Soul Boom - Toxic Politics: America’s NEW Pandemic (w/ Mustafa Santiago Ali)

Episode Date: February 10, 2026

What if environmental justice is not just policy, but a spiritual responsibility? Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali breaks down how toxic pollution, redlining, and disinvestment created unequal health and wealth outcomes and why grassroots community power is the only path from surviving to thriving. From PFAS and public health to the dismantling of EPA science and the sacredness of nature, this conversation connects climate justice, healing, and hope with real on the ground stories and solutions. SPONSORS! 👇 Sundays for Dogs 👉 Get 15% off OneSkin with the code SOULBOOM at ⁠https://www.oneskin.co/SOULBOOM⁠  #oneskinpod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Fetzer 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.fetzer.org⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⏯️ SUBSCRIBE!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠👕 MERCH OUT NOW! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠📩 SUBSTACK!⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  FOLLOW US! IG: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://instagram.com/soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok: 👉 ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://tiktok.com/@soulboom⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  CONTACT US! Sponsor Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Work with Soul Boom: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Send Fan Creations, Questions, Comments: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠[e-mail]⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Executive Produced by: Kartik Chainani Executive Produced by: Ford Bowers, Samah Tokmachi Companion Arts Production Supervisor: Mike O'Brien Theme Music by: Marcos Moscat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Religion in America, unfortunately, has been used to segregate, to support things like slavery. That's why I think spirituality is so incredibly important, right? Because it's not just about words, it's about deeds and action. We have a deep conversation on that. This is a place to have it. Well, this is a place to have it then. You're on the right podcast. Hey there, it's me, Rain Wilson, and I want to dig into the human experience.

I want to have conversations about a spiritual revolution. Let's get deep with our favorite thinkers, friends, and entertainers about life, meaning, and idiocy. Welcome to the Soul Boom podcast. Mustafa, welcome to Soul Boom. Thank you for having me, Ray. I really appreciate it. Oh, man, I'm so excited. I've been wanting to have you on the show for a long time. Your bio is crazy.

Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali, Executive Vice President of National Wildlife Federation, founder and CEO of Revitalization Strategies, your consultation company. What does that do? What does that focus on? It helps our most vulnerable communities move from surviving to thriving. I love that. You're on the right podcast. You were a chief of programs at the Union of Concerned Scientists, senior vice president at the Hip Hop Caucus. I don't want to hear about that. And your career began at the Environmental Protection Agency, founding member of the Office of Environmental Justice, the senior advisor for environmental. environmental justice and community revitalization. It goes on and on.

You've worked with over a thousand communities around the world. Blu-blah for president. A clean economy coalition, bipartisan infrastructure. CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, Democracy Now, 300 publications, writer, poet. We're going to get to that. Netflix, Green Sports, NAACP, Mager. I mean, that's not even all of it. Your resume is so intense.

Sometimes they see me in suits and I say I'm country. So you can look past, you know, the suits and you'll see the essence of the individual. And did you, the first thing that pops in my mind is like, well, did you deal with race issues growing up in West Virginia? I mean, maybe it's a stereotype, but I think of it as kind of a racist place. And I think about the hillbilly culture out there and stuff like that. What's your family's origin and the origin of your name and any issues you had to deal with? Yeah, I didn't really have many issues like that. You know, I mean, yes, I'm black, and yes, most of the people I was around was white.

Now, when I got older, I had to deal with some situations, but I was really lucky. You know, I was in sports. Everybody knew my dad, knew my grandfather and other folks. And at least for the longest time, I just felt like folks just saw me for me. It didn't mean that I didn't realize that I had brown skin and other people didn't. But as I got older, my best friend, I remember one time we were supposed to go to this county fair, which was the county next door. And he and I did everything together. I mean, you know, campouts and spent time together, played ball together, all those different types of things.

And I remember we were going to go to this county fair. And I remember one time his mom saying, well, he's not going to be able to go with us. And my best friend was like, well, why? Why is that? You know, we do go everywhere. We do everything. and she's like, well, he probably wouldn't be welcomed over that other county. And then I remember talking to my mom about it, and she broke it down to me.

It was actually a county where the clan was. And then she had to explain to me what that was. But I was very fortunate when I was coming up that didn't run into a huge amount of that stuff. It exists. But I was lucky that I didn't have to deal with it in the way that so many other people have. Now, as I got older and began to move around a bit more, and wasn't in such a protected space, you begin to see that the world has its scars.

It has, you know, the things, those dark things that sometimes are brought to the light. And you have to figure out how you're going to navigate that. And you've got to figure out what role you want to play in helping to change that dynamic. That's when you also begin to understand the challenges that still exist inside of our country, right? Especially in that moment.

because in the small community that I grew up in, there were three churches for less than 500 people. And the handful of black folks went to my grandfather's church. And then other folks went to the other churches. After the church was over, you know, people would come back together, you know, people playing softball, people at all kinds of different events that are in the community, at the community center, so forth and so on. But it also reminds you, as someone aptly said one time, that Sunday is the most segregated day in America. So it's always interesting because God is universal.

Yeah. And, you know, for us to put, you know, these unfortunate shackles on God is really interesting in how humans do that. It's interesting. I grew up in the Baha'i faith, as you know, and it was very, very. racially integrated. So if you went into Seattle to a Baha'i meeting, you'd have Native American, Baha'is, Black Baha'is, Hispanic Baha'is, a lot of white hippie Baha'is, Persian Baha'is, all kind of mixed together. And I knew about kind of spiritual segregation, but not until I spent a little time in the South and I was in a small town and we're driving down the street one day

and it was 10 a.m. or 11 a.m. whenever the church service started, and it literally, as we're driving down the street, like 20 miles an hour, you saw the white church and kind of like SUVs pulling in and the white family's going in, and then there was a black church over on the other side of the street and the black family's pouring in. And they were literally across the street. They're both Protestant denominations.

