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Countdown Profile: Week 4 Alexis Jemal (’21)

Alexis Jemal, JD, LCSW, PhD, clinical faculty member at Hunter’s Silberman School of Social Work, and member of the MA in Applied Theatre class of 2021, talks with Michael Wilson (’11) about her hunger for justice, finding applied theatre, and how she’s just getting started. 

Okay, we’re recording 

The first thing I want to put out there is that I don’t have all the answers or know how all these pieces fit together. I consider this journey to be a work in progress. That’s how I’ve always led my life and have ended up where I am today. It may sound, I don’t know how it will sound at the end, whether it seems it all fits together… 

I’m a many-interested person myself, from anthropology to theatre, and now photography. There’s a connective logic I feel intuitively, but it might not look like it from the outside. I do believe that we attract passionate, interdisciplinary people to the program. 

Exactly. 

I welcome that complexity. 

It is complexity! Which I have found not always welcome or understood. Even in my doctorate program, for example, they’re trying to fit you in a box. They’re trying to say who you are as a researcher. Do you do this, do you do that?

 At first, I started out in law, because I wanted to help people. The main message in my personal statement for law school was: “stealing bread is wrong, whether it’s done by the king or the man living beneath the bridge.” I had read this passage in a sociology textbook. That made me think about inequity, and how, well, the king will never be prosecuted for stealing bread…

I went to law school because I wanted to be an advocate for the man, woman, child, person who lives under the bridge. I loved law school. But then I had a bunch of internships at places, like in the chambers of a Federal District Judge, at the New York Civil Liberties Union, at MFY Legal Services in New York that provides legal services to indigent people, and the Public Defender’s Office in my home county in New Jersey. And I kept seeing injustice after injustice after injustice. A person who is getting evicted from their house, yes, you could help them not be evicted, legally, but that wouldn’t help with their mental health issues, or their substance abuse issues. It wouldn’t help with the trauma they’ve experienced in their family history, or the macro sociopolitical issues that are harming them.

 So I figured, social work is where I really want to go. I ended up first working at this place at Rutgers called the Center for Behavior Health Services and Criminal Justice Research. That’s when I learned I was interested in research, because we were testing psychosocial interventions within the women’s prison in New Jersey. I was really seeing the intersection [between] the intrapersonal, interpersonal, the mezzo, the macro…everything was interacting. I thought, this is what I want to do. I want to be on the frontlines but I also want to be a researcher. I was one of two students that were admitted to the first PhD MSW program that Rutgers started—one foot in front of the other, the stars just kind of aligned… In my doctorate program, I was not planning to go into a professorship. I wanted to do more the non-profit route. But I began to consider how going into social work education could be advocacy in a way that I get to help shape future social workers. I could be that change that I want to see in social work.

 Thank you for sharing that. I’m inspired by that.

 It all intersects. To me, social workers have no excuse. We are the only field, as far as I know, to have an ethical mandate to address oppression. When any social injustice occurs, we should be the first responders. Instead, we’re trying to be psychologists, or something. 

Technically, at Silberman School of Social Work, I am clinical faculty. I get to, in my class, bring the message of how clinical work and social justice need to be integrated and practiced. Like: “I get it, you guys want to go out and you want do therapy, but you will be interacting with multiple systems, and there’s no way around it. So how are you going to practice with an anti-oppressive lens?”

 So that’s the teaching. I’m also a researcher, right? My interventions are always grounded in critical theory, liberation health models, restorative justice-type practices. They’re always about developing critical consciousness. 

For my dissertation, I wanted to create a scale of Paolo Freire’s critical consciousness. As a doctoral student I was developing an intervention called Community Wise, that’s grounded in critical consciousness theory. Community Wise is a group intervention, it’s fifteen two-hour weekly sessions, for people who were recently released from incarceration. It’s supposed to reduce HIV STI risk, criminal reoffending, psychological distress, and substance use. And it’s grounded in critical consciousness theory, meaning that we have these critical dialogues, and we have capacity building projects, where the participants work on some type of project together. 

The theory is called transformative potential: a scale of critical consciousness. The heart of the theory is that…when people [social workers] design interventions, like substance abuse interventions, they’re trying to get these people to use substances less, but really, what we’re arguing, is substance abuse is a symptom. It is not the issue. The issue is oppression. If we can find ways to get at the root of the issue, then substance use will decrease.

 And there’s the Freirian piece: you’re there to challenge people to develop critical consciousness, that’s about reading the world.

