Where dreams come from, is a podcast featuring successful people from around the world who have pursued their dreams to arrive at a station in life. I'm your host, Sanjeev Chatterjee. I'm a professor of cinema and journalism. And in my creative life, I make documentary films. I started this podcast to explore what it takes for people to follow their dreams, even while being true to who they are, at least, who they believe their. My guest, Ruth chanterelles mother fled the oppressive Duvalier regime in Haiti, and settled in Boston, Massachusetts, where Ruth was born. From all accounts, it was hard to be a single mother without knowing any English and never having had faced the brutal New England winters. Route who learned Haitian Creole at home and English at school became a mother's interpreter, as she tried to make her way in the US. In the absence of money, the church was their sole source of solace and inspiration. And this conversation, Ruth explains her clearly influences the discovery of words for the inequalities that surrounded and ultimately, as a woman of African ancestry and her deep desire to help others like to turn around, come to where dreams come from. Thank you for having me. Tell me a little bit about where you began and your formative years.

I was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and my family's Haitian were from Haiti it and where my ancestors and my ancestry goes towards West Africa, Nigeria, and Benin. Where I began, it feels like it's important to name them where I began isn't just on the land to right like the where I began, feels like it's in a faraway place. And I'm still trying to figure out where I began in that way of like, understanding that my purpose is much larger than the land that we're in. That's part of like, my, my journey here is like to understand, okay, we're all like on a spiritual journey. And we don't know where we come from. Like, some people will say, Oh, we come from heaven. Or some people say, Oh, I came from my mother's womb, and assure why not right. But I think part of what we're here to do is to remember, where do we come from? And how do our stories connect your

early memories of being in Massachusetts? What are they like?

It's beautiful, right? is very diverse. There's a lot of Haitian people. There's a lot of Jamaican people, it's very different from Miami. And it's also a bubble. It's also very much segregated, where there's like populations that just live in certain areas. I remember there was like periods when I was younger, growing up, where I would serve as like the interpreter for my mom, my language, my first language was Haitian Creole. And I learned how to speak English in school. And so I remember going to different offices and then talking to different people. And then people would try to interact with her directly. But she would be like, no speak, to speak to my daughter, like, interpret, like, interpret this way. And then I would listen, and then I would interpret back, or she would say something, and then I would listen to it, and then interpret back to her. And for me, like those experiences were like one of the first signs that I was like, okay, we're different

life in school, what was that, like?

The school that I went to it was English as a second language. So the classes that I was taking, like my first two years, I was in ESL classes. And then I started to pick up English. And I started to learn it. And I remember being in school and looking at myself, and then looking at the other students, I began to, like, notice, like, even in the playground, I would see that like, some of the children had like, different, like, nicer clothes than I did, or they had like nicer sneakers, or their hair was done a certain way. And I remember like asking myself, why, you know, like, why we're like looking at myself and being like, why I have like something like this, and they have something like that. And then children, of course, children and children, so lots of bullying, you know, but those kinds of things made me just start thinking about poverty, even though I didn't have the language at the time, because that when I was growing up, I felt like we were rich. You

talked about riches, despite having a consciousness of poverty. I'm curious to know what are those riches?

We will go to church from on Sunday, we would have church Wednesday. We would have Bible study Saturday. We would have like a morning service. And then there would be something else that was like happening. And my mom is a very spiritual woman, and she was praying all the time. And so for me the ability to like pray to be able to enjoy good food to be able to enjoy her company, even though she worked a lot. I always enjoy being around her that was rich for me,

what is your earliest memory of having an aspiration in life,

I remember one of my sisters, something happened where my actually my father and my sperm donor who had that I called him sperm donor for a long time. But my father, he came to drop her off. And that was the first time that I ever saw him. And I was 10. And I remember my mom telling me that, you know, he's, he's your father, but he doesn't mean good for you, he actually thinks that you're going to fail in life. And that's going to be a statistic, you're going to get pregnant early, and that that was his prayer for you. And that became to be like, my aspiration to like, succeed, to like, prove him wrong.

What are the steps that it became more defined, that I would do something this in my life to to be successful,

I began to take school like much more seriously, I began to connect my academics with like, my social life. What I mean by that is in fourth grade, that was like my first political activism work. That's where my work began, where we were fighting against the equivalent of Florida's f cat. So it was a standardized test. And I remember the teachers rallying up, the students, the pet, some parents kind of being like, Okay, do you all want to do this, and we literally walked from the school to the city hall and started to tell our stories. And that literally was an example for me of like, Oh, I'm gonna be something

who encouraged you to become part of that movement against Africa.