I don't know if it was Baptist and Methodist. I'm not sure exactly. But it was like it made zero sense to me whatsoever. Wait a minute. Why don't they mix it up? And just like roll the... the dice 50-50 and let people worship together across the street or bring all of them together and rent out the local soccer stadium or something like that. And it was, it was, it was pretty

astonishing. Yeah. Well, you know, religion in America, unfortunately, has been used to segregate, to impact, to support things like slavery. And a number of other things. and you know so folks had to be able to separate themselves and then dehumanize individuals to be able to justify it and then they wrap it around scripture you know and their interpretation of scripture and think most of us if we take a serious look we understand those dynamics we understand how books inside of our you know inside of what we believe to be the word of God have been manipulated to meet the needs of whomever was in power at that time or was looking for power. And slavery was justified by the Bible, and slavery was also torn apart by folks that believed in the Bible.

Exactly, exactly. You know, and wars have been started from passages of the Bible, and wars have been ended from passages in the Bible. And it just depends on how you want to use it as a tool. Yeah. Well, that's why I think spirituality. so incredibly important, right? Because it's not just about words, it's about deeds and actions and how you show up. When you see someone who's the least of these, how you make sure that you do everything,

which is in your ability to be able to uplift them. That's Godlike. And that is what God expects from us. And unfortunately, folks have their own selfish needs. So they try and manipulate God and shrink God down into something much smaller than God is. And we have a deep conversation on that because... This is a place to have it. Well, this is the place to have it then. I wanted to do a show called An Inconvenient Jesus. And just going into Bible quotes that really run contrary to the way that most Jesus

believers and churchgoers act in contemporary America. Yeah. Because there are so many quotes when you start to dig in. Yeah, yeah. Well, if you go back and you take a look, whether you're a person who studies the Quran or the Bible or the Torah, you know, and really go back to the essence of what those were about, you know. In many instances, it was about love.

It was about, you know, finding ways to bring people up. It's about a stronger connection with, you know, the supreme being. and then whatever label name you may want to give. And I think if we were willing to actually spend the time to have honest conversations in that space, we would have less war. We would have less people going hungry. You know, we would see less misogyny and less racism

and all these other types of things because there's a higher expectation than because you're truly in touch with your spirituality and not the religiosity that many people find. themselves locked into of I'm supposed to do X, Y, and Z. And then that's it. And I'm good. So, I mean, I know that's a deep conversation for so many people and sometimes it can get prickly for individuals. But you know when you see somebody, when you spend space with somebody who is truly spiritual, you don't have to ask who they pray to. You don't have to ask what their

character is about because it shines through. And that's. I still have hope, and everybody says I'm this eternal optimist because I see good in people. Sometimes you've got to look a lot harder with some folks, but I believe that the possibility still exists for us to evolve into what we're supposed to be. You spent a long, fruitful and fascinating career at the Environmental Protection Agency, and I'm just wondering how this kid from Pritchard's Falls, pickup Falls, what's it called? Pick up pickup truck falls, West Virginia, you know, you end up going to law school, you get inspired by working for the environment.

When did you find your calling in environmental protection, especially for communities that are on the front lines of suffering at the hands of pollution and whose environment needs the greatest protection? How did that transition happen? I know I don't have the best reputation when it comes to pets. Well, at least a character I once played, didn't. But to be specific, that was cats, okay?

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Thanks, Dr. Tori Waxman, who got tired of seeing premium dog food packed with fillers and synthetic stuff, so she made Sundays instead. It's a very loud dog food. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to Sundaysfor Dogs.com slash Soul Boom 50 and get 50% off your first order. Or use code Soul Boom 50 at checkout.

That's 50. percent off your first order at Sundays for dogs.com slash soul boom 50. Again, Sundays for dogs.com slash soul boom 50 or use code soul boom 50 at checkout. You know, black and brown, indigenous, lower wealth white communities, Asian and Pacific Islander communities are the ones who disproportionately carry the burdens from toxic pollution. It impacts them both in their health. It impacts their wealth. And it impacts their future generations. And that we should do something about it. You know, we can go through, you know, the cancers and the liver and kidney diseases and the heart diseases and the chemicals that are a part of that.

But there was intentionality in many instances and pushing people into certain communities. We talk about redlining. When we talk about restrictive covenances, those were policies. I don't know restrictive covenances. I know redlining. Yeah. Is that the same thing? Well, restrictive covenants has said only certain people can live in a certain area, right?

Redlining said you can't have the money to be able to purchase something in a certain area. So you get that one-two punch, if you will. I gotcha. And that determines if you are black where you could live or brown, or we know what was done with our indigenous brothers and sisters pushed to reservations and then the disinvestment there. Same thing in black and brown communities and Asian communities in some instances as well. And then I also make sure that we have to bring forward on our brothers and sisters who are lower wealth and who are white because in many instances they've also been seen as less than human if we're going to have an honest conversation. But we know that race is the primary predictor, but, you know, social economic stuff also plays a significant role.

So I believe that you should never exclude folks if they're being impacted. Because then you create these gaps in a process. You never completely heal. And you also give others the opportunity who don't have anyone's best interest at heart to then try and sneak in and say, well, that's just those folks over there. That reminds me, a big chunk of my family is pretty white trash, and my aunt Mary Lou lived in a trailer park by the Cetac airport, and it was under the flight path, and they were literally like the lights going,

dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk, dunk. And, like, there was a trailer park under it, and the planes were going, and you would go visit her, and you'd look up and you'd see these planes coming over, and you'd just see this airplane fuel exhaust spreading out every five to 10 minutes over this trailer park. And even at age like 13, I was like, this can't be good. It's not.

You've got so many different. So right there, a lot of times people don't pay attention to all the different impacts that are happening when you're dealing with sort of what's going on around the airports, right? So, of course, you've got the trails of pollution that are going to, one, people inhale them, then they get into the water bodies that are around. And in some instances, then you end up drinking them. You have the mental health aspects also because of all that noise and the lights and your immune system just gets getting hit again and again and again. And then it opens you up to a whole bunch of different diseases.

