Activism in the Lehigh Valley is taking on many forms.

There's a need to challenge systems of power to bring equity, diversity and justice to our communities.

Systemic structural and institutional racism oppress people of color on a generational level.

My guest today is interrupting racism and striving to better the oppressed community with advocacy and empowerment.

Hello, I'm Pastor Phillip Davis.

Welcome to Courageous Conversations.

We're back for another season to inspire, educate and inform our audience on controversial issues that plague our society and to highlight the wonderful work that is happening in the minority community to bring justice and equity to all.

Welcome to Courageous Conversations.

Dr Batts is the executive director of Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Lehigh University.

He also serves on the governors board of African-American Affairs, along with many other boards and positions in the community.

Welcome, Dr Batts.

Thank you for taking the time to come on the show and hang out with me for a little bit.

- Listen, it is my pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

- Yeah, I love the work.

You're welcome.

I love the work that you're doing in the community, man, and just seeing you impact the community the way you do in so many different areas.

I just want to jump right in, man.

We got a half-hour to talk and really, really chop it up so you can share with the people some of the things that you're doing.

But I want to begin with your story.

You have an amazing story of redemption.

You were arrested back in 2007 on drug charges.

Now you're a doctor, a community leader, an advocate for the community, a community epidemiologist and a public speaker.

I'm interested, man, to learn, how did you get to where you are and how did you arise from the challenges that you faced?

- Yeah, well, thank you for asking, right?

So, my story is one of the work that I do.

So, our work is centered around restorative practices, our work is centered around healing from trauma, our work is centered around, like, really helping people achieve excellence in their lives despite the experiences that they've had.

You mentioned I was arrested in 2007.

This was my last arrest.

I often tell people my first arrest was when I was 11 years old.

- Wow.

- So the long journey of healing, a long journey of poor choices and poor associations that led even as an adult for me to be arrested, right?

And when I returned from prison, when I was looking at what was next for me, I had a lot of opportunities through relationships to go work in different spaces.

And my mother challenged me.

She said that Allentown, Pennsylvania, the Lehigh Valley, is a community that you harmed.

And she said you have a duty to repair the place where you did harm.

So that's where that idea of being here, living here, waking up every day in the Lehigh Valley and doing this work comes from.

That is really about that old notion our parents tell us - if you break it, you fix it.

- Yeah.

- You fix it!

So we're fixing what we've contributed to destroying.

- Sure, man.

But, I mean, so many people get caught in that cycle and never really break the cycle.

When we think about, you know, the prison industrial complex and how so many of our brothers are caught up in that space.

What was it, Hasshan, that caused you to be able to really break that cycle in your life?

Because maybe there's a young man watching who is, you know, in that space, maybe just reentered, you know, and came out of prison, is in the community.

What was it for you that gave you the intestinal fortitude, I guess you would say, and the discipline not to repeat again?

- So, again, it didn't happen overnight, right?

So people deserve second chances, people deserve third chances, people deserve fourth chances.

Some people need fifth, sixth and seventh chances.

That's just the reality of the world we live in.

What it was for me was building community.

So the advice and the offer that we give to people returning from prison is we have a community here that is really about you making a contribution.

We believe that there are no throwaway people and we believe that everyone has something to give.

So on one side, the community has to be willing to forgive and make space for people to return.

And on the other side, people need to accept responsibility, because, Pastor, it's about accountability.

- Right.

- I harmed this community, and I need to show up and make a difference and contribute to being a constructive and positive member of society.

- Yeah.

And you're doing amazing work with the prisons, as well.

We happen to serve on the Lehigh Valley Justice Initiative board together.

And can you talk about the work that you're doing just with the prison, the prison population, and how you're making a difference in that community?

- Definitely.

So, we have an effort that I started called Prison Survivor Network that has been supported by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which is the largest health care foundation in the country, right?

And it's really centered around inspiring folks through these inspirational stories that say you can do it and people like you have done it before.

It's around creating a community, saying you're not alone and that I'm here for you and to support you into work.

And it's around education and access to resources.

And those are the things that we find people need.

They need to see people that reflect them, that have lived experience, that have been successful, because success leaves clues.

So the path to success has to be depicted for folks, illustrated.

- Yeah, yeah.

And do you find that the minority community is more so impacted by incarceration than the nonminority community, the white community?

- Listen, the black and brown community, without a doubt.

We know that one in three black males will be incarcerated in their lifetime.

So what does that mean?

It means that a child that is born today, if the trend continues, a black child, one in three will go to prison, will be incarcerated in their lifetime.