Her name is Miss Kathy. And she was my teacher at the time. And I remember, she sat all of us down. And she was like, this is what we're thinking, this is already going to be happening with the teachers. And this is what we're already going to be doing even with the parents. And then they did like, kind of like a permission slip. It was like a field trip, to basically get us to take home into side and she really encouraged all of us. I remember us like writing signs and walking and feeling like really excited, even though even at that time, I was like, Okay, I'm kind of going along with the flow tool. And I was like, Oh, I'm doing this with a greater good. Like, it felt like it was like for like, not just for myself, but for for nobody to fail.

And your mother's reaction to this.

My mom was scared. She was scared. I think she, at the time, was also trying to figure out what that activity was. And afterwards, she was like, Okay, I guess if the school is doing it, then that's okay. You know, but I don't think I don't think she's at the end of it approve that. It was like, against the school system. You know, even though it was the people within the institution that were like leading it, you know, like she trusted the teachers. But she was scared like, Huh, even now, this work that I do now, even now, she'll be like, Oh, my gosh, and I understand why, because of her experiences.

And then High School

in high school, I also grew really depressed. Even though I was in this phase of doing a lot of things. I was also kind of like questioning myself like I was, am I gonna succeed? Is this really going to happen because the classes got harder, too. And I went through to K through eight school and it felt like, again, a bubble. And then when High School came in was like a big bubble that like I felt lost them. And I went into joining like different groups and clubs. But even then, I was like, ah, I gotta like, find myself. I asked questions. I asked a lot of questions. One of the things that happened in high school though, in order to graduate, we had to learn how to swim. And I remember going to take a swimming test, and I failed it because I didn't know how to swim. And I remember going in the water, and kind of being like, Oh, I'm getting this I'm getting this. And then I got like the paddle and I was like kicking my feet. And literally, I let go of the paddle because I was like, Oh, I can do this. I good Buddhists. And then next thing I know, from what I remember, I like suck. It was that risk to be able to say, Okay, this is something that happened. That risk of like letting go of that paddle, you know, and be like, I'm gonna try this out on my own, even though I felt like I drowned. I overcame it.

What were the central influences in college,

I joined a sorority, I joined a predominantly black sorority because I was like, Oh, I need to I can't be alone here. It was, I mean, it was still four hours away from home, I ended up joining the Atlanta caucus. And I joined the Haitian student American Association, like I joined all these clubs to belong, and to be part of sisterhood, and to know that, that other people who look like me would care and protect me on this huge campus.

And what did you study?

I studied social thought and political economy. And I minor in women's studies, My major is one of a car. That's why I'm like, it's one of a kind, because that was when I first started to understand the world in a different way. Because I learned a lot of theory. That's what I began to understand and get answers to my why. So all those questions that I had, it wasn't until college that I began to understand like, oh, okay, there's like a political economy. There's like, this is about economics. This is about labor. This is about making money off of people, particularly black, low income people, immigrant people, women,

what were you thinking about doing beyond college at that time,

so at that time, even when I was younger, I always said, I wanted to save the world. I know it was wild. But that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to save the world, I wanted to make the world a better place to live in. And when I got to school, and I learned that there were many ways to save the world, and that, in fact, I needed to kind of start from myself, to understand my political consciousness, my social and, in fact, now like more of like my spiritual consciousness, to elevate to grow. So that way, I can connect with other people who are either like minded or could help to shape and shift other people's consciousness. And that's what saving the world looks like.

Your approach is fairly well, it's not mainstream, in terms of incorporating spirituality, in betterment of socio economic status. Tell me a little bit about that.

Even in college and what I was learning, it was just social and economics, it was just even like political. And I remember I was looking, there was like a pyramid that I was learning about, of just like, around capitalism, for example, that there's literally exploitation of people's labor, and that some people are making more, while others are just there to work and to make less. And all of that was around social conduct, construct, economic construct, political construct, and the spiritual was just church. That was just like the end. I knew that church was like an institution, you know. And so for me, it was where spirituality in that because I always, I felt like, that was a very core value of mine, even outside of the church, growing up with my mom, that prayer worked,

what were the concrete steps you took to bring this kind of contracts of economics, spirituality, women's issues, issues of race together,

after college, I continued to build my conscious consciousness by reading books. One of my favorite favorite books is The Autobiography of Malcolm X. to like, understand that, like, it wasn't just about economics of labor, but it was also around like race. And it was also his story. The places that I grew up the things that I've seen, felt like okay, I can understand him coming from like a really negative place. So then changing his life to become an activist. That felt like it made sense I could read I resonated very well with that

shift in the way that you define spirituality. Do you see it separate from religion?

