Many engineers say that they want to teach STEM to younger generations. However, J. J. S. Sealeson has actually figured out how to do it. He's created Learn Through Robotics, and he's found the key to really teaching anyone anything. Let's hear all about it. All right, now I'm excited to welcome our guest onto the podcast today, J. J. L. Sealeson. I'm excited because J is an entrepreneur like myself. He is an entrepreneur and an educator. He's the founder of Future Technologies Education, as well as Learning Through Robotics. J, welcome to the Engineering Career Coach podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. So J, I'm excited to talk to you as well. You've accomplished a lot. You're a very motivated person and you're really interested in some of these initiatives that we're going to talk about today. But before we go there, tell me a little bit about your career and your background, how you got to where you are today. Well, I come from a finance background. So my undergrad and my master's all in corporate finance and ended up in a bank as most finance people end up going to a financial institution. So I worked for Citigroup, and I worked and traveled a lot. I worked in Japan and Singapore for some time and also moved to US. And then right now I'm in Utah. From the banking career, I found that there's something missing for me, which is technologies, science, particularly engineering piece, STEM. So because of my interest, I just learned by myself something that I can do with engineering, even though it was a little bit late for me because it's halfway through my career. So I got into education and started teaching and started learning through robotics in 2011 with a friend of mine called Glenn Jacobs. And then we also started Future Technology Education, another company bringing technology to children. And I love what I do. Wow, that's crazy. So you your backgrounds in finance, but you became very inspired into the STEM and engineering, you wanted to teach children. And I know you've taught many, many children. And I know you like to do it in a way where they can, you know, a hands on approach where they can see it, they can feel it, they can, I think that's a great way to learn. And so you kind of learned, you learned a lot of this on your own, huh? Yes, I really believe education has a lot to do with interest. If a person is interested, even after all the degrees and everything and experience in a career that is completely different, you can still learn. It's just getting that interest. So as educators, I think that should be our job to get people interested in what they like. Yeah, and especially children, right? If they're not interested in something, they're not going to really want to learn about it. You know, I know that I have young kids myself and I know that that, you know, it's one thing to have them read a book, but if you can also tell them a story or show them pictures and really get their interest in something, they become much more willing and able to learn about it. And I think that's something that you've kind of captured for sure. Alright, so so that being said, Jay, talk about it's one thing to talk about, you know, teaching kids and understanding maybe, you know, how they might learn. But for someone who's from corporate finance, I mean, how did you even understand how to educate people? How did you learn how to do that? Well, to begin with, like yourself, I have really young, I had really young children at the time. I have three boys. So I would come home after a very long day of analysis and presentations and numbers and play with my kids. And I found that the interest I had was actually with my kids a lot more than what I did with my bosses. I don't know what I should be saying this in a podcast, but I really don't think I had good bosses. So I had I struggled a lot with even though it's a great company, great potential. So I worked well with a lot of people, but I struggled with some of the tasks are very, very stressful tasks and long, long hours of work, and constant travel. I don't know whether you will believe me, I have traveled to 56 countries on assignments. And some of them six, seven times a year, which means every other month I'm on a plane to a country.   Instead, I'm really on a plane all the time, and eating hotel food. Wow. So that must have been I, I that made me change, do some things different. And I realized that at least my older boy, at the time, 10 years old, had a very big talent and interest in building things, and taking things apart and putting it together. And I had the same interest, even though I didn't know that. If you go to my garage, I have a lot of little little robotic kits that I used to play with in the middle of financial analysis, I would come home and that's where I would de stress myself. Then I thought, hey, this is what I should do for living. But how can I do that? So I just thought, why not, you know, get together with a group of friends and their children, and make a program where you can build things, use a computer to program a few things, and see whether we can bring education that way to younger kids. So that's how it all started, that's my statement in Utah. So that's how you started learning through robotics? Yeah. So you mentioned, and you talk about how learning through robotics offers a hands on approach. Yes. Tell us more about that. How does it work? So pre COVID, I will tell you what we did. We go to a classroom, and we bring equipment, robotics kits, sensors, motors, Lego pieces, a lot of other plastic pieces to build things for elementary students, along with a laptop, and a programming software. So kids will put together a little robot of some kind, or an animal or a man or something