So, you know, we have to take holistic sorts of sets of actions for all of these different types of things to be able to do it right. That's why it's not just about the Environmental Protection Agency. I know we're going to talk a little bit about the work, you know, and me being there and those different types of things. it is about all these federal agencies and departments having a distinct responsibility for protecting folks, right? They take your tax dollars. No matter who the president is, no matter who in the administration is, hopefully you have one that actually cares about people and is trying to do something to move the needle in the right direction, but they are using your tax dollars. And that's one of the things I always try and remind folks is that no one deserves to be poisoned, right?

No child deserves to have their life shortened. no elder should have one day taken away from them that they desperately probably want to hold on to and rightly so. And we often don't hold our elected officials accountable for what they should be doing and how they should be doing it with our money that we're paying in. So nobody's paying their money to say, gee, I sure hope you shorten my life. Gee, I sure hope you expose me to, you know, PIFO's, you know, forever chemicals. or we can go down the laundry list of those different types of things. So, you know, one of the beauties of my mother and my grandmother is that they taught me that you have power unless you give it away. And in our country, nobody teaches you about power, right?

How it manifests itself? How does it play out in your life? What is your responsibility with it? Yeah, you can give it away if you want to. But then that means that you are choosing to allow somebody else who may not know you, may not know your family, may not know the places that you come from to make decisions. And you're not talking necessarily just about the power of the privilege and the elite. You're talking about the working class power, about the power to change your community, to speak up, to rally people to vote, to make changes in your community at the grassroots.

All of those things, without a doubt. Because, again, it is about a cumulative set, right? You have a cumulative set of impacts that beat you down, that cause all these negative things. But you also can have a cumulative set of positives that can make real change happen. And that's all the work that I've done over the years. It is not about these big giant home runs. It is about the singles and doubles and triples. It is about when you can help people to begin to see something positive happening in their life,

even if it's a small win, they begin to say, you know what? I might want to get a little more of that. How do I do that? How do we add this element in? And how do we make sure that we are highlighting the beauty that exists inside of our communities? One of the things I used to do is I would go around the country and I was training people in different things. But I would talk about community treasures, right? Because we often, when we think about treasure, we think about money, right?

Or think about gold or silver if we watch the movies or those different types of things. I would help people to have a better idea. I think about like magic swords and armor from Dungeons and Dragons when I think about treasure. Just FYI. Well, there's nothing wrong with that. Dungeons and Dragons had its time, right? It still has its time. Thank you very much.

I got to get you in my game. Well, you probably do. You probably do. Keep going. So every community has its treasure. It has treasures. Mrs. Ramirez is a treasure, right? Mrs. Ramirez has been taking care of kids inside of her community while folks went off to work.

Mrs. Mr. Johnson knows everything that ever happened inside of a community. Mr. Johnson also loves the fish. And when he goes fishing, he brings stuff back to make sure that people have protein inside the community. Because it can't afford to go to the grocery store. The grocery store is too far. far away, right? Or there'll be somebody else in the community who knows natural remedies, right? And they can make sure that they're helping people to understand why we should be protecting these types of things because for generation upon generation upon generation, they've been used

to help the community when they didn't have access to medical treatment. You can go through all these different examples of treasures that exist, the folks who are the storytellers and who are the poets, the singers who are inside of it, the folks who know accounting, the folks who know all these various types of things. And when you begin to bring that together, people have this holistic structure that helps them to be able to not just fight against, you know, these major polluters or these major folks who are doing damage inside of community, but you're also showing folks what community actually is all about. It's about not one of us having all the answers, having all the things that are necessary. It's about us coming together. But it's hard. It is hard. It's hard work.

Of course. I've tried to do some stuff at the community level. Man, it's hard. You've got to listen to everyone. You've got to take in their input. You do. And you're listening. You're like, well, this person's an idiot.

Seriously? There's no way we're doing that. And you've got to consult. You do? And you've got to come up with a decision and a timetable. And I think that's part of the problem is that community work. Grassroots work is just really hard. It's way easier to have someone just step up and say,

here's what we're going to do. You're going to do this. You're going to do this. you're going to do this. But community work is fruitful, right? Especially when you find for a long lasting. It is long lasting. And that may be the most important aspect is because if one person, something happens,

they move away, they transition. There's still a number of people who one have the history because you build it together. And two, they understand that they're in this together. And isn't that what this is all about? Because everybody feels alone, especially in this country, in this country, you are taught to be the best. You're taught to make the most money. You're taught to step on whoever you need to step on. That's not everybody. I don't want to broad brush it, but far too many believe that that is the way to success. I believe that success is by the people you have around you who love you,

by the people who will stand next to you no matter what comes, the people who will tell you the truth if you're moving in a crazy direction. So for me, community is incredible. incredibly important community is what will save this country if we are willing to make the investments there those hard investments those investments that take time as I tell my philanthropic family you can't make an investment for one year or two years and expect traumatic change to happen if you're serious get in there and stick and stay and you will see amazing things happen hey I wanted to give a quick shout out to our spiritual partners at the Fetzer Institute they have just launched a brand new

shiny website over at fetzer.org. That's fete zer.org. And it's full of spiritual tools for modern struggles, which is exactly what we're trying to cultivate here at soul boom. Fetzer believes that most of humanity's problems are spiritual at the root and they're helping people plant some deeply soulful solutions. So I urge you to go poke around their new website, check out fetzer.org. Thank you, Fetzer Institute, for helping sponsor the show and all of the truly amazing work that you do over there. Fetzer.org. That's FetZER.org. In the soul boom and the spiritual revolution,

we talk about work at the grassroots and how that is where the change is going to happen. That's where the change is going to have to happen. What did you see working in the halls of power, working high up in the EPA, meeting with these giant governmental organizations and overseeing, you know, funding in the tens and hundreds of millions of dollars,

and the bureaucracy of Washington, D.C., the backstabbing, the infighting, the power struggles, the switch every four or eight years between a Democrat and a Republican administration. I think a lot of people feel like government is gonna save us. Government is gonna save me. If we have the Green Amendment, then the EPA is gonna be fine,

the environment's all gonna be fine, and it's all gonna be taken care of. We gotta have the right person in the White House, make the right decision. Now, of course, that's helpful. the right legislation, the right people elected, who care about the issues that you care about, is super important. But how does change really happen at the grassroots level?

