When a five-part (5) webinar series, “The Non-Traditional Approach to Criminal and Social Justice & Healing Justice” begins today, years of investment in the community and one another by How Our Lives Link Altogether (H.O.L.L.A!) will be showcased as part of the healing justice movement.
“We have put a lot of work and energy uplifting grassroots movements and learning lessons, focusing on teaching, and building educational and healing spaces in the seven neighborhoods of New York City, where 75 percent of the state’s incarcerated population comes from,” remarked H.O.L.L.A! co-founder Dr. Cory Greene. “Political education is a key, teaching the history of street organizations (or street gangs) and the connection to grassroots movements, and how COINTELPRO (covert and illegal FBI projects that surveilled and infiltrated progressive and revolutionary organizations in the U.S.) destroyed Black power movements that were bringing us (seven neighborhoods communities) liberation.”
H.O.L.L.A!’s cultural work and political education includes a study from the Green Haven Think Tank about the seven neighborhoods that was published in 1979 and again in 1990. Although it was well-known in by people serving long sentence NYS prisons and within grassroots movements, it did not receive national recognition until it was printed by the New York Times in 1992. Formerly incarcerated ancestor and Black Panther Eddie Ellis revisited the study in 2020. The study focused on the Lower East Side, South Bronx, Harlem, Brownsville, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, and South Jamaica communities.
“Teaching is one slice of how we share and learn around lessons of grassroots movements. In our formerly incarcerated healing circles, we take those lessons to support each other over and above philanthropy. We don’t need salvation money,” Greene stated. “We have conversations about Black Panther survival programs, how a lot of the money was organically generated. Although we are in New York City, these conversations extend throughout the country and across to the United Kingdom with sister grassroots organizations. We have been building & strengthening our grassroots relationships through a praxis of healing circles that focus on sharing our personal and collective stories of fighting and surviving the War.”
The Problem/The WAR – H.O.L.L.A! Fights Against
“Those that know me, know that since the 1970s, I have been making a statement about what I understand to be what is going on. And I have been saying to Black People, we as Black People greet each other with a saying ‘What is happening?’ I say, we put that greeting in the form of a question because we don’t really understand yet, what is going on. After today, I hope we will be greeting each other by saying ‘You do know what is happening don’t you?’ We will be saying The WAR is going on, we will greet each other by saying The WAR continues; and that each and everyone of us will do our part to see that we bring The WAR to a just end, so that it can be peace on this planet.” – Dr. Frances Cress Wesling
In the 1990s, Mother Queen, Black Psychiatrist, Dr. Frances Cress Wesling articulated a speech titled “The War Against African Youth,” Dr. Wesling subtitled her talk “From Endangerment to Empowerment; From Mass Death (Physical and Psychological) to Mass Resurrection.” In the opening remarks, Dr. Wesling shared, “We are in a WAR. I came today to give my opinions (analysis) of what the WAR is all about. The reason why I say it is WAR. Is because bodies are dropping, of Black men… We had 470 plus deaths at the end of last year in a city with fewer than one million people. That is the District of Columbia alone. I think the national figure is something like 10,000 deaths, in this part of the world, of young Black men, each year. So, what is going on? The War is maintained through the development of global politics; the U.S American government, policy, laws and societal institutions that do not serve the development of African and Indigineous communities, and work to further African enslavement and Indigenous colonization. The War represents analysis of white supremacist history of African enslavement; Indigenous colonization; killing and jailing of African & Indigenous community leaders, elders, ancestors and culture. The WAR is a praxis of knowing what’s happening, so one can fight against The WAR at multiple levels and intersections. Black and Indigenous experience the prolonged effect of The WAR as a result: 1) Historical Violence (Trauma); 2) Structural Violence (System of Oppression); 3) Interpersonal Violence (Community harm); 4) Intrapersonal Violence (internal harm).”
Dr. Greene stresses the importance of understanding the history of the criminal justice (punishment) system in the U.S. from slavery to the 13th Amendment to the Black codes, to the convict leasing system, to the so-called “War on Drugs” in 1970, 1980, and 1990 and how they all tie into what Angela Davis and many others frames as the “prison industrial complex.” Dr. Greene and H.O.L.L.A! appeared in Ava DuVernay’s documentary film 13th, which examines the reality that slavery was not fully abolished with the 1865 amendment as it only applies to those who are not incarcerated.
Five-Part Webinar Series
“Doing the webinar (for more information and link to register, please go to end of story) allows elders and young people across the world to learn about intergenerational, intersectional, and community-specific approaches to healing justice,” Greene explained. “Fake restorative justice practices don’t match up to the Black Panther Party/Black Liberation Army work. Healing Justice must engage and serve the community. We are trying to push community wellness back into understanding the work those revolutionary groups were doing.”
“Restorative justice practices should strive to get political prisoners like Matulu Shakur free, and/or create learning strategies so that these types of community leaders could be teaching in the seven neighborhoods of New York City, where 75 percent of the state’s incarcerated population comes from,” he continued. “If you work with people in a war, you need to examine and name the parts of the war. The war on drugs was a war on our community, the crack epidemic and the reaction to it was part of the war. We need to talk about peace in a deep way that begins with us being snatched from our land.”