One in six Hispanic males will be incarcerated in their lifetime.

It is inevitable, right?

But we also know it's not because communities of color create... - Commits more crime.

- More crime.

It's because of disparities and injustices that exist, it's because of overpolicing in our community at every level of the criminal justice system, from overpolicing to overarrests to a higher bail to longer sentences, to being denied parole etc etc etc.

- Mm-hm.

Mm-hm Yeah.

And, you know, it's amazing when you think about even the bail situation.

Bail was not created to keep people, you know, dangerous people off the street.

It was created as a way to make money for our counties and municipalities.

And many times, African-Americans, minorities, Latinx community are impacted significantly worse through bail because they can't afford to pay to get out.

- That's right, and it doesn't keep the community any safer, right?

So what is presented as something that supports public safety does not.

That's across the board.

Having 2.4 million people incarcerated in this country does not make it any safer than anywhere else.

I mean, if locking people up created safety, then this would be the safest place in the world of all time.

So, we have more people incarcerated than ever in the world here in America right now, man.

And the majority, the overwhelming majority of people that are incarcerated are going to be returning back to our communities.

So how do we create bases?

How do we get job opportunities?

How do we create safe housing?

How do we create a way where people can come home and contribute their talents to making our communities better, improving things?

- That's great.

That's great.

Now, you're doing some exciting work over at Promise Neighborhoods of the Lehigh Valley.

We've had an opportunity to see some of the work that you're doing.

Tell us what you do there and why your work in the community is so important.

- Definitely.

So, Promise Neighborhoods is a black-led, anti-racist, liberation-based grassroots organization that is focused on healing and wellness through leadership development.

So we have leadership development programs every month.

We have cohorts of people that go through.

We've trained over 70 Leadership Without Limits folks that, when you look across the city or working with the City Council, city government, have run for elected office, are working within the school district and the health networks.

We have violence prevention and reentry.

We have our Zero Youth Violence program that really works to end youth violence.

One youth being murdered in the Lehigh Valley is too many.

So we respond to every act of violence that happens in this community.

Reentry, the state parole brings people to our office when they return home and we create community for them.

We have so many success stories.

Another part of our work is racial justice and health equity.

We responded to Covid big as things were going on.

We have an outreach scene that's out on the streets every day - you'll see the orange shirts - talking to people.

Are you OK?

What's going on?

We're handing out Narcan, we're walking people to change on Hamilton on treatment so that they can get the substance-abuse support that they need.

And then we have a part of our work is community capacity building, so making sure that the grassroots nonprofits in our community have the things that they need to be successful, making sure that people and organizations in our community have the tools and resources that they need to serve.

One of the things we emphasize is grassroots leadership, so we want to make sure that the people that are closest to the pain, the people that most understand the issues and have those solutions are the ones that are leading across our community.

- Yeah, that's pretty exciting.

I mean, you said something that, you know, that resonated with me.

You said it's a black-led kind of BIPAC organization.

Why is that important when you think about the majority of the nonprofit organizations in the Lehigh Valley and in the nation really are not led by the people who many a times are most affected by what's happening in the community?

- It's important for a couple of reasons.

One is that that child within the inner city needs to see themselves reflected in leadership.

They need to know what the possibilities are, right?

I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.

When I was growing up, I used to watch the show Cheers.

And this guy Norm would walk into the bar and everyone would scream, Norm!

So, I grew up in a loving family, but I never had belonging when I stepped out into the community because that radical welcome didn't exist.

So another reason that it's important is not only do we need to see ourselves reflected, but our youth and the families that are struggling need to see themselves being welcomed into the space.

So if you come to Promise Neighborhoods, it's a place where people are welcome with their love.

We look for their strengths.

We ask them to get involved.

And a third reason that it's important, Pastor Phil, is that we want the wealth to cycle throughout our community.

We don't want folks coming in from other areas.

Because we look at the data.

The people that work in the urban context typically live in other spaces.

And the people that live in that urban area typically leave the community.

- Right.

- So we want people to circle, to circulate throughout our community.

So we want people that live here, people that have relationships here, people that invest here, people that are in love with our cities, who are in love with our neighborhoods and within our county to be the ones to have the jobs.

- Yeah.

That's exciting because you're engaging the community in which you live.

You're repairing where you harmed at, as your mother instructed you to do.

You mentioned a program called Leadership Without Limits.

Is that about raising people up to be able to run for public office, to be able to serve on boards and nonprofits?