And from your personal experience of working at the highest highs and the most community of the community, how do you see that differential? Well, first of all, government has a responsibility to be an authentic partner. They have a very difficult time with that labeling, authentic partner, right? because that means that you are not showing up as the singular power, but you are one player and what communities are asking for. That's the way I believe policy should be developed. So not only did I do all that work at EPA,

but I also worked on Capitol Hill. I advised White House. I led the interagency working group, which was 17 federal agencies and a few White House offices as well. So I had a chance to see all this different type of stuff play out. And the federal government just has a problem because they often operate from theory. Now, the theory in the best years is also tied to science, right?

It's tied to good analysis, those types of things, but it's not homegrown, right? It's not authenticated based upon the experience. It's not tried and true tested necessarily. Groundtruthing is what one of my elders once told me. It was like, okay, Mustafa, that sounds great. Sounds like you, you know, you got your master's degree, it says, but it's about ground truth. And I say, okay, yes, it is, sir. And we began to unpack that.

So I bring that into our conversation because, you know, I can talk about all the things that I saw at the highest levels of government and, you know, where the gaps were and those different types of things in relationship to funding and timing for funding and making sure that communities had the capacity to be able to truly apply for it. And, of course, if they couldn't, then dollars move on to somebody else, those different types of things, which is a problem. but it is really about you have to be able to show examples of how real change happens on the ground to be able to convince folks. I took some information one time back to a White House. I won't say who was in charge of that White House

at that time because I couldn't get them to pay attention to environmental justice. And I said, well, this is what environmental justice looks like. When we do it right, when we make sure that the resources are there, and that we make sure that the voices of communities are a driver along with other partners. They are the driver.

So you look at projects like the Regenesis project in Spartanburg, South Carolina. No idea what that is. I hope you get a chance to go there. Okay. It looks like America. And what I mean by that is they had many of the same challenges that if you went to Utah or Oklahoma or Mississippi or a number of places. So, you know, they had bad transportation routes.

So there were impacts that were happening there. They had lack of jobs. They had exposures from toxic facilities. And people were struggling with those that were there. They had lack of access to housing. They got a small grant from the Environmental Protection Agency about $25,000. And over the years, they've leveraged in over $300 million in changes, 144 partners. So those bad transportation routes, this is really interesting.

And I saw it even where I grew up. So when you would go to the community, there was a railroad track. And, of course, there was a chemical facility. So if there was an explosion or release that happened at that chemical facility, the community was trapped because a train often would be sitting on the track across the road that was there so you couldn't get to it. So they have this process where they ask you if there's an emissions release to stay in your house, shut the windows, shut the doors until it's over with. Now, if you're in Spartanburg, South Carolina, in the summertime, when it's 100 plus degrees

and you have to shut your windows and can't open your doors until this is over, it can be a really tight situation. So that's the bad transportation routes type of thing. They had old shotgun housing. Now, I know you're a city person. So old shotgun housing means that you can open up the front door and see out the back door.

Not a whole lot of insulation, those different types of things. A lot of old mills used to have shotgun housing. Coal mines used to have, we would probably label with shotgun housing, those different types of things. There was no community center for folks to come, for kids and elders to get together.

lack of jobs were going on there. So as we fast forward, people building these partnerships, people beginning to identify what are those various federal resources, state resources, and philanthropic resources we need to be able to make change happen. They began to identify that. And they began to then say, who are the partners who can help us to move forward. So Department of Transportation, you said these Tiger grants around transportation stuff. So they were able to get a new transportation route. They were able to work with the railroad system to make sure that they no longer just sat and idled there inside of the community. They were able to build partnerships also with the companies that were there,

the polluting companies, and they began to build these advisory boards where folks had a better understanding of what was going on there, what their longer-term plans were to be able to transition away from certain things. They were able to get 400, I believe it is, new green homes. Now, why is that important for everyday folks? I know there are going to be some folks who might be able to understand what being everyday is. So before they were paying $3 to $400 a month for their electricity costs, because remember we were talking about shotgun housing, not very much insulation,

so forth and so on. We were able to get that down to $67 a month with the new green homes that were built there. The other beauty of that moment is that folks from the community also got trained in how to build homes and how to do some cleanups that were necessary. And again, Harold and others played a critical role and being able to make sure that that happened. So for me, this work is always about not only being able to clean up pollution, but how do we get people the skills so that they can create their own businesses? If you're an entrepreneur or if you're, you know, just want to be a worker in a space, make sure that you have those skills to be able to do that. They build a new 60,000 square foot green community center, again, where there are all these cultural things that are being protected and elders are being able to sit down with young people and, you know, build relationship and keep community strong.

and a number of other types of things that are going on in that space. So there's a laundry list of things that they were able to do. And that's just one example of when we're serious, because it doesn't happen overnight. You know, it takes decades to be able to do it. But when we honor that plan and make sure that community's voice as a driver, you know, amazing things can happen. Oh, it doesn't matter if it's Democrats or Republicans,

and the bureaucracy is always there and being able to have to navigate it, being able to have to understand, you know, the language that's necessary to be able to move a process forward is something you learn over time. Also understanding the power of the inside, outside, gang. And what that means is that if you're working on the inside, there are certain things you can do and certain things that you maybe should not be doing. But when folks from the outside get focused and they say, these are the seven things that, we are expecting and they continue to place pressure on the leadership of an agency or department. It usually gets traction. It has in the past. And so that's one of the ways you deal with the bureaucracy is that you know what the right thing is to do. But you may only be able

to get it so far and that's why other partners, they may be community folks, they may be folks who are in local county governments, they may be folks who are in business and industry. It goes down, you know, the laundry list of folks. But to address the bureaucracy, you need a number of folks in the process. You resigned from the Environmental Protection Agency in 2017. Yep. When the first Trump administration came to town. Talk to us about that, that decision. Prayed on it a lot. Talked to a family. I talked to mentors. I had made a promise years and years and years before to some elders one time, that I would do everything in my power to be able to stop folks from dying, to do what we can to mitigate the impacts that were happening.