Greene notes that miseducation starts from the very beginning of the U.S. educational system. “None of us are told in our K-12 education that we are in a war. A war on African people all over the world. They tell us that Columbus discovered America instead of how institutions were built to dehumanize us. The same people who lied to us about the 13th Amendment are lying to us now,” he described. “We just need to break it down so people can digest it. We need restorative justice in the right way, not the co-opted ways we see now. For our story and our contributions, we are doing it for ourselves and others most impacted by the carceral system that violates Black and Indigenous, Brown people.”
“We Came To Heal” Documentary
H.O.L.L.A! is organizing a “We Came To Heal” Documentary Screening Fundraiser with community and philanthropy towards the end of the year to help raise funds for an office space to do our 18-month healing-centered organizing training. “The We Came To Heal” Documentary Screening Fundraiser with community and philanthropy is connected to the last five years of non-traditional approaches and praxis in general, but particularly the past two years when we have not had an office space,” Dr. Greene defined. “We have an 18-month process for people who may not be aware of the non-traditional and healing process with the focus on bringing young people into senior leadership within our movement. The fundraiser with community and philanthropy would be an opportunity to engage potential funders to explain why our program is 18 months, talking about the pillars of our program and the magic sauce (theory of change) that fights against the war. It is what our young people need.”
Greene and H.O.L.L.A! note that raising money for a space is connected to the training process as people, community members, funders, donors can invest in the 18-month cycle by supporting two or three cohorts at one time, one cohort, or even one part of a cohort.
“There are organizations who do one thing, like giving out a metro card, have youth sign in, lightly check in for an hour, that have no lasting impact. That is not enough of a healing relationship because it does not involve processing deeper information and working through vulnerability,” he explained. “There is so much more that can be done when we reframe the conversations from an African-indigenous point of view. The We Came To Heal” Documentary Screening Fundraiser with community and philanthropy is our call to the community, funders, and organizers. We have been doing, giving and sacrificing much for our community and selves without money. We have had to hold meetings in garages, living rooms, and basements. We have myself and Arcoks, who are our most senior staff, go more than 10 years without receiving a paycheck from the organization so that the funds here can support the youth and community.”
In spite of a lack of funding, H.O.L.L.A! has sought to build a foundation of doing the work of internal and external healing, talking about the urgency of what the war is and how imprisonment, trauma, and emotions have affected the seven neighborhoods, but also neighborhoods throughout the country. In addition to collecting data on the carceral system, the organization has also created a documentary entitled “We Came to Heal and music album called “The Report Back” by the Youth Organizing Collective.”https://youtube.com/embed/o1ITejZrw6Y?enablejsapi=1
LEGACY TOURS
Dr. Greene went to college after what he refers to as his eight-year enslavement and incarceration, first earning an Associate of Arts degree from LaGuardia Community College and then his bachelor’s degree from NYU’s Applied Psychology program. Greene earned his PhD from the Critical Social Personality Psychology doctoral program at the Graduate Center of the CUNY.
“My dissertation involved a lot of research practice. At H.O.L.L.A!, we do more organizing than research. Organizing informs what and how we research. This has opened up critical methodological research opportunities related to studying historical trauma and healing from generational pain in a practical way through ancestral legacy tour trips,” Dr. Greene articulated. “The ancestral legacy tour would include studying important historical documents of the U.S. in places like Washington, D.C., Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Memphis. We would study and see the places where Harriet Tubman, Nat Turner, Denmark Vesey, Fannie Lou Hamer, Emmett Till, and Medgar Evers lived.”
“Ideally, we would take an ancestral study trip and tour down south where we would take photos of historic places and have healing circles around those people, places, and events,” he continued. “We would study beforehand and reach out to family, grassroots community organizations and local people in those cities to see if they could come and gather with us. It is gonna be powerful to learn and document history together, while having our non-traditional healing circles in those locations.”
LASTING WORK
Through all of its work and its formative ideas for the future, H.O.L.L.A! centers grassroots movement building, street pedagogy, healing justice, and African and Indigenous epistemology. “We pull on the basic principles of healing circles, but we are also urban and formerly incarcerated people who are re-framing discussions from an Africanized, Black-anized, Indigenous-ized perspective,” Dr. Greene elucidated. “We are saying that restorative justice should be rerouted and redirected to what the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army were doing. That was true healing justice and knowing that fact, the U.S. government attacked them.”
Dr. Greene believes that Black people being indigenous in Africa brings a lot of similar cosmology with native Americans. “That ancient cosmology is important as is wellness and restorative practices of the ancient spirit,” he stated. “To be politically grounded right now means recognizing the commonalities of us and political prisoners who were taking care of one another and feeding their communities.”
“Getting money from non-profits may make you look good, but what is it accomplishing toward systemic change? That is what we need to echo in our strong analysis,” Greene concluded. “We have learned that we need to talk to others in a deep way. We don’t need to be in relationships that aren’t working for our communities. We have the full story of why this country is where it is. People are asking for these conversations. We want them to understand the war that is going on.”
Five-Part Webinar: The Non-Traditional Approach to Criminal and Social Justice & Healing Justice
The free healing justice webinar (registration link) will take place each Tuesday from July 8-August 5 from 2-4 p.m. ET (replays will be available on the H.O.L.L.A.! website):
July 8: Echoes of the Learned Lessons
July 15: Healing Justice is Our Strategy
July 22: Let the 7 Seven Neighborhoods Speak
July 29: Healing Across Generations and Intersections
Aug. 5: Funding for day Grassroots