they like to build. And then they will configure it using a very basic programming language to make it move. So then now the animal is just not a Lego toy, but it's actually walking, it's talking, it's doing different things that they like. And it's really exciting for a child, say, eight year old, to actually make a little toy do something, and see that it happened. And that's where the beginning of excitement comes. And then they, and then we teach them, hey, these things you can do unless you do physics, math, programming, coding. So the students start to think, my, so it's not just for the classes, I had to learn these things in order to make the toy move. So the kids interest goes to a different level. I really believe engineering, particularly has to start in elementary school, not in high school, when everything is finished for them to become an engineer, it's too late. So that's why we started with elementary school. And we had huge success when we started. That's great, because I can, you know, I have a son who's 10, and I know he used to love the Legos, but now they're becoming boring to him, right? And they're missing that dynamic component of what you're bringing to the table with the coding and, you know, making things come to life. And I think that that's really, really awesome. And I also think I agree with you, I mean, I'm an engineer myself. But I didn't know anything about engineering until someone started talking to me about it in high school. And, you know, luckily, I gave it a shot. But I bet you that there's a lot of kids that don't give it a shot, because they didn't know about it soon enough. And they kind of have other predetermined notions about different subjects and things that they want to do. And so talk about how learning through robotics can kind of help bridge the gap of some of these missed experience kids might have. Okay, so because of COVID, now we are doing a lot of things online. So online, when we are teaching with a student, typically that student has taken maybe four other online courses, homeschool, and everything else he's doing it on the computer, plus a lot of YouTube channels, and maybe even playing video games in the same computer. So it so we want to differentiate ourselves from all these things. So we send the child a box where the kid will engage and build something while our instructor is watching him on Zoom, just like you and me. And then he would so the student can actually see and talk to the teacher while they're doing it. And then programming language is taught also using online methods. And then that way, we still have the interaction, it is definitely not as good as a classroom setup, but still from a bedroom or wherever the child is, he's able to engage and talk and build. So rather than just listening to a teacher. That's really interesting.  And I know you're passionate about, you know, talking and teaching kids about that in an early age. Why do you why do you feel that that's so important? Very good question, Anthony. When I first, when I was in college, we I was looking for really good jobs, and went through a list of available jobs at the time. 10 years later, those jobs were no longer the top jobs. In fact, they're not even in the top five. Today, if you look at the highest paying jobs in the job market, particularly when we have this pandemic and downturn economy going on, you go back 10 years, these jobs did not even exist. They've changed so much that the top, top five pay high paying jobs were created in the last 10 years. This is really a different world that we live in. So when we teach our children, are we going to teach something that's going to come 10 years from now? Or are we going to teach something that existed 50 years? So this is where the difference is. So children will be doing things a lot to do with automation, nanotechnology, biometrics, maybe drones, maybe a lot of other things in 10 years from now, that we can't even see and we can't even understand what they will be. So how do you prepare an elementary kid who is nine years old, when he's 20, what kind of a job market that would be and how do you prepare for a market like that? The best way to do it is get the kids interested in what is coming in future technology. So this is the reason we are thinking of and we are constantly engaging our children in future technology related programs, automation, coding related to future, not just something that is obsolete or outdated. But the challenge is we have all these at an industrial level. They don't they're not even existing in university level. So bringing it to high school, middle school and elementary is a big challenge. But we have to do that. That's the only way the kids will know that they will learn something that they'll actually use. Yeah, and I think the learning through robotics is a great way to approach it as a beginning way to approach it because again, things that are dynamic that they bring to life to me is exciting for them, right? And when they see that they remember that they go home and they tell their parents about it. And then they start to get on the path of thinking about how can I do more things like that, you know, as they grow and as they they mature. And so I definitely commend you for doing that. Another thing I want to ask you about though is, you know, women in engineering, women are certainly a minority in engineering. It's a big, big topic today, you know, the diversity in engineering, my wife's an engineer. And I know that she struggled because she's always, you know, the one of the few women in class or you know, whatever the case may be. So how can we start to get young girls interested along the lines of what you're doing in engineering? Very good