Can you talk a little bit more about that and what has been the impact of Leadership Without Limits?

- So, that is our flagship program.

A lot of people don't know about it.

It doesn't get a lot of press, but that is about the leaders that we have are not the leaders that we need.

So we need to see people that really understand the issues that are important at the neighborhood level.

So it's about building people up at the neighborhood level and really them choosing how they want to use those leadership skills.

So it is an eight-week program that is focused on development and then there's three months' worth of high-level mentoring.

So some people choose to run for office, others have chosen to lead nonprofits.

We have people that have come to our program of color, women of color, leading some of the largest nonprofits in the area.

We have people that have run for office, people that are in office.

Again, we have three people that came through our program and are working for the city of Allentown.

We have people working for health networks, local health networks.

So it's really about, most importantly, creating a support system.

All of our work is centered in the idea that healing and excellence occur and authentic relationships are within community.

So we bring in 20 to 30 people a year per cohort and we really support them with community so that they know they're not alone, so they can step in spaces confident, they can get on boards.

We have people at the state level on boards, we have people on federally qualified health center boards.

I mean, it's really been a successful program.

- Yeah, it can be a bit of a traumatic experience when you walk into a room and you're, say, the only African-American on the board or the only Latinx person on the board and you walk into a room of all white people.

I did that with the workforce initiative and there were 50 people in the room and I walked in.

I was the only African-American serving on the board.

And it was a bit intimidating, right?

And so those spaces really need to be populated with people from our community so we're, number one, at the table, but then our voices can be heard, because if you're raising issues of equity and you're the only one raising the voice of equity in a room of 50 people, your voice kind of gets drowned out.

And so I can see the importance and the value of really equipping and training people to be confident, to walk into those spaces and to have their peers in those spaces as well.

- And even when we are the only people in the room, you know, which I'm hoping is short lived, because we're looking to expand the table.

People think we want to kick all the white men out the room.

That's not the idea.

- That's not the case.

- We have to come from a place of abundance, not scarcity.

The table is big enough to expand it, to welcome other people.

But even when you are the only person in the room, one of the reasons you and I are successful in those spaces is because we have a community.

We stand on the shoulders of the ancestors, we stand on the shoulders of the elders, and we can check and check in within our community.

So even if you're the only person at the job, we want you to know you're not alone, that you represent a village and that you have connections and people that care about you.

- That's good.

And I appreciate that level of work.

You know, can you talk about the nonviolence program too?

I mean, you said that you respond to every issue of zero youth violence.

Can you respond to that and talk about why that's valuable, why it's important and why Promise Neighborhoods is really leading the charge with that?

- Yeah, definitely.

So there are three components to it.

One is, again, we respond to every act of violence.

So if there's a shooting or stabbing, our team shows up at the scene.

We have a partnership with Lehigh Valley Health Network where we have someone bedside that can show up to prevent retaliation.

That's why that's important also, to let people know that the support is there.

When the trauma occurs, people need healing and they need that immediate response as someone who understands it.

So our team of people has lived experience.

We have been perpetrators and survivors of gun violence.

That's critical.

The other part of the program is prevention, so we do workshops in schools in the community making sure that we change the community norms.

You'll see billboards.

Again, you see the shirts.

You see we do programming to talk about what are some ways to manage conflict differently, conflict resolution, problem solving.

We mediate disputes constantly.

The third part is being in relationship and providing case management for those highest at risk to commit acts of violence or to be survivors of acts of violence.

So we're looking at who within the next six months is going to get shot or shoot somebody.

And our team is working directly with them, following them, getting them jobs, getting them adequate housing, getting them mental health treatment, pulling them into our community, our support groups and really helping them to make better choices.

When people have a sense of belonging and their basic needs met, they make better choices and they show up different.

- Sure and I won't say it's a new paradigm.

I mean, historically, you will find that, you know, faith communities are the ones connecting with young people to really try to empower them.

But having a nonprofit that is led by BIPAC folks and are connecting in the community and responding to issues of trauma, gun violence and things of that nature really adds a level of value, a level of connectedness.

People feel loved and supported and accepted.

And that just makes a difference in the life of a young person, because many of them, as we know, are coming up without their fathers in their home.

So being able to see a person like yourself representing them in the community, caring enough to show that love and even provide mentoring for them can be life-changing for a child.

That's pretty impressive work that you're doing there.

You know, the new census just came out, and Allentown has some really interesting dynamics.

It's changing drastically.

And how does that affect the work that you all are doing there in Promise Neighborhoods?