 Exactly. We’ve all been socialized to blame the individual. The participants have been socialized that way, as well. “When I come out of prison I should be able to get a job, I should be able to do this…I have all these skills, I have all these certificates.” And it’s like, “dangit, you don’t need another certificate. What you need is for people to stop discriminating against you and give you a job!” 

One of the questions I ask people sometimes is, “could you have done everything right and still things have gone wrong?” And the answer is, well, “yes.” And that tells you it can’t be 100% about you. 

I am concerned with the health of marginalized people. I want my work to be a healing agent. And it always has to be multi-systemic. 

So, that’s what brings me to applied theatre. 

How? 

I saw psychodrama at a social work conference. And I was immediately impacted by it. Everything started to collide in my head. From, role theory…we’re all on the stage, different roles that we play…to, just that art itself, whether it’s dance, whether it’s painting, just has a way of breaking down boundaries. How I see applied theatre fitting in [my work] is that it integrates healing from trauma that’s associated with oppression AND raising consciousness and getting people to act against inequity.

 And I have always been a creative writer…I’ve always felt I didn’t know how to integrate my academic and creatives sides…but applied theatre is the perfect way to integrate both aspects of myself. It seemed to all merge here. 

I have several ideas. I wrote a story when I was thirteen or fourteen about hair. I know that for, especially black women, there’s so much trauma at the roots. Every time I read this story I can’t help but to cry. It’s a tear jerker. I think about how this [the exploration of hair] could be used with theatre as a healing agent for the people who participate in the drama, devising [an original piece of theatre around hair], but also it can impact people who are watching it. 

Telling your story is healing, but also empowering. And unifying. It could build empathy, you could know people in a way that you didn’t know them before. 

Thank you. Thanks for bringing me up to what seems to be a frontier for you now. 

Yes. It seems to bring together all of my interests, from education to consciousness raising to community organizing to healing, to health. To creativity.

 Now switching gears, what does it take to keep going as an interdisciplinary person in a world of siloed work? 

Yeah, that’s…I believe that my work will be more effective [because it’s interdisciplinary], I guess. But I do battle. You know, it’s not like just going into carpentry, where I can just work with the person’s mind, and forget their health, because you know…people can’t be sliced. People can’t be separated like that. We’re complex and we’re a mess and that’s humanity. 

What gets you up each day to keep doing it?

 People are fascinating to me. I could sit and people stare, and guess, what happened there? When I’m driving and see a home, and I can kind of see in laughs—like I’m peeping—I wonder, does that family eat dinner together? Is there violence? My mind wanders. And, I’ve always been a person about justice. I’ve always been a champion for people who didn’t have power, since I’ve been young. To stand up for people, to stand up for justice. I don’t like people to be in pain or to suffer. My name, that’s connected to Alexander, defender of mankind. And that’s how I’ve felt. I’ve always been about justice and equity.

 Okay. Well, as I’m listening, I’m so struck by your accomplishment and knowledge. I really admire what you’re up to. 

Thank you. People think I’m humble or something, but I don’t feel like I’ve done much, yet. People are always in awe of the DEGREES. It’s like, yeah, but the degrees mean nothing if you don’t do anything with them. So I’m hoping that I do make a difference…so far I feel like I’m laying groundwork. I’m in the preparation stage. 

Rapid fire round. A fiction author or book that’s lighting up your imagination? 

That is hard to say, because, I’m so ashamed to admit this, but I don’t read as widely as I’d like. Because, I’m usually reading journal articles and papers. 

Alright, fine. But did you read Octavia Butler at all? 

So that’s the funny thing. I just took this writing course at Medgar Evers in October. It was every Monday night. And I write kind of sci-fi stuff. 

Aah [of course, just like Butler]. 

That’s my genre. I started looking up African-American sci-fi writers, and of course she pops up. So I have several of her books on my kindle but I have not read one yet. But I do know who she is. 

There’s someone else who was perpetually fascinated. And so personal…so interested in each person’s wounds and psychology, and also so curious about social change. She used dystopias that are not so far away as a metaphor for interrogating the present. She used the arts as a reflecting surface for society.

 I’ve been warned that I sound a lot like her…the teacher was like, “I don’t know if you should read her, because it may…” So I’m like, “do I or don’t I?” 

Well you’ve given me a writing challenge, because I have a full article here on your work on critical consciousness and a full article on your reflections on the value of theatre. 