And I had worked under both Democratic and Republican administrations, and they may have different policies and different ways of getting at it, but I always saw a pathway forward. Under certain administrations, you knew you might even be able to get half the distance that you wanted to get to, but you knew you could keep making progress. When that administration came in, I took a long look at what they said, and I believe what Maya Angelou shared with us that when someone shows you who they are, believe them, and I believe that they were going to do some nefarious things. I try to be a

respectful person. So, you know, I've written my resignation letter. A reporter said over a million people had read it. I pointed out to them all of these amazing resources they had. How you know, positive things have happened and also what they could do to be able to, you know, as a new administration, to be able to do some positive things. Because I don't believe in identifying a problem without also talking about possible solutions. But I knew, based upon my value system, I knew based upon what they had shared, that I couldn't work for them because I took the oath when I raised my right hand very seriously. And I believed, and then later on.

What was the oath you took? Well, when you become a Fed, you take an oath to protect the Constitution, both from folks, both domestic and, you know, beyond. And I take that very seriously. I come from a long line of folks who served in military and other types of things. So oaths are important.

Oaths should have meaning. and I knew that I couldn't be a part of anyone hurting the people that I had, you know, promised that I would do everything that I could uplift. And what surprised you the most about the reaction to your resignation? A million people read your resignation letter. Yes, what they said. I was surprised because I'd never had a million people

to care about environmental justice before. You know, I was the first one, you know, whatever you want to call it, high-ranking official, whatever, whatever, to be able to stand, up and push back at that time, I was surprised, but pleasantly surprised. At the positive support you were getting. Yeah, I mean, you're always going to get it. Was it partisan support or was it just from folks who cared?

I think it was a mix. It was a mix. Because I had known folks who were Republicans and Democrats and, you know, folks who were in that world. And then I'd work with folks who were in business industry. I'd work with folks in county and local guns. governments and of course all the grassroots folks that I had work with. So it was a cross-section of folks who were supportive. But you're also going to get the folks who have whatever challenges they may have. You get the death threats, you get all that other kind of stuff. But that wasn't my focus.

My focus was, how do we protect this important entity that took decades to get in place? and that was done because of front line folks. So it wasn't about Mustafa, right? Talk about that. The EPA was founded. Yeah. Well, the EPA was founded back in 1970, right? So the reason EPA was founded was because, you know,

you had the Cuyahoga River catching on fire, right? There was so much pollution. And Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. Rachel, yes. You had in major cities like Los Angeles and other places, there were days when you couldn't look up and see the sun. because there was so much pollution. So all of that, you know, push folks to actually found the Environmental Protection Agency.

And if we're not careful, we can find ourselves drifting back into some really dangerous types of situations with the folks that we currently have. Oh, we're there. Yeah. Oh, we're there. But the Office of Environmental Justice, right? It was not bureaucrats who made that office become a reality. It was the folks who were on the ground, right? It was folks like Dr. Bullard and Dr. Wright and Richard Moore and Bunyan Bryant.

And, I mean, I can go down the laundry list. Tom Goldtooth, from our indigenous family. And hundreds of other folks. Those are great names. Bunyan Bryant. Oh, yeah. Tommy Goldtooth. Yeah.

Come on. These are, they're great names, but they're even greater individuals. Nice. Hazel Johnson. Let's talk about Hazel Johnson, just one. Let's do that. Hazel Johnson, the mother of the environmental justice movement. She's one of the folks who pulled me in.

I used to go to the meetings. They would have these meetings at these hotels, and then they would always meet in the lobbies, off to the side on the couches. And there was only a handful of us who were kids back then. And Hazel used to say, get the kid, bring the kid over here. And I would come over, and it reminded me of my grandfather when I was with my grandfather.

And she would say, I want you to listen and learn because you're going to have a responsibility for this stuff. Like your grandfather feeding you chunks of the apple with his pen knife. Yes, that's a proverbial apple. Why is Hazel important? Because Hazel's the one who gave, who would become Senator Obama and then President Obama, his street cred in Chicago. She's from Chicago, Southside. And Hazel was just one of these amazing folks.

So when we bring forward these names that are just letters, right, for people, you really need to understand the substance of who these individuals were and their dedication and the decades of work that they had to put in place. just to get a little bit of traction. And all these individuals were the ones who pushed to get that Office of Environmental Equity, which became the Office of Environmental Justice in place. So there's no Fed, and there's been some great ones to. Dr. Clarice Gaylord was an amazing leader inside of the Environmental Protection Agency. And as a black woman, all the things that she had to go through to be able to reach the levels that she was able to, all of that.

And she would say it if she was here, pails in comparison to what those frontline leaders did all those years ago and continue to do today. Our mutual friend Liz has the newspaper website Word in Black. Yes. You write essays for them. It's a multimedia site. You wrote an essay for them that I read. I had no idea in the most recent Trump administration. They have completely dismantled the scientific recent.

branch of the EPA. Tell us about this very specific small office and how integral it is to the future of America and how it's dismantling has pulled the rug out from under any kind of climate justice that one would ever want to do. Yeah, so thank you for the clarification because I write a whole lot of stuff.