It's becoming even more diverse than it was in the past.

- Yeah, I mean, it impacts the works, because we need faces that reflect the community.

We need people from the community with stories and credibility, that are in a relationship with people from the community.

When Covid initially hit, you know, we had a huge campaign, Allentown Versus Covid-19, that was really given the messages from their neighbors, from people, the attractors, the connectors and the community influencers that were saying, wash your hands, mask up, practice social distancing.

That is so much more powerful than a message from LeBron James.

- Sure, yeah.

- Not more powerful, but when you see Pastor Phil or Pastor Greg or Pastor Haley or Dr Batts or someone saying, you know, wash your hands, this is someone you have a relationship with, have an intimate connection with.

So as we see the numbers change, we say, well, we have to find out who are the people that people are listening to and follow and who are the national influences and work with them to bring about change.

- Mm-hm.

That's good.

Let me ask you a question kind of walking down a different path, but I think it's still relevant.

How do you confront systemic racism, white supremacy through your efforts?

How do you engage in those spaces and really help to dismantle?

You know, I had a show on not long ago with Camilla and Phyllis Alexander, who to me are just some of the most impressive people in that space with boldness to be able to speak to issues that are plaguing our community.

From your perspective as an African-American man, a community leader, an advocate, how do you confront those issues and how has that impacted the work that you do?

- So, we believe that complex structural issues require complex structural responses, right?

- Yeah.

- So up to now we've talked about the work that we do with individuals at the individual level.

There's the individual response, the family response, the community response.

And then there's the institutional response.

And that's looking at the policies and procedures.

That's some of the think tank and research work that we've been doing for some time.

We have a patient-centered alcohol research institute, which is a national grant the Promise Neighborhoods has received to work with health care around the violence that exists within health care, around changing the policies, around bringing what we call context experts.

So we bring context experts, which are people from our community with lived experience as leaders in the health care space, along with content experts, who are the folks, the admins, the administrators, the clinicians, and we bring them together.

- Yeah.

- We begin to develop these ideas and these practises and policies collectively, because what we've learned is that policies, practises and procedures will always reflect the values of the people that design them.

So with constitutional racism, we expand the table, we put people in a room, we develop people and we get national partners that support the work to push things forward.

We put out documentaries, we do policy analysis, we do research papers and white papers.

You know, I sit on the governors board for African-American affairs.

Those are the ways, we put ourselves in rooms and we put the people on our team in roles to bring about those changes.

- Yeah, that's a great segue into my next question I was going to ask you.

You are serving as a commissioner on the Governor's Commission of African-American Affairs, which is a wonderful space for you because it impacts everything that happens in the state of Pennsylvania as it relates to policy.

Talk a little bit about that.

How did it come about and what do you hope to accomplish as a member on that commission?

- Yeah, so it came about because of the work that we're doing in Allentown.

The state and actually the country is watching Allentown.

You know, we had that CNN article not too long ago.

We have several national funders that have reached out to us because Allentown is an interesting place.

So within the state of Pennsylvania, the Governor has always cared about the work being done here in partnership with our state reps, with the senators that are local.

The Governor has been leaning on us and reaching in and asking questions about what do we do about mental health, how do we make some changes towards gun violence.

We received three grants from the state level because of the work that we do.

So just constantly showing up.

And then I was invited to be on the Pennsylvania Reentry Council.

So, working there led to the Governor inviting me, appointing me, actually, to be a commissioner, and also I'm the co-chair of the Gun Violence Committee for the Governor at the state level, which gives Allentown and the Lehigh Valley a voice around issues that impact the black community, around public health, around gun violence, around transportation.

So all of these entities are leaning on us.

And for some time, like I said, we've been contributing to white papers around these issues for the last few years.

- Mm hmm.

And your work at Lehigh as a fellow over there, how did that come about?

And what is the focus of your work there?

- So, the focus of my work at Lehigh is again looking at the systemic issues of racism as a public health crisis, and I work with Dr Sirry Alang, who is phenomenal.

I believe she's the chair of the Health Justice Collaborative, and it's working along with her.

She's also a resident researcher with us.

So one of the things that we do different here at Promise Neighborhoods is we understand that you have to impact what they call the canons of knowledge, that people in our community have to contribute to research and we have to contribute to the academy.

So we always have interns who are always producing papers, who are always doing poster presentations at conferences.

So there's the clinical work that we do, there's the community organizing work that we do, but there's an academic arm to it that must exist to bring about the structural changes that you're talking about.