And so I’ll tell you this last part so it wraps it up. I have this research project I’m starting to get into now…with women, they’re going to do auto-ethnography. Researching their own lives and experiences with different types of oppression. And the last part that I’m hoping they do—I’m going to present it to them, but it’s up to them—is to do something with applied theater. Somehow incorporating what they’ve learned from their autoethnographies into some type of applied theatre format. So that’s kind of where it’s going. That’s it. 

For now. Thank you so much. 

Thank you for listening.

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Countdown Profile: Week 2 Cardozie Jones (‘12)

Cardozie Jones (’12) is Founding Principal of True North EDI. He sat down with Michael Wilson (’11) to talk about building his company and how he brings joy and rigor to his work for equity, diversity, and interdependence. 

Cardozie, it’s been years. I think of you as an entrepreneur in the arts, because of your directing background. How does that land? 

I guess less and less I would call myself an entrepreneur in the arts. I’m still directing—I direct a few times a year, and I really direct because it’s fun, and I love it, but my work has in the past three years really been focused on facilitation and consulting, primarily around racial justice. But generally speaking, equity work. 

So I’ve been consulting for three years on my own as Cardozie Jones. And then this summer I founded True North EDI, which is “Equity, Diversity, and Interdependence.” Right now, I’m the only “employee” of True North EDI, and my expertise is certainly in racial justice, but my larger goal is to have a cohort of consultants who just are really amazing and talented within the different spheres. 

Tell me more about True North.

 In doing my workshops, which have been in schools, for the most part—that’s really where I got my start, as an educator—I’m called in to sessions with staff, sometimes one-off PDs, and then it became more like I came once a month, or something like that, over the course of a year. And developing curriculum and sessions and content and themes.

 I was a consultant for Border Crossers…now the Center For Racial Justice in Education…and I’m also a consultant for NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools. And then from there, I got more agency. First of all, I realized, okay, I’m good at this. I got great feedback, and I’m meeting other consultants who are really good at what they’re doing. 

That was a blessing for me, to find those organizations. But then I’m realizing, oh, but, when NYU sends Cardozie out, they’re literally just sending Cardozie out. I’m creating the sessions, I’m doing the reading, I’m doing the research, I’m doing all of the work. And I don’t say that begrudgingly at all, but people are just getting Cardozie.

 It was good and important to have those supports, and those big names, but now you’re at a point where you can stand up on your own. 

Yeah. 

Would you take me, take readers, into what a workshop feels like? 

Racial justice work can be so heavy. “I spent six hours in a session to realize that I literally have no power in this, because it’s so far beyond me, it’s so much older than me, whether I’m a victim of it or I’m privileged by it.” It still seems unchangeable. And so, for me, the energy that I bring into the room is very buoyant. We are up and moving a lot. We’re playing games. We’re using Theatre of the Oppressed to have fun. 

I’m so glad. Use the tools! 

Yeah. To have fun and to reflect and question and think critically. And it’s one of those situations where we’re about to have this really heavy conversation for three hours or six hours where we start off by laughing. What an amazing way to start a conversation about things that are kind of crappy, you know? And I maintain those exercises throughout. Whether we’re actually up, we’re doing small group work, we’re doing posters—we’re generating, right? This is always a space of generating versus continually being depleted. 

One of my favorite co-facilitators, a white woman, and she does great work from a white anti-racist lens, and her background is in restorative justice, and she brings that same energy. She has a theatre background, too. We have so much fun, playing Columbian Hypnosis, and two by three by Bradford, and with role play. It’s this really amazing time.

 People leave, given the written evaluations we receive, feeling like they see possibilities in the world. Versus, like they see the things that are insurmountable. And part of that is we’re very specific that we’re asking people to target their sphere of influence. We’re not asking them to un-do the entire system. And that’s part of interdependence. None of us can do it alone.

 Another problem that equity and diversity workshops get into is slowing down and helping out the white people. And then people of color are just like, “yep, I knew that, but what am I getting out of this?” How do you address that? 

A few things. The first is I try to acknowledge for everyone in the room, if you enter this conversation in any way, shape, or form with the mindset of, “I already know this,” then you will not learn anything. No matter what your racial identity or identity is in the room. Right? The second thing is that, you’ll have one person of color in the room saying, “well I already know this, this feels like it’s very white centered.” But you’ll have eight more people of color who are like, “oh I did not know race was a construct. I never heard that before, actually. My race is my race, that’s what I was taught,” right? Yes, to some extent, in racial justice trainings, they [black participants] recognize it more than white people recognize it. Because the fish can’t see the water. But they don’t necessarily see it as a choice they can not make. 