You're talking about the Office of Research and Development. The Office of Research and Development is so critical because it's like where science lives, right? Everything that you've probably ever heard of in the news, whether it's the Flint water crisis and all those children who were impacted there, or, you know, what's going on around Phaas,

or what's going on around. What's Phaas? Phaas is forever chemicals. It's polyphloral alkalize. Okay. So it's these chemicals that live literally forever in the water body or in other ways and also causes cancer,

immune disorders, if you're looking on the wildlife side, it actually will slow down a wildlife's ability to be able to replicate, all these different types of things. It's really nasty stuff. It's now everywhere. But almost if you look at methane, of course, one of the greenhouse gases, you know, the research that they've done there, to make sure that there's strong science, right? This is not guesswork. These is science and analysis that takes, you know, years, sometimes decades to get in place. So these are the individuals who are sort of the central core

of what's going on there. And this administration has decided not to have these scientists anymore. It's intentional. It's a part of a strategy because if you can manipulate data, if you can take data away,

then you can justify cutting budgets. You can say, you know what, chemical X really isn't that big. of the deal, you can go ahead and move forward. Or, industry X, you can pollute more or you can have more emissions come out because this is not as toxic as some have said

because the science is no longer there to say one way or the other. So having, not having these individuals really puts America in a very more precarious situation. It's very dangerous. And you don't think that this is, this is like the the 37th thing in the headlines. I missed it.

I pay attention to climate stuff. This is something that I miss, that this office, a small office, that consolidates the data around climate, around pollution, around its health effects, around how it's affecting communities, especially black and brown communities,

has just been flushed on the toilet. You don't think about, like, oh, this small office with this ridiculous acronym is gone. what kind of impact that's going to have, but it's going to be absolutely devastating. It's going to be devastating. It's going to make it much tougher for communities and others to be able to go to take data and information that has been QAQC, right, quality controlled,

and be able to then go to a court and say, here's the impacts. Here's what the law says. So now you're taking that part out and it makes it easier for them to dismantle, you know, the regulations that are necessary. It makes it more easy for them to say you don't need to fund these particular things because there's no evidence that's saying that this is a problem. Not only do you have them eliminating this office and the scientists that are there, but you also have them, you have these advisory councils, right? These advisory counselors are usually made up of a number of different types of folks who have expertise, right? Not assumed expertise, but individuals who have spent decades upon decades on whatever their particular area focus is. And now they're getting rid of those also, or they're taking off all the individuals who actually know what they're talking about. You know, they're peer reviewed.

and you're just putting other individuals who are like-minded with themselves. Yeah. And so we've got a really, really tough situation that's in front of us. You know, the first principle of environmental justice is about honoring Mother Earth and the sacredness and the interconnectedness of all species, right? Species from the microorganisms that are in the ground

that play a critical role all the way up to, you know, other types of things that you see, whether it be buffalo or turtles or us, it's all interconnected. And sometimes we forget that. When you spend time in nature, you understand the value of diversity. And if diversity doesn't exist, then extinction becomes, you know, a part of the process. Because you can't, you know, be prepared for the changes that happen. You know, I operate and always have from a mind-body spiritual paradigm, if you will. because it's all interconnected.

And you see it when you do the work, right? When I'm out with community, there's no separation between it, right? You know, you hear elders, and they're talking about ancestors with us and talking about the impacts intergenerationalally from elders all the way down to babies. And when you talk about in Soul Boom, you know,

some of the things that we need to be aware of and focused on and how we heal, that's what this is, that's what this is all about because there is an erasure and eroding that has taken place. There is intentionality and bringing darkness into certain work, into certain spaces, but when we bring light in, it balances that out and it gets us back into the right direction. So when I go into community, and even when people are just dealing with some of the most horrendous types of things, I've been to places where solid waste landfills were so high that you thought they were small mountains or heels.

When I spent time in Flint, and I'd spent time in many other communities that even had higher levels of lead, but when you see children who come up to you, four years old, five years old, and say, Mr. Ali, Dr. Ali, am I going to die? You have to hold on to that for a moment. Because a child should never have to say that. A child should never have been exposed to these types of chemicals that are going to have these neurological problems. You go to places where you literally can take a lighter to the water and flick it and it catches on fire because there's so much methane that's there from fracking. You know, you go to these places and you understand that people are making decisions on the physical plane,

but they're also making decisions on the spiritual plane because of the connection that's there and how it's going to impact people. And that's when you have to do the work of helping people to understand their value and that, you know, long before words ever came into being they existed. And I go through, you know, these number of things because I don't know. don't want folks to think that this is just a physical battle that's going on. This is also a spiritual battle that is going on. And there, out of those two elements, also comes into the mental aspect because you can

either fortify someone, help them to become stronger, or you will watch them slip further and further away from who they truly are and what their sets of expectations could be if they choose. and we talk about all that in community. Those are not things that people normally will fund. Yeah, that's hard to get funding for. But they are things that are incredibly important when you're talking about holistic healing.

But how do we shift consciousness back towards sacredness and interconnectedness? Because our indigenous brothers and sisters, including mine of ancient Norway, saw every day experienced in the four seasons and the growing seasons and the birth, death cycle, that all things are interconnected and sacred and that divinity is in the earth

and within nature and without nature and beyond nature, but contained in nature, most importantly. So how do we shift this consciousness? Because it's not just about passing the next green new deal. We have to shift how we're doing most everything. We do it in a couple of ways. We do it by reconnecting with nature. We do it by reconnecting with self.

We do it with reconnecting with community. You know, I was blessed in Colorado outside of Denver to be with the tall bull people as they began to bring back buffalo, right? And to be able to literally be an arm's length away from the buffalo, to be able to spend time with the buffalo, to be able to understand the resource and the cultural connection that existed with the people and the buffalo, it's spiritual.

Now, for folks, unless you've been there and experienced it, it may be hard for you to understand how that was church and how that is a spiritual connection, but it also helps people when they go through that to be able to understand why we need to protect, you know, these cultural, sacred relationships with the species and with ourselves, because we are a species. When we spend time outdoors together, there's a mental benefit to that, but there's a spiritual benefit.

