Jasmine Snipes and Tonya Dawn Recla on Power, Privilege and Radical Inclusion

Jasmine Snipes:
Right, Tonya? So wow, I think it’s still a whirlwind. And a lot of it’s really full circle. But something my colleagues and friends and folks I facilitate too often hear me say is every star starts with a star, like I just wasn’t this it’s been a commitment, and a lot of falling down and getting back up. But when I think about my most prevalent moment of where it started, like where I was bit by the bug, I was in at the time, a little girl, probably still a little girl internally. And my mom had volunteer opportunities through her employer. And so we would do immunization clinics, we do help build housing through Habitat for Humanity. We also did food drives and stuff like that and gave stuff out to the community. And I was like This feels good. Also something I call my selfish selflessness in the sense that I do this because I love it, it feels good. I have to feel good internally and externally. i My past is filled with like a lot of trials and errors and learning the system and really doubt not even dialing in just accumulating what the systems in place that are harmful had done to me and people I care about entities I care about. I would say in high school, I went to this leadership opportunity I was advised to go to through my Black Student Union, Harriet Galbreath, recommended me to go to uni town, which is a spin off of any town and it was run by at the time Calvin Terrell. And that was it. I went as a delegate, I was like, Oh, we can have these conversations. We could talk about how to be inclusive and have this language then. But it was like anti discrimination, social justice, social justice as the word at the time. Like, here’s how we’d be nice, and coexist as humans. And so I came back as a counselor. Life happened. I had a kid. I learned a lot about my mental health and my physical health. And then by the time I was in college for the sixth time, I got a few degrees. And while I was in community college, I was a part of a rigorous academic program. It was called the Student Public Policy Forum. And so basically, my history teacher was like you would be great in this class and I was like, I’m offended. I would be great at why would you? So I did it. I went to the state capitol. I got the job. I went to the nation’s capital for a private tour. So I was like, I’m good at talking to people and how Helping people. So let’s just keep doing it. So I was a legislative staff member for about nine years. And then I think the term was poached, but kindly asked to join a lobbying firm, then COVID happened. And then I was laid off. And I was like, What do I do? And I had already been facilitating with the anti Defamation League doing anti bias training for I had done some for law enforcement, but mainly students, administrative staff and faculty. And I was like, I love to facilitate. And then I started being asked to facilitate community conversations. And then I would use that skill at the Capitol, I would bring folks in, I’m like, this is your building, this is your state to show up, show out dude, you gotta do it with loving accountability. Right. And so the layoff happened. And my friends who had announced they’re all consulting businesses were like, Why don’t you know what you’re doing? You know, admin stuff, you know, people stuff, you know, customer service, you’re also really good at facilitating, and getting people to establish common language and meeting people where they are. And I’m like, yeah, oh, no. And so I did. And I started, you know, doing a lot of projects, which I actually prefer with CO facilitators, like people who have identities that just don’t aren’t the same as mine, because some can hear different things from this person and different things from me. So I joined a great kick ass group of consultants called kick ass consultants who do this work, right. And it’s just been growing since then.

Tonya Dawn Recla:
Brilliant Wow, well, because you do, right, you start peeling back some threads, and you’re like, oh, wait, it’s connected here. It’s connected here. And, and I love the parallels and our journeys, I had the extreme like privilege of being able to be involved with service very early on through our church in really responsible ways, right, working with a bi national mission team, rather than thinking that we know what’s best for the communities that we’re going into. And we have no affiliation with them. And that really stuck with me as I went forward, and similar to you actually was prior to my experience with leadership 2000, which was, you know, related to the Anytown concept. I, like my roommate brought home, Gordon outputs the nature of prejudice. And I consumed this book, and I was like, I can study this, I can know this stuff, like I can wait a second for people like you, like people are talking about this. And it’s okay. Like, as a white person is, like, right? Does this work? And can women, right, as a female, like, all of these experiences, like you said, of like, wait, hold up, like, not everybody experiences things this way? Like, wait, wait, what’s going on here. And so and then, having the experience of finding out people really hated me, because of the color of my skin was like, what what like, you know, that wasn’t in my manual, you know, being brought up. And so it was really amazing to have a place where I could talk about it, right. And I could hear about it in a way that, you know, kind of sucked at the time. But it was so helpful to see those reflections and to have a place where I could get messy, and kind of grow through it. And then, you know, fast forward into teaching those things at ASU, even as an undergrad, because people just didn’t know how to mitigate these things in the classroom. There were huge problems at ASU at the time. And so, so the involvement in the getting into counterintelligence and government and teaching it there, well, you know, on your political tracks, so the parallels are kind of fun, as I’d imagine your journey sort of twisted and turned, and a lot of similar ways to mine because I was looking for solutions. And when you look, when you start to dig under power and privilege, it’s like, you got to go all the way back to origin on a lot of this stuff. And it’s uncomfortable. But once you start digging, it’s almost like you can’t stop because, you know, nothing that gets built on top of those faults and fissures is going to last. And you gotta keep digging, right. And so I think that that’s what the pandemic did, for so many people it was inevitable that there are real fault lines underneath all of this. And, you know, we can be concerned with laying blame. But we should be instead empowering ourselves with taking responsibility for where we’ve been complicit and complacent in these things. But how do you do that if you don’t even know how to talk about it, right? So I love that you’re getting into these spaces and being able to do that in your way right in the way that’s been developed through you. And I think that’s really all any of us can do and then joined together because we got kind of the same memo of now. It’s like bringing different voices together because we are saying a lot of the same things. But it’s really important that we hear them in all kinds of different ways. It reminds us that we’re not robotic, that we’re not all uniform, but we can all be equal. And so you and I talked a little bit before, before this episode about you know where do Where did we really feel ourselves intersecting and that power and privilege but but the radical inclusion component? And, and I think that that’s an important piece to touch on. Because when we talk about inclusion, like what are we talking about, like, oh, no, everybody can come, but everybody can be there is different than the way we made space for everybody. And so I’d love to hear your perspective on that.

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