I transcribe these for Paul Ingles, http://paulingles.com every month. Usually, if there's a noteable one, I'll put it in my radio blog.But this one pertains to poverty.
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KHAMISA: At that stage, I was angry, but I wasn’t angry with the kids. I think I was angry at American society. I felt we had failed our responsibility to our kids, because they join gangs to get respect, protection and belonging. We must do more so those kids do not have to join gangs. I wrote several articles. I’ve also written a book. I have voiced my anger, not to the kid who actually took my son’s life, but to society, as a whole.
BOSS: I read an article you wrote, a couple of months after your son’s death, on your foundation’s website [ http://www.tkf.org ]. You drove to Mammoth Mountain in Southern California. You’d gone to spend a few days in solitude and reflection. Can you tell us what came of that experience?
KHAMISA: According to the Sufi tradition – I’m a practicing Muslim of the Sufi tradition, which is a metaphysical interpretation if Islam – we have prayers for the dead at the funeral and ten days, thirteen days, forty days and prayers every year and prayers every year afterward. The most significant are the forty days prayers. At the forty-day prayers, my spiritual mentor counseled me. According to the Sufi tradition, it ends the grieving period. I was told that the spirit, or the soul, of the departed person stays in close proximity for the forty days, which are allocated for grieving. After the forty days, the soul moves on to a new consciousness, in preparation for the forward journey. Because souls do not die. I like to think of my son as not dead, but at home, or in a different dimension. I was counseled that excessive grieving after the forty days, by friends and family members, would impede the soul’s journey. I was counseled that, instead of grieving, I should do good deeds. Good deeds, done in the name of the departed, are spiritual currency, high-octane fuel, for the soul of the departed for the forward journey.
It was in Mammoth, about three and a half months after my son’s death, that I got the inspiration to start the foundation. I thought that the enemy here was not the killer of my son. Rather, it was the societal forces that forced a young, African American man into a gang at the age of eleven. To prove himself to the gang, he killed my son. If I was able to solve that problem – so kids would not have to join gangs to gain respect, protection or belonging – then, we would improve society.
The foundation just celebrated its twelfth anniversary. It amazes me, how well the foundation has done.
BOSS: Let’s talk about some of the programs. On the web for the TKF Foundation, the Tariq Khamisa Foundation, it reads, “Empowering kids, saving lives, teaching peace.” There are several school-based, violence-prevention education programs. Talk to us about one of them, “Violence Impact Forum.” I know it’s for students from fourth to ninth grade.
KHAMISA: Violence Impact Forum is a live assembly. We have a video, which we have developed, where the murder scene has been reenacted. The kids first look at the video and then we are introduced. We are on stage, live, Ples [Felix] and I, as, “This man’s grandson killed this man’s son. Here they are, as brothers.” Then, I give my testimony. Ples gives his testimony. We then have panel members, male and female, both ex-gang members. They have powerful stories. Then, we engage the kids into a Q & A. It’s a very intensive, emersive, hard-hitting, reality-based encounter. It always amazes me. There’s on fidgeting. There’s pin-drop silence. Very often, I’ll ask the audience, “How many of you have lost family members, as a result of violence?” It breaks my heart when three quarters of the hands go up. We have six, key messages which we try to impart in these live assemblies.
BOSS: One of them is, “You can make good and nonviolent choices.” In this era of violent, media images, which are so pervasive in this culture, and so attractive to youth, how is this message presented in a way appeals to young students?
KHAMISA: You’re right. The violence is extremely pervasive. We are, by far, the most violent, first world nation in the world. I started with a simple premise: violence is a learned behavior. Nobody was born violent. None of our children was born violent. If you accept that violence is a learned behavior, then nonviolence can also be a learned behavior. Who teaches it? At TKF, we teach it. Let me answer your question by an example.
After the Violence Impact Forum, we plant a garden. It’s a very healing thing. We plant a tree in memory of my son. For all the family members the kids have lost, they plant flowering plants. This becomes an alter for them to visit. It also becomes a very visible presence of our program on campus. It reminds them of the key messages we taught.
After that, we have another program called, “Ending the Cycle of Violence.” We’ve created six, multimedia vignettes, around our six, key messages. One example would be that we have a lesson on empathy. It’s a big word in many of these schools. We usually have a theme, “I don’t know you until I walk a mile in your shoes. You don’t know me until you’ve walked a mile in mine.”