When you're out on the water, whether you're just dipping your toe in, or you're out, swimming, canoeing, kayaking, when you're hiking, it gives you a chance to let that device go that so many people have a very difficult time. I know you talk a little bit about it as well. A lot bit about it. Yeah, it's just addictive, right? It becomes your reality. But this shows me how interconnected all this stuff is because the mental health epidemic is tied to how much time we spend indoors staring at screens. And we need to get back outside and get our children back outside. And I know I was reading this article from a positive psychologist talking about the way that we interact with nature. Like every day we should be in nature.

And even if that's just a dog walk or sitting in your garden or at a park nearby for a certain amount of time each day, right? And then every month, there should be extended time in nature. Where you're spending like a day in nature? Like, you don't want to spend Sunday at the beach or something like that. And then every few months, there should be like a couple of days, like a vacation or something like that or your boating or something like that. But you don't even need money. It could still be at a campground or or someplace. And then once a year, there should be some kind of interaction with deep nature where you're in a forest, where you're camping, where you're under the stars, where even just for a day or two, you're kind of like interacting on the deepest possible.

level with nature and that this progression is tied to mental health and that's tied to screens and that's tied to the amount of time we spend inside and that's tied to climate change because the more time we spend outside the more we're going to want to fund the preservation of our forests of our air of our waters and that's why the National Wildlife Federation is so incredibly important okay tell us about that you know the beauty of that people were like myself why you go to national wildlife federation like I had folks what is it by the way I don't really know what it does It saves owls. That's all I know about.

You sound like my friends when I first went to EPA and it's like, man, what you're going to do? What are you going to rest squirrels? What are you about to do? And I was like, no, it's like I'm going to be working on issues that impact our community. The National Wildlife Federation's been around over 80 years. You know, it helps us to preserve nature, you know, those special places, both national parks and state parks and local parks that we were just talking about, you know, help us to protect wildlife, you know, helps us to make sure that we're also. fighting for water quality issues and does so many other things. One of the things I love about is that NWF has a big focus on kids.

So we work with between 10 and 14 million kids through our Eco Schools program across the country every year. Most people don't know that. We have a Sacred Grounds program that I'm incredibly proud of because houses of worship, we work with individuals there to be able to help them to plant native plants, to help them to beautify whatever. it is. It doesn't matter what your faith is. You know, folks show up

and are able to be able to do that. You know, we have a monarch's pledge where we protect the monarch butterfly, which is incredibly important because it's part of the pollinators. So, we do that work that's there. I love the monarch butterflies. I did a report

on them in sixth grade, and it's devastating what's happening to their habitat. Everyone who's listening, plant some milkweed. Plant some milkweed, bitch. is, Mustafa. I'm going to get in a lot of trouble for saying this. Here's one thing I newly appreciate and love about black folk.

Okay. Doing this podcast. One of our first guests, Dr. Tima Bryant, who used to be the head of the American Psychologist Association. You're Dr. Mustafa Santiago Ali. You're like specialists working for a decade. at the top level of your profession. And you're also poets.

And you don't hear that much from white folk. You don't hear about, like, Dr. Duncan Cunningham from St. Paul, Minnesota, is a professor of this and works in the radiology department of life. And he's also a poet. Yeah. But I love that bringing poetry to every occasion. and I wanted to ask you to maybe share some of your poems with us.

Talk a little bit about why you're also a poet. Why do you think so many black PhDs are also a poet? Well, for me, it's a part of my therapy, right? Because I deal with so many tough issues. It helps me to think critically about them to understand that the scars are real and that the scars tell lessons. They remind us of where we came from and where we can go. Because sometimes we try and run from our scars.

I don't believe that that is healthy. I believe that we find a way to put the tools necessary so that we don't scar ourselves again over and over, but that we honor that. It's like your history and you wanting to erase an aspect of that. poetry. Poetry is political. Poetry is about justice. Poetry is about healing. Poetry is about remembering and beginnings and all that is incredibly important. When you ask why so many, we've always, in our communities, our stories in many instances have been oral. So we bring

them from generation to generation to generation, there might be a slight new flavor that's placed on it as those stories move forward, but it is how we breathe. It is our existence. It is our saying we are here, we were here, and we will be here. And that's why I think poetry is so incredibly important because it is not just the analytical, right? You're getting your PhD and you're putting together, you know, all this information and you're sitting in front of a committee and people are judging that information, that's one thing, right? And it is finite. Poetry is infinite. Poetry has been before words existed and poetry will exist after. We're all gone. So I think that's the reason you see so many amazing people who, you know, maybe experts in

medicine or engineering or a number of things, business, who also understand they have to have that spiritual connection. Well, I think that's one of the soul boom spiritual answers to the radical spiritual revolution is that everyone needs to be a poet. In addition to whatever they do, everyone should say I'm a bus driver poet. Yeah, yeah.

I'm a kindergarten teacher, poet, I'm a fry cook poet, I'm a PhD poet, I'm an actor poet, and to bring poetry to everything we do and how we process things internally and how we share our story. It's like making sure people will see, you know, you've written something. I'm like, oh, you know, you're an author, you're a writer, these types of things. I always tell folks, you are too.

It's just when you decide to be, when your moment pulls you in. So what I love about poetry is it reminds us, as this piece I wrote, that you are enough. Imagine if people really understood that you are enough, that you don't have to put on all these airs that certain things want you to do. So I'll share this with you really. Yeah, please. This one is labeled, you are enough. Don't let the silence trick you.

You've been whole since birth, braided in brilliance, birth from black earth and stardust prayers, your grandmas whispered over collard greens and candles. You are the poem before it's written, the answer to a question the world keeps forgetting, how beauty bends, but don't. own break, how survival sings in the key of grace. Your laugh is a revolution. Your scars are not shame. Their maps, directions back to your name. Beloved, even when they ghost you, even when they

frame your softness as sometimes of shame, remember, ain't no lie strong enough to eclipse your flame. You are enough, not when you prove it, not when they say so, now. Always. Always. because you exist. You are enough. And I carry that with me because all of us sometimes think we're not enough, right? You can be a person of color, you could walk into a space and be the most educated individual in the room. And people ask the question, why are they really here? Someone must have given them something, even if you've done the work.