question. It's a lot to do with stereotyping and stigma attached to it. There's nothing else. Girls, I've been teaching girls for the last 10 years, and they perform equally or better than boys. There is no study anywhere that says that they cannot get into engineering, STEM, science, technology programs. However, if you walk into one of those programs, 95% of the population is usually boys. So getting them interested is the key and the schools and the school districts have to play a major role in this. We offer STEM robotics for girls classes. This is one of the first initiatives in Utah, in multiple universities, particularly at the University of Utah, where we have courses for young girls, after school programs, summer camps, weekend classes, where they would come and learn with the group of girls and a lady teacher. And the whole idea is to promote them, promote these programs among them. And they are parents or champions. They would support us with this initiative. So it's been going on for some time now, but it's a very small step. At school level, we have to do that. We have to have a broader mechanism to promote this. But I really believe it's very important, it's half the population. Yeah, I agree 100%. And that being said, Jay, it's a monumental task. As you just mentioned, how do you stay motivated and inspired to go after this goal when it's such a big task? Very good question. I, when we first advertised this, we expected at least 100 students out of 1000 that we get during the summer. And we got maybe 30. And when we get the 30, it's really discouraging. And even that 30, some of them were just signing up. They were just coming to find out about it. So we got hold of the parents instead of the students and asked them, why did you sign up? What do you want from this? And they all wanted their girls to succeed, become great people, engineers, scientists and all that. So we went around telling people, we actually asked those people to help us promote this. And they were our champions. But it's a very small step. It's really discouraging when a lot of people say I tried my best, but I only have boys in our classes, you know, one girl, maybe, feel lucky. And that's really true. And if you look at the job market, it is the same. We have what 5% of the engineers in Utah, probably girls, I don't know. It's very low. And same with the any of the engineering, mathematics, technology classes, in any of the major universities that we go to, it's a very common trend. But we really have to keep at it and be positive. I really believe because I already I come from Singapore. If you go to an Asian country, if you go to an Asian class, third grade, and ask the students, how many of you like math? It will be 50% or so among girls and among boys. Now I go to the same kind of a class set up here in US and ask the same question, will 50% of the girls will raise their hands and say, I like math, I like stuff. No, this is the difference. Why? Because somehow we have taught our children this way, that these are hard subjects. These are subjects that some should do and the other should not do. So these are stereotypes that we have created. And then the results show the same thing. We get 10% of them actually going to engineering programs as a result, and maybe a lot less, you know, excelling those subjects and take them as careers. But if you come to some of the countries I mentioned, like the Singapore, Japan, China, they have high girl or the female representation in those fields. Yeah, it's interesting because, you know, what fundamentally what you're doing by, you know, giving the kids this experience, I think is amazing. And I think it's life changing for them. However, in order to do that, the challenges that I'm hearing is that you've got to convince the parents and the schools to allow you to do that. And in a lot of cases, some of the stereotypes around that are that, you know, these are hard subjects, my kid, I don't want to push this on them, etc. But you're really, you're really making it fun, you're making it exciting, what you're doing.  And we like to grow companies and grow initiatives. And I know you want to grow learning through robotics. How do you do that with some of these challenges? How do you how are you planning to try to navigate and overcome some of these challenges? Okay, last December, pre COVID, we just went to classrooms and taught and promote that. So it's pretty much in class robotics, STEM classes. With COVID, we quickly shifted to online. So but the advantage in this is I can teach probably your children, or someone far away from Utah, doing online, I can send a package, and they will open up and then teach them how to download software. And here we are teaching robotics from their homes. So we have that opportunity, which we did not have before, because we were only focused on classes face to face. So this is what we are looking at right now. Our next step is to right now, we don't have any classes taught outside of the state of Utah. So this is where we are planning to move forward. That's our new plan. That's great. And I tell you what, the good thing about how this COVID pandemic may be able to help you go and forward is people are getting more comfortable learning remotely. And now they're very open to remote opportunities. I mean, I know my kids, they were taking Taekwondo before the pandemic, and then they started doing it virtually and everybody adjusted to it, which is you never would have thought of that before that they're doing Taekwondo virtually, you know, so I think the positive and the opportunity here is that for someone like you that has something that's really great, now getting it out to people almost might be easier because there might be more