You have to change the mind-set and what they call the canons of knowledge.

So if you remember back to when you were in school, the textbooks didn't even reflect us.

So now when you open textbooks, you'll see textbooks not only written by folks like me, folks like us, or you'll see textbooks written about people of color, but also that are practitioners that are knee deep in the work and are content and context experts in this work.

- Yeah, that's exciting, when you think about changing policy, but coming at it from an academician's perspective, you begin to appeal to the intellect.

For so long, our folks have been downgraded and have been minimized as it relates to education.

So being able to live in that space... As you know, I'm a doctoral student myself.

Being able to live in that space and have discussions at that level I think helped to level the playing field.

But it really has to do with your view of self, because if you're not comfortable and confident, then you're not going to approach those spaces to challenge systems that have been in place for so long and are a part of that systemic structural institutional racism specifically at the higher education level.

- That's right, and the other part of it is they think they will have you in awe, right?

They'll tell you how brilliant you are, how great you are, and then you just sell your soul and sell your community out.

So one of the things we do in our leadership development is we help people understand who are you accountable to.

Really, you have to ask yourself that.

So I'm accountable to my village.

So when I get a text from you that is so meaningful, we don't speak daily, but if you need me, I'm here.

I highly respect and watch the work that you do.

And those are the people.

And you talk about.

Phyllis Alexander, when you talk about Camilla Greene, these are the greats across our community.

So not only do we need to step into those spaces, challenge them, resist and disrupt, we also need to remember who we are and what we bring to the table and not lose that in the process.

We are a community.

I mean, we stand here, we have to acknowledge, on stolen land from stolen labor and stolen brilliance.

So we are a community that has to step back into that, and together we will do it.

- Yeah, thank you for that.

And you know, you mentioned something about community elders.

And I know that Allentown is farther along than some of the other communities in the valley.

But can you talk a little bit about the importance of community elders and how that helps to shape the framework for the work that you do?

- So that is our way.

Our way is through mentorship and apprenticeship.

And I mean as a people.

Right?

Historically, we have sat at the feet of the elders, and somewhere along the way that has been lost in an individualism that tells you to just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and you can do this alone, that glorifies individualism.

Here in Allentown, we have a council of elders, we have a collective that we really look to for guidance.

When you look at my programing, it's always responsive programing.

I have a commitment, we have a commitment to not make decisions in isolation.

If the elders don't approve, you know, we revamp it in relationship with people.

And when you have critical decisions to make in your life, again, you don't make those in isolation.

You check in with the people that have lived before you.

- Right.

- And that is our way.

It's just returning to the way that we were.

We have been disrupted.

We are people that are untethered and have been disconnected from our culture.

In our return to our culture, we strengthened our relationship with Africa and across the diaspora, and we know that that means connecting with the ancestors and the elders.

- I know you just recently took a trip back.

We got about a minute left.

Can you kind of share what that experience was like for you and how it impacted you?

- I travel a lot, and there's no place like home.

I went to Senegal, Africa, I walked to this thing called the Door of No Return.

And this was the last step that our people saw when they were put on those ships, when they were kidnaped by those pedophile savages that put them on ships and took them to what they called the New World.

So to walk back through that door was healing, it was restorative and it was rejuvenating, and it strengthened my connection to my motherland, something that I've always looked for my entire life.

And it's invigorated me in the work that I do.

And we are going to be planning trips for people all across our community to go home.

- Wonderful.

You know, thinking about the sojourn that we've been on as African people here in America, it has been one that has been filled with many hurdles and travesties and trauma.

But in the words of Maya Angelou, and still like dust, we rise through it all.

And it is definitely connected to people like yourself with a passion, with a heart, with a commitment, a set of values that allows you to sow into a community and to build people and community up by the work that you do.

Man, I'm just glad that we had this time together.

You know, we could go on and probably talk for another hour.

But I am grateful for you and the work that you're doing, not only with Promise Neighborhoods, but also with the Governor's commission and the other boards.

The reentry work that you're doing is healing for our community and you are fulfilling the words of your mother.

You're healing where you did harm.

So once again, Doc, thank you so much for taking time to be on the show today.

- Thank you for having me.

And I just want to say this work is not new.

We're following in the footsteps of all the work that you've done, as well as others across our community.

- Thank you.

Thanks for coming on Courageous Conversations.

Listen, on behalf of everyone here at PBS39, we want to thank you for taking time for hanging out with us today.

I'm Pastor Phil Davis.

God bless you, and we'll see you next time.