When you're a woman doing the same job as a man by getting paid less, and people think that that's okay, not realizing that you are enough. When you're an indigenous person who has been here for millennia, and people still want to relegate you to less than to all the other labels that they put on you. When you're an immigrant, people make some assumptions that the words that were on the Statue of Liberty only related to them and not to the next sets of generations who are looking to be able to do amazing things and to be able to give back to this country. I try and remind folks that you are enough.

And we see this situation play out if you come from rural communities where people assume that you aren't quite the same as others. Even though you get up, go to work, you try and keep the rent pay, you hope you got enough left over to be able to buy some food or make a decision about if you're going to buy your baby's asthma medicine, you're enough. And I play that scenario out a million times in a million ways. And I often think, because these words, they keep me up at night. And I'm just like, imagine if in our country, if we help people to understand that you are enough, how these divisions wouldn't exist where we think, well, I've got to pull somebody else

down for me to be able to just keep where I am. Wow. I remind folks, we are enough if we decide to be and if we make sure that others don't let us feel that we're less than enough. That's beautiful. Yeah. And you wrote a poem for Soul Boom. I did.

Let's hear it. I love it. I love it. Let me grab. No one else. No one else. 70 guests we've had so far. No one's come into the studio having written a poem.

Wow. For this movement that I'm trying to get off the ground. Go ahead. So let me just say real quickly, I hope everybody understands how truly authentic and amazing rain is. Okay. And this is not to blow smoke. This is because I've held space with you on a few occasions. I watch people.

Over the years, I've learned to be quiet and watch and see how folks treat, not just, you know, those who've been blessed with celebrity resources or those other types of things, but the everyday folk. I worked for John Conyers years ago, and I used to watch him. We'd walk through the airport, and he would take time with every person who came up to him. And I remember one time we were late for flight, and there was a person who handled the baggage. he wanted to talk to him. He wasn't a constituent. And John stood there and talked to him and talked to him and talked to him. And I was like, Congressman, we've got to catch this flight. We're going to miss it. He looked at me and he said, just be a piece for a second. This is what's important. And I watched you in interactions with other folks and how your grace and patience speaks to soul that guides you. And I'm glad I get it. chance to say that. So I'm not trying to embarrass you. I'm trying to share with folks who will watch your podcast and hopefully who will get more engaged with the work that you're doing to understand that there's real authenticity and what you're sharing, that you're not just doing it for any reason.

And we need more folks who I appreciate it, Mustafa. Thank you very much. Yeah. With that being said, I couldn't stop writing when I was thinking about you. in soul boom, but I know we're short on time. So I'm going to read you a couple of things. Okay. This is called soul speak. Some say the spirit is silent, but I have heard it roar, in the hush between heartbreaks and in the laughter of the poor.

It rises not in rage but in rhythm, a drumbeat deep beneath the noise of systems built to steal our joy. Soul boom is not a weapon. It is something, a gathering of sacred things. we left behind, hope, humor, holiness, and human hands. We are not lost, we are becoming. Born again through the bruises into something bold, something eternal, still we sing. Still we rise, not louder, but wiser, with soul as our thunder and love as our prize.

That's soul speak. I want to talk to you about soul talk. They told us the soul was soft, but we knew better. It bends like jazz, burns like truth. Don't flinch when the world gets mean. We've been patched with prayers and stitched with songs, rocking babies in the rubble while dreaming freedom full grown. Soul boom, ain't bang.

It's a birth, a breath, a rising of what's been buried. beneath deadlines and dead ends. It's holy mischief. It's laughter and ashes. It's the hush right before you remember who you are. Not saved by noise, but by meaning, by the beauty that dares to break open in a bruised and beating world.

I'll share one more with you as we close out here. I just want to say holy mischief. That's what I should have called the podcast. I think that would have been a good one, too. Holy mischief. I think that would have been a good. That's damn good. Yeah.

I'll close with the one that I actually labeled Soul Boom. We ain't lost, just low on light, high on hurt, chasing worth and things. They never knew our name. Truth is, soul been whispering between sitcoms and sirens in the cracks of our screen. and the cracks of our scrolling and the ache behind our eyes. Its old boom ain't noise. Its memory unzipped, a gospel of giggles, a fistful of stars in a world that forgot the sky.

It's spirit with sneakers on, asking real questions, making room at the table for laughter and lament to sit side by side and still bless the bread. We don't need perfect. We need real. We need real. boom, we need soul. We need both to come home, whole. Soul boom. Oh my God. How are you going to top that? That's fantastic. We got to put that at the beginning of every episode.

Soul boom is evolving. Soul boom is making sure that it is connected to everyday people. To the folks in Appalachia, the folks who are in the Rust Belt, the folks who are in the black belt, to the folks who are up in Alaska, folks who are in the middle of our country, who are looking for a way to reconnect with each other, looking for a way to find a pathway forward, looking for our commonalities and not our differences. Woke just means that we are realizing that we have an opportunity to be human again. And Soul Boom is a platform that says, Come, let's have a conversation.

Let's figure this stuff out together. You know, James Baldwin said that if I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don't see. We understand that right now there is an erasure that is happening inside of our country where we want to erase science. We want to erase people of color. We want to erase folks who are coming to our country looking for a better life. We have an opportunity in front of us, even when those things are going on to say no, That's not true. Here's the narrative that is built from the folks who are actually on the ground who are living every day.

We're trying to put food on the table, who are trying to make sure that their kids will have a brighter future. So when I think about soul boom, and I'm reminded of those words of Baldwin, when he said that a system cannot fail those that have never meant to protect, I'm thinking about the administration that is currently in place that's trying to make. sure that the system that all of us have paid into the system that all of us have worked on for decades upon decades upon decades becomes a system again that actually cares about people that sees people that is willing to make investments in the lives of people no matter where you come from urban or rural no matter if you're black or white or indigenous or Asian we have this moment we can make change happen well let's get into it the soul boom podcast subscribe

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