receptive to doing it online. So that that's very exciting. And so with all that being said, Jay, you know, I know how it is to kind of leave one career and start up another one. I did it myself when I went from engineering to doing the coaching and the training and it can be very scary, quite frankly. And you've obviously put a lot of effort into doing this. And you've taught a lot of kids now. You've been in, you know, I think it's thousands of kids, if I'm not mistaken, over 30,000 kids. In fact, talk about how that feels to you being able to accomplish that. Well, when the children grow up, and then when we see them say I saw a kid that was 12 years old, I took him to a competition one time, a robotics competition and we won and I was his coach, training him to win a robotics competition. I met him nine years later. And I just asked him what he's doing and how he's changed. And oh, my goodness, that is the satisfaction to just hear his story. What made him change? I don't know whether he's saying that because I met him, I hope not. But he was certainly interested in pursuing a career related to STEM. Not that I want everybody to do something in STEM, but this is where the job market is. If you look at the job market, these jobs are always available. And they can quickly get into that job market versus a job market that really hard to get into. Or they can have two things that they can learn something that they like, they also can be good at STEM subjects, so that they have an immediate job if they need it. So this is a huge motivation for me. And when I see it is all about I really believe children are the future. Whatever we do to them, however we take care of them is what the world is going to look like in the next 10, 15 years. And I also believe education is not just filling a cup. It is lighting a fire. And if you don't do that as an educator, then no matter how good you are in the subject, you'll end up as a boring teacher.  So the student picks it up. And then the next step you know is they will invent. Educate engineers can do all kinds of miraculous things. We do a thing called product design, where we teach students how to design a product. And when they do that, they look around and they realize every product that they have in their room, it has been designed by somebody. They never thought about it before. You know, so these are little things to get them inspired and excited. I always like the logo that we we call it inspired the next generation, because it is the next generation that we really have to focus on education. Yeah, that's really powerful stuff. They're Jay, it's good to hear you talk about teaching like that.  I also, as I said, I have young kids that I'm constantly trying to teach things. I also coach some of their sports teams. And this is all teaching and engaging with people.  And in fact, my mom is a math teacher, and I visited her class one time to do an engineering kind of demo and for civil engineering. And what it decided to do is instead of talking about civil engineering was to have them each draw out a plan with a building in the site. And I gave them cutouts of a building of trees of a parking lot. And these kids were thrilled. I mean, they were so excited. We put a time limit on it. They were working on their projects and moving things around. And so, you know, I think that this is a really important message for people to take away in terms of teaching, just in general, right, teaching STEM, teaching, you know, whatever, whatever you're trying to teach people anything is it being engaging and giving them something interesting to learn and an interesting way to apply it. So what we're going to do right now is we're going to take a quick break and then we're going to come back with Jane, we're going to wrap this one up with one thought in our Take Action Today segment. All right, we're back with Jay, Jay Asilin from Learning Through Robotics. We're talking about some really interesting stuff and engaging the youth and teaching STEM and getting them excited and what Jay's doing is really interesting to me because what you're doing, Jay, is you're taking something that's an interesting concept, but you're bringing a lot of things into the mix. You're bringing the building component, you're bringing the coding component, you're bringing the dynamic animation component into it, which is what we have to do to teach people and get kids excited about something. And so to that point, Jay, what we'd like to do in this end segment, we have a lot of listeners that are STEM professionals. And a lot of them are always interested in getting out there to the youth and teaching them about STEM. What are some things that they can do? They're working every day, but they want to make a difference. So what do you recommend that they can do to start driving STEM and making some changes? Thank you. First, to make a change, they should start at home. With their children, if they have children or their brothers and sisters, or I'm pretty sure at least one of their neighbors will have some children. And they should find a way to approach them through the parents and see whether they will be interested in learning about technology. And if these viewers or your listeners, if they have any knowledge about coding, about robotics, about technology, I think this would be a very good start. And then what they know, if they can teach, that will always stay. I believe that. If they don't teach, it'll just go with them. I'm pretty sure you heard this before, but if we never give what we have, we'll just take it to the grave. And nobody will ever be able to see how we taught, how we designed, because some of these great scientists, when they die, when we find their diaries, we