pyramid scheme of humans supremacy my peoples have always been buried at the bottom truth is I know we are all animals and all life on earth would be better but there was a lot less competition and a lot more Harambe. Nikita Oliver thank you so much for everything that you do and everything that you are thanks for being a guest on our show thank you so much for taking the time it's been amazing she said a lot of amazing things what what struck you the most in the same I'm still vibrating from the poem which I found incredibly moving but really as a metaphor for all the work that she does and everything that she is I think I think the lesson I'm going to take away from this months and years from now is how risky it is just to be present and vulnerable in the moment and share yourself and your values and be accountable with your community what she said about sacrificing yourself your heart your body and and relying on your community is something that is going to stick with me she affirmed for me the power of story that I've always believed deeply in to make you think to make you question yourself to educate she had so many good examples of stories just her discussion of being a boxer and how you have to be vulnerable to be a boxer I thought what that's I've always thought that's the opposite now I will leave here and think about that for the rest of the day how is that you have to be ready to take a hit we talk about the perfect metaphor for life yeah you have to be ready to take a hit and be present it's the moment that you're not present that you get hit what did you think about her take on mentorship it was very interesting to me and I was a little sad to hear that people who had been mentors to her in the church were upset with her decision to to leave you know traditional Christianity I think you know as we not to mention heteronormativity well right right yeah and she came from a pretty conservative Christian background I felt inspired by her I mean I felt like she was my mentor I had that same feeling and it's only been maybe three years that I have started looking for young people as my mentors and as these beacons of spiritual wisdom yeah I always felt comfortable with my elders but it's these young people who shake me up and make me pay attention in ways that feel deeply uncomfortable but also revelatory go out there take risks show up wage love rage if you have to engage stay engaged yes