I have been really reflecting on the nature of “diversity work” and, as I said, it’s very white-centric. It’s like, that’s the target. And so what I tried to do more recently is bring in black-centric or POC-centric texts that are speaking to experiences. So people of color in the room can feel like “yes, this is me, this is my life right here,” and white people can see, “wow, this is blunt, no one ever talked about this this way before.” People of color feel validated in the room, and it removes the burden of having to over-share and be so vulnerable, in a way the white participants simply aren’t, quite frankly. 

But that question…it’s still a work in progress. We still need to figure out a way for “diversity work” to not be white-centric or not dominant-party-centric. 

I asked because it bedevils me with the work I do on gender. Every time I do a mixed gender group, we end up taking care of some white guy. And sometimes I feel like we got somewhere, that we took a detour but it’s worthwhile, and sometimes I’m like, “this is just patriarchy protecting itself, and whiteness protecting itself.” 

Yeah. The other thing I’ve decided is…there’s all these jokes about white tears and so for me, you can cry all you want. That does not mean I’m going to center you right now. And I’m going to call out the room if we start to center that person. So whether it’s tears or it’s outrage, or whatever the spill of emotion coming from the dominant body is, it’s valid. I’m not going to silence it. But we’re also going to keep moving on. Because we’re here together. So you can let it out. Flood the floors. And we’re going to keep moving forward. Because that’s what this work is, right? Moving forward despite the loads of emotions we feel. 

Thank you. You mentioned earlier you wanted to circle back to the MA? 

Yeah. My ability to facilitate groups is hands-down from this program. I was talking to a colleague of mine, a chief operating officer at an organization, who is contracting me to do racial equity work with her organization. And she said, “as we design sessions, you’re constantly and perpetually thinking about the reception and what’s happening in the room.” Versus, it would be much easier if I could design a session and not think about that! But having been in the program and understanding…having a more human-centered approach, having a more co-intentional approach has forced me to consider that I need the people in the room to create a partnership in this. 

Also, you know, we went to grad school and there’s times we had whole courses where we would just play, for an entire course. And somehow that made the learning more rigorous, and not less rigorous. So part of what I understand is that rigorous learning and rigorous experiences require imagination, and so, being a graduate of the applied theatre program, I recognize all the possibilities that exist when the imagination is activated, and when we can step in and out of roles, and in and out of possibilities, and act as if—not as “what is,” but “as if.” 

What gets you up in the morning to keep doing the work, Cardozie? 

The simplest way to say it is I love what I do, and I have the privilege of my work being my passion. The hardest thing about my work is the planning, is the administrative stuff. Me like doing invoices, and designing a session from scratch. But when I’m in the room, which is five or six days a week, I’m in a room with people, it’s FUN. It’s FUN. 

[Also,] more and more I feel like this work is a calling. And I’m the kind of person who would have scoffed at the word “calling.” Like three years ago. 

What I haven’t talked about, is it takes a toll, right? The work takes a toll. I’m talking about things that are very personal to me that I feel a lot of pain, as it relates to racism. So my well depletes very fast. When I burn out, I am BURNED OUT. And so I’m trying to figure out ways of self-care, or ways to facilitate self-care for myself. 

I hear you. 

But waking up in the morning, I get up and go. I never dread sessions. And they can be really really challenging. But I welcome the challenge. 

You’ve got this small smile and your eyes are lit up. 

Yeah, I love it, I love it. It’s not really great for my marriage laughs. He’d prefer that we not have the challenges sometimes. But I’m the kind of person who…I thrive off of debate and I thrive off of…not conflict, but problem-posing.

 Anything else you’d like some curious person to know about you?

 My next and current step is creating seminars where people can come to me. In January I have this three-evening seminar called “True North Together.” What I realized in doing this work is that I’m only in spaces that call me in. But then there are regular people in the world, like mothers and people who work in spheres where this isn’t the conversation, but who are reading the news and raising children and on social media. They see the world. But they don’t have the language or the knowledge to engage the world in a way that’s powerful and thoughtful and positive, and so True North Together seminars are for anyone at any point of access to come in and be more powerful in conversations, specifically about race and racism. Race, power, and privilege. My hope is to fill up two cohorts of that in January and February. And so, yeah, that requires another entrepreneurial hat I need to wear, because now I’m recruiting, so to speak.

 Send me the link. 

Thank you, that would be great. I want to have a 1500-person conference one day. Where we can really convene and commune in innovative ways, and some old ways that work, too. 

Thank you so much. 

Thank you! 

Check out True North Together at https://www.truenorthedi.com/events.html.

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