It was a seventh grader. His name was Alex. He had all the signs: the swear, the encounter, the colors. You could see the gang member, written all over this kid. Somehow, this lesson on empathy got to him. The homework is that they have to practice empathy for the whole week. The week after, before they get their lesson on compassion, they’re asked to share their homework on empathy. When the teacher asked, “Who wants to share the lesson on empathy,” it was Alex. Remember, this was the most disruptive kid in the class. What he shared was very powerful.
He said, “I was walking in my ‘hood last weekend. This kid gave me a dirty, angry look. The rules of the ‘hood are, if a kid looks at you like that, you go beat him up. Because you taught me, ‘You don’t know me until you’ve walked a mile in my shoes, and I don’t know YOU until I walk a mile in YOURS,’ I walked up to this kid and said, ‘Why are you giving me a dirty look?’
“The kid said to me, ‘I’m not giving YOU a dirty look. I’m angry. My brother was shot and killed last night.’”
We asked, “What did you do, Alex?”
He said, “I held his hand. We cried together. I gave him a hug. I told him, ‘I know how you feel, because I lost my uncle six months ago.’”
One lesson! When you think that this kid walks the ‘hood, every weekend. Tell me you can’t teach nonviolence. There’s more power in this. What could have become a fight became a compassionate action.
One of the key messages we teach is that, from conflict, love and unity are possible. I talk about the fact that I would never have met Ples, if his grandson had not taken the life of my son. Ples is African American. My roots are Eastern. Azim is Persian/East Indian name. I’m a Muslim. Ples grew up as a Christian. And he’s as close to me as my own brother. We hang. In fact, I’m having dinner with him tonight. He has met my entire family; I’ve met his. We have this love for each other. I cannot even put it in words. I always tell him that he helps me carry my load; I help him carry his. We are water bearers for each other.
I always tell people, “I want you to notice something here. This is not Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., meeting Gandhi. This is an investment banker, meeting a green beret. Ples was a green beret. The point I’m trying to make is that, if he and I can do it, we can all do it. I think that is very teachable.”
The President of the Foundation, Mark Fackler, always says, “If TKF is successful in meeting its mandate, the only outcome can be world peace.” Kids are our future leaders. If we can teach them, now, that from conflict you create your brother or sister, you create love and unity – if you apply the principles of nonviolent peace making and forgiveness – maybe, someday, we’ll have world peace.
BOSS: Let me ask you about Tony Hicks, the fourteen-year-old who killed your son. From what I understand, he’s still in prison. You met him in prison. Could you describe that experience?
KHAMISA: It was five years after the tragedy. It took me many hours of meditation. I’d met his grandfather and guardian at nine months. It’s a whole, new equation, to come eyeball to eyeball with the person who actually pulled the trigger on your son. I could tell, when I first met him when he was nineteen years old. I was thinking, as I was walking up the steps of the prison to meet him, that I was not going to like this kid who took the life of my one and only son. When I met him, I was quite surprised. He did not portray typical attitudes of a nineteen-year-old in our culture. On the contrary, he was remorseful, well mannered, and soft-spoken. I could see that my forgiveness of him had also transformed him. Quite frankly, when I looked deeply in his eyes, I did not see a murderer there. I saw another soul, just like me.
He was eleven, when he joined the gang. He ran away at fourteen. The same day he left his house – where his grandfather loved him – he joined his homeboys. They drank a lot of alcohol. They smoked a lot of drugs – a lot of pot. When they got hungry, they wanted to jack the pizza deliveryman. Somebody put a gun in Tony’s hand. Take a fourteen-year-old, in our society, who is angry, who has run away, who is now high on alcohol and drugs, and give him a gun. Is that a recipe for disaster, or what? Then think: how often does that happen? It happens a lot!
Not only did I forgive him, I went the extra step by telling him, “Tony, when you come out of prison, you have a job at the Khamisa Foundation. You can come work with your grandfather and me.” I gave him an opportunity to redeem himself.
What’s amazing about this story is that he has exactly done that. He just turned twenty-seven; his birthday is September 22. Two years ago, he aced his G.E.D. in prison at the sixty percentile, self-taught. He’s now doing counseling courses, learning Spanish (because we work with a lot of Hispanics here). He reads five books a month, and this kid used to hate to read. He knows that he can’t be about gangbanging, drugs and violence, if he’s going to work with the Foundation, teaching kids about the principles of peace making and nonviolence.
I’ve written a letter to our governor in California, to see if he would consider commuting Tony’s sentence, because I would hire him. I think he would serve society a lot better, working with the Foundation, trying to keep kids away from making the same, fatal mistakes he did – rather than just serving time in an adult prison.
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