I do. I see spirituality more as when I see somebody that comes to me, before somebody comes here onto this earth, their spirit, they don't have a religion. When a baby comes into those, well, you can be holding a baby. The baby has no religion, but yet they are breathing. They are breastfeeding, they are crying, and that is that's their, that's their spirit. And that's their essence, and that everybody has their own way of being in their own essence. And that is different from religion.

told me about your present work, and what you're focusing on and why

a lot of the work that I do right now is around healing justice. restorative justice and teaching people to be able to, like shift their consciousness. So I've, since I've founded will I continue my work organizing and activism, because one way to change the world is this change a set of conditions. So activism does that very well, by changing policies, whether it's within schools or with whether it is within hospitals, whatever the policy, there's like a policy that is set in place, that makes it there's a law, right. So there's a lot that set in place that makes it that some people have or some people don't, because of my personal experiences, it's led me to not just focusing on like the external activism, but to focus internal and external, and to focus on like that, like, we can't, we can, as much as we want to write the man for other people to understand that Black Lives Matter, right, that's part of my work, we can absolutely should speak on that the land is free. And that, in fact, all so many people died to keep this land the way that it is. So many black folks helped to build this country. So many women have fought right to be here for us to be here. And at the same time, the way that I've experienced activism is that I worked so much, and I wasn't taking care of myself. And so what led me here to do healing justice work is that I have to be able to find ways like self care practices, wellness practices, as I'm building, building political consciousness, and myself and others, to be able to be prepared to build like an alternative institution.

So tell me about your organization. Yeah, and the nuts and bolts of the work.

Okay. So the organization that I'm serving right now is called font size. From size. And Haitian Creole, it means midwife. And it also means wise women. And so what we'll say is like midwives catch babies and from size, we catch communities. And it is a organization I founded in 2018. For that simple fact of life, that we have to be able to like raise our consciousness, to the point that we can practice self care, community care and fight for justice at the same time. And the way that we do our work is through doing different programs to fulfill our mission of making sure that people across the African diaspora have all the tools spiritual, cultural, political, social tools that they need to be able to take care of themselves and their families. And so some of the programming that we have is we have every month we have a full moon, sacred healing circle where that space is a space for black women to be able to talk about their stories, talk about their experiences, build camaraderie, build sisterhood, and and to be able to teach one another different, like healing practices in which they then go back and take to their own lives into their organizations.

And can you explain restorative justice? From your perspective,

restorative justice is an alternative to a punitive system. And so most of the time a decision, when there's like something that happens and somebody needs to be held accountable. somebody tells them what they need to do. And so whether that's in school, right, so in schools, how that looks is like students are suspended or arrested, because there's like a policy that says, If you do this, this is the consequence, right? Whereas restorative justice, creates room for accountability where the person who committed a harm or then fracture is part of the decision making of like, what happens and what does accountability look like? And so that's like, the simplest way that I could share of like, what restorative justice looks means. And in a lot of ways, in our work, not just with peacekeeping, but restorative justice in our society, then would mean that there's like a lot of there's like reparations, right? There's a connection to land, connection to labor, and really like unpacking and debunking all of these policies or levels of oppression, that keep people either fighting themselves fighting each other.

It is current to talk about systemic racism. Can you talk about your work in the context of systemic racism?

Yeah, so a lot of the work that we do is what we say is we center people from the African diaspora, because one of the things that systemic racism has done is had a long standing impact because of the transatlantic slave trade. Right. And so the transatlantic slave trade, African people came from Africa somewhere already on this land, maybe across the Caribbean too. Sure. There's an incident that happened there. As a slave trade that happened where black people were removed from their land, and brought here to the Americas, for the exploitation of labor. So their bodies were used for labor. And so now, what that does to people is once you leave, you move somebody from one land, to another land, what that does is that that person loses their culture, they lose this part, they lose part of their identity, they lose part of and many, many of our ancestors lost. Their family was torn apart, black women, even men were raped. Right. And so all of the transatlantic slave trade, what is done is that it's left that impact, generational impact, because we're, we're literally all just running DNA. We're like recycled DNA. And it's left this mental impact of like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it's left leg spiritual impact of like, what does that mean? Because they hurt, like what was happening here, they chose to just throw themselves over the boat, right? They would rather like chose, they chose to, like, throw themselves over the boat, rather than to come here to be exploited. And so all of these stories aren't stories that are not really told, right? But we see it every day. We see it in the generational trauma, where people are like loss of identity, loss of language, loss of culture, now are like trying to find out who they are.

So could I say then that your dream is to reclaim the cultural and spiritual roots of the African diaspora in America?

A shame? Absolutely. That's absolutely yeah. That is, I would say, the largest dream that I have

read, john, well, thank you very much for talking with me. In my way of thinking, we remain accountable to ourselves for the progress we make in this life. Show up work hard, get ahead, etc. The question to one that has been highlighted in more recent times, is how our histories not just in this slide, but generational histories handicap, our ability to achieve our dreams. For those of us who don't worry about it that much. We are privileged for those with histories of exploitation and exclusion, the question of erasing the burden of history is a real world. Today's episode was edited by Scott Albert, for medium for change. I am Sanjeev Chatterjee