see a lot of sketches that we have no idea what they were thinking, because they didn't tell those last few hours of thinking, and they could have been great thing, maybe medicine for cancer. I don't know. Great ideas, they probably had, but they're gone. So I think they should start teaching, like you properly said before, to anyone that they can think of, not necessarily STEM, anything that they know. This is the first step. Second, they have to get involved with the school district. They have to get involved with the school. That's where students are there. And they are teachers, they are principals that they can approach. If their kid is going to a school, I'm pretty sure the principal will listen to them. If they have a skill that they can teach, it doesn't have, it can be cooking. It can be practical. I'm a very big believer of practical application. Things that they can actually do tomorrow, like cooking, like coding, like making a website, something they can do immediately, rather than you have to learn a lot to do. So STEM subjects are very practical. And it will also help them in their regular subjects. So these are two things I would really like the listeners to do, either to do something at home with your own people, or with the school district. Those are two places where you can immediately reach future generations. That's great. I mean, essentially, if you want to teach, you got to start teaching wherever you can. It doesn't have to, you don't have to go right into schools right away, like Jay's doing, you can start at home. You can start by sitting down with your kids and teaching them something in an exciting and an engaging way. And just continue to improve from there. So Jay, before we let you go, what's next for learning through robotics? Well, we certainly want to take this program to multiple states. So we are already talking to a few universities, we always partner with the universities. In Utah, we have partnered with universities where the university engineering students are our teachers. So they get a part time income. At the same time, they learn how to teach young children. So we want to do the same kind of a model with multiple universities across the nation. That's awesome. And your website is roboticsstem.com. Is that right? Yes. So roboticsstem.com, you can learn all about learning through robotics. And really, what you have to think about is if you want to spread and help to spread STEM through future generations, we need to teach in a way that engages people and teach in a way that excites the youth about engineering. Engineering can certainly be can sound interesting, but when they see it in motion to me is when real powerful things happen. So Jay, thank you so much for taking some time to come on the podcast and talk with us. I really wish you all the best in what you're doing because I think it's important. And it seems like you have a really good plan of how you're going to inspire people in STEM. So thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Please leave your comments and or questions in the comment section below this video. Also, if you'd like to view the full show notes for this episode, visit engineeringmanagementinstitute.org or see the link in the video description. There you will find the key points discussed in today's episode as well as links to any of the resources, websites or books mentioned during the episode. Until next time, I wish you the best in all your engineering career endeavors.


All right, check this out here slightly longer piece, but some good weight there and then it goes into And this is cool, all right Now there is also reference all of this here It's cool like that Prop making here for a big sword cool cool cool. Yeah, definitely cool to see I like it What I would say you have a couple notes here the grip from 214 That is the left hand grip you say from here Yeah, there's something Visually, it's also how that elbow kind of pops out and then it just feels uncomfortable and I think you might be able to To wait and I don't know if you want to drop that hand This could almost be like maybe even out for balance You know gives like a big preparation so that by the time you're around here And you might even want to bring that arm higher and this might be tricky But there's a cleaner silhouette and then you can see that arm that was out here to go underneath or Over right so you have this arm like this that folds over into this pose Then you can do this and that I think that won't be my my note for this. I Think this is really cool in terms of just the complex mechanics I like what you're doing in terms of the the lift especially this here with the turn bring this around if that's all very cool Well, I would say it looks more like someone's practicing which is not wrong But it's not like someone's attacking someone clear was doing all of this to be dead So just so that you're Aware of that, but I like I like what you have I think there's some things that you could tweak where potentially this leg either further in or You twist the body around so that the sword is further out So imagine it could even be both that you have a little bit of this and then the sword is out here So we don't have this overlapping too much We're spending quite some time down here that gets better because now we have a cleaner silhouette here But even then it could be interesting To have a bit further, you know, maybe again further in and this sort further out get a cleaner foot silhouette Because if you do bring it over there try to keep it like this and not flat to camera. Unless it's just just a line. I Think what's happening here is that you're leaning back, which is cool and you're using this leg to Push this thing up here to sort But what happens now is that I'm seeing mainly a This is almost the beginning of it. All right. I'm now off balance enough and now I can bring this up, but then this suddenly lifts Magically in terms of the weight because it's it's with the arms towards you. It's kind of like a pool towards you Where this doesn't quite make sense in terms of the weight distribution to me What would work better subjectively see if you do like this, but by now This leg is here If that makes sense like you're really Lifting this this leg and the knee is pushing this up like as much as you can So that even at this point you might still be higher And then you got a bigger stomp And I like this. I like what you have here. So from here now I know it's heavy and I don't know if you can if you want to consider bringing this up higher Possibly just because of gain of silhouette because it's gray on gray on gray We need to kind of clean this here. Those are the silhouette and then watch out. We are Dropping we're staying in this high position tip up here for quite some time only at the end does it come down. Let me see No, it's okay. It's one of these suits too late Like should it pivot because this hits this and then it rolls, but it doesn't Okay, it's good Yeah, definitely higher here and then just watch out if you're only holding it here and this is so heavy and The trajectory is this some onions getting there, right? Roughly What are we doing here something something roughly like this here? Oh Look at that. That totally matches roughly. So you're doing this here. So to me with something that heavy and Just dropping it right the body goes down This feels like I might be too picky, but it to me feels like This should be your arc right this goes up and down But now it goes up and down You know mean and this would work if it's the wrist holding it twisting it to make it go down like that So what you could do just thinking out loud not that not that it's crazily wrong You know, you could still argue well, you know they have something to do you can potentially on this Straighten out this arm So that you're like this so this straightening of this going this way will force this to go this way To bring it down that could be one thing or you keep this arc Instead of doing this and then the end is actually more Like this where the head is here and then the sword ends up being here I know it's the drawing probably makes no sense, but the point is that this continues to drop So if it would the tip will be here, you know me maybe here Now this might make it too off-balance So if you keep that as the trajectory of the sword, but then adjust your end pose So that your end pose is more under the sword This would stretch out this leg so that we're underneath the sword more if that makes sense And then you're almost already in this pose or you go from here to this Which is then a forward motion Into all of that. I think that could work, but that's solely up to you. I Think probably must move out the path of this sort. I see some Sharper turns here and there. It's not too bad. Oh right here Sharper dip there Given that this is so heavy. You're not gonna have a lot of changes where the tip arc is it's going to be fairly smooth But that's cool. I like that and I like that she pushes It's forward a little bit. I think it's cool All I would say is it's just the body has some hiccups Physically, whoops. Stop whoops. Stop a couple hiccups there and then I will probably not have a Slam down and then sudden acceleration here to me this the sun acceleration comes from this This is suddenly it's so heavy that this is the thing that pulls her forward So this is the speed up into a slow and what's happening now is that you're down slow sudden speed up This to me feels late. That's all cool. I do love this love this action. That's really great And then you got there you could probably into this Find a way to push this more Really exaggerating here, but it's like this is so heavy. It's like you want to yeah, you want to really Stretch this this way for that almost feels a bit too We're getting there. That's promising and now we're straight. We're pretty straight I know she's angled this way. It's just the dot line here feels just very straight No, be a neat pose to really go into this this big curvature You know, you might have to adjust the hips and maybe this leg would have to be for the back for all of this But I think that'd be really cool and on something that heavy I wonder if you can put in like this is such a hard hit. You mean and this Hard shock wave is going to go through there. So on that hit you're gonna have elbow shake into a shoulder rattle Not huge, but right now what I'm seeing is a Like a very soft settle Right if you can order the sword and you just look at this here It was very soft that we kind of need to feel that That tremor All the way back in here All ready That is that thanks All right, there's an email you can sign up you can start whenever you want you can submit whatever you want You get 16 submissions either way like and subscribe would be awesome. All right. Thank you


What's the word y'all? Hey listen, I woke up this morning, I'm getting ready to go to the podcast, I'm brushing my teeth, I get a notification from Shams that say the Pelicans are talking to the trailblazers about CJ McCullum, like oh that's interesting, that's great, that's about to be the biggest trader of the day. I was wrong, out of nowhere, okay, maybe not out of nowhere, but the Kings and the Pacers agree on a deal with Sabonis being the main piece from the Pacers going to the Kings and Tarris Halliburton being the main piece from the Kings going to the Pacers and I cannot believe that trade happened. Just a week or so ago, the Kings were telling the world, stop calling our phone about Tarris Halliburton because we're not trading him, he is one of the untouchable pieces in the organization and just like that they folded, they folded and it's crazy because Tarris Halliburton felt like a building block for me as an outsider looking in but we knew this, right? I said this very early on in the season where they were going to have to make a decision between D.R. Fox and Tarris Halliburton and you know what, one bit of credit that I will give the Kings because there's not gonna be a lot of credit given to them in this video as they didn't take too long to make the decision but they might've made the wrong decision. We will only time will tell, right? Only time will tell who ended up being a better player between D.R. Fox who may not be having a good season this year but last year where he was averaging 25 or who would be better between him and Tarris Halliburton but we had an idea that they were going to do this and it feels like more often than not, franchises wait too long to make that decision. We just saw that with CJ and Damian Lillard so they make the decision a year and a half of them being together but they made a decision and it is just a bit weird a week ago, literally a week ago, in a post game interview Tarris Halliburton, you know, during this loser streak that they were on at the moment, they're like, we don't really, he said we don't really care about the history to see. They ain't been in the playoffs the next amount of years. They're one of the laughs and socks of the league. I am here. We are here trying to change that. He was trying to be a positive impact in the locker room, changed the narrative about the Kings and they said, you know what?  And I've seen some people try to speculate the reason they dealt Tarris over D.R. is because they just gave D.R. Fox his big old contract or they drafted Davion Mitru and they're trying to say face on that regardless. Tarris Halliburton felt like a piece that should have been untouchable. What is the ceiling of Tarris Halliburton? Only time will tell. But I think bro is really good. Now everything I said in this video is just me as Kenny Beachham. I haven't talked to Reese in a couple months. Actually I texted him after the train. He ain't got back to me because I'm just assuming his phone is blowing up. He got to think about moving and all of that stuff. So I ain't worried about it. But everything I said in this video is just my opinion. I ain't talked to bro in a minute. I want to bring up wolves because I want to give you the exact details because it was just more of a one for one as you could probably tell. It was the Montessabona's Jeremy Lamb and Justin Holliday for Tigris, Buddy Heald and Tristan Thompson. We knew that the Keys were trying to make some deal because well this team was being very, very bad.  And it just felt like the guys did love playing together. They didn't really have an identity and they get the best player in the straight. You know what I'm saying? As of right now in 2022, Montessabona's is a better player. This is a guy that is in all-star conversations all the time. He's a two-time all-star. He was in conversations this year. He's a guy that's going to put up 22 points, 10-12 rebounds and some assists a game. He is the best player in this trade and that might be the thinking that the Kings have. Hey, we're trying to make a push for the play-in. The Pelicans just made a trade for CJ and now they about to get up there and now the Trailblazer is going to go down. We need to go ahead and make our move too. But man, this just feels wrong. This could be a trade that they look back on in the fuses because the Montessabona is this year or next year on this contract. And I think that he said before that if he were to pick where he wanted to play, he'd want to play in California because his wife is from the LA area. So he's in California, so that's a W. But it's the Kings, right? And I'm tired of hearing fans and people who start talking about these less prominent, these smaller market teams talking about cap flexibility, cap space, you're going to see that when we talk about the Portland Trailblazers, people are assigned into the Kings. Don't talk to me about how much money they freed up in this year and when has they ever legitimately signed someone that wasn't already on their roster and got an extension? It doesn't happen. Yes, these teams are at a disadvantage to building their organizations because they're not LA or anything like that. But stop talking to me about the Trailblazer having $60 million a cap or the Kings having this amount of money a cap in two years.  I don't know what the spacing looks like on this on the Kings team with De'Aren Fox being a negative shooter. The Montessabones don't really shoot the ball like that. They traded away Buddy Heald. He's one of the greatest three-point shooters in the league. I understand that he had to get free up because obviously things were working. But it's just, let me just take a look at the entire depth chart real quick. So according to ESPN, they're looking at De'Aren Fox, Davia Mitchell slash Justin Holley or Jeremy Lamb. Both of those dudes are out, I guess. Harrison Barnes is Montessabones and Rashad Holmes. And I was just in the spaces with Kings fans and were basically saying that they don't really know if Harrison Barnes is going to get traded now or Rashad Holmes get traded now because this is a win now move for them, right? Again, they got the best player in this trade. They got an all-star caliber player in this trade. This don't seem like a team that just a couple of weeks ago was saying like, oh, we might be able or other teams around the league, like we might be able to get Harrison Barnes for a bargain because they suck. I feel like they might make a decision to keep Harrison Barnes on the team now because he's actually a good player to add. The Montessabones is a great pick and roll player. De'Aren Fox is not. Tyrese is a great pick and roll player. So I just feel like the fit would have been better with Reese and Sabonis rather than De'Aren and Sabonis, especially since just a lack of shooting on the wings or lack of shooting any organization at all right now, other than I guess, Justin Holley's now the best shooter on the roster. Is this a bit weird? Kings gone king, they might push to a 10C, which is probably they gonna be in a front office, half-fab and each other if that's the case. When in reality, you don't ever want your ceiling of your team to be the 10 seed. And that's kind of why a lot of teams hold on to those younger pieces because we don't know what Tyrese might be in three seasons and he might be able to help you be more than just a 10C. I don't know if this is the best version of the Montessabones because people forget that the Montessabones is a young player too. I think he's already 25, 26 years old, but it feels like the Montessabones you get, which is all star caliber, this is just who he's gonna be for his career, which is good. Oh man, it's just very weird for the Kings. I feel like this is a team that's gonna push themselves into the ninth slash 10C, then they gonna be in a front office, half-fab and each other. We did it boys. When in reality, I don't think you really did. The Montessabones is a very, very, very good player doing not get me wrong, but he's raising your ceiling marginally. You know what I'm saying? If you want to be a team that's in the playing, great trade for you. But if you wanna get your fans more than that down the line, this trade doesn't really do that when an opportunity to maybe develop Tyrese could have done that. I don't know though. Pacers though, ooh, the Pacers, listen, listen here Pacers. I'm excited about this trade, okay? I'm super excited about this trade.  I like the Cares of Earth trade for y'all. And now I like this, because you can build okay teams with youth. You can. You're gonna have Chris Duarte, who's like 36 years old, Ricky, that's fine, that's okay. You're gonna have Tyrese. And they just said that they believe that the future of Miles Turner's in Indiana, which is great. You finally get to see what you have in Miles Turner deeper than him just being a stretch five. He's wanted more, but he hasn't had the opportunity because he had to narrow his game down so some bonus can flourish. And they love each other. They're like homies, but he had to narrow his game down. We'll see at the age of 25, I think he's also 25 too. How much he can progress as a player, you're not gonna be good this season. So you're gonna have a top hand pick. I like this trade for them a lot. This is like one of those, this is the trade that they wanted, right? How can we take a step back, but also still be competitive? We don't wanna be, okay, see, no disrespect. We don't wanna be the Houston Rockers. We don't wanna be this team.  The lineup of this team don't look terrible. Yeah, bro. After this trade, these are interesting. So Malcolm Brogdon, I forgot, I ain't see Malcolm Brogdon hooping a minute. So you got Malcolm Brogdon, Tyrese Halliburne. Who are funny because I remember coming out of the draft, a lot of people compared him to Malcolm Brogdon. Now they're playing together, okay? Maybe he get mentored a little bit there. They got Buddy Hill at the three, Tory Craig at the four, and Miles Turner. Miles Turner's not here. The bro gets raided and I ain't got my noties on? He didn't, but as you can see, Miles Turner's not here. I had the Google bro name because I was like, wait, did I miss something? Either way, that team doesn't look terrible. You gotta have Chris Dorte coming off the bench who will probably be starting for now because Malcolm Brogdon is out. You still got Lance Stevenson. This is not a good team by any measure, but it's not a bad team either. This is a team that if I was Indiana Pacer fan, I would pay the $1 to go watch, especially if Isaiah Jackson go come back. You know Isaiah Jackson, Tyrese Halliburne pick a roll? I'm here for this. This is a good trade for this organization. This is a good trade for this organization, bro. After all of that me begging them to hit the reset button, they kind of did but didn't and got one of the better young pieces in the league. If you ask somebody, look at any of the articles, best 24 players on the 24. Tyrese is high on those lists, man. I think a lot of people understand how Tyrese plays and how he can be a floor general and how he with the janky looking shock and still hit a lot of the things and how when a pick and roll comes to play, Tyrese does that. Him and Rashad Holmes, him and Chamezi Metru, that was it. And now you don't got no crazy vertical lob threats, but in due time, who knows? They might draft, I don't know, prospect. Jabari Smith, can he jump? He probably can jump, maybe not though. On the surface, if I were to be great in this trade for the in-and-a-patience, I would give it AB plus and for the Kings, I would give it a D. A D because you might make the play in and that's decent, D for decent. But before we transition to the next trade, we gotta go to basketball, hell, the Kings. Let's see what the fans are saying. What are the moves that the front office needs to make in order to justify trading in Halliburne? Very good question. I don't know if there's a lot you can do to justify making that trade. We definitely need some three point shooting and probably need to move Holmes as well, IDK. Yeah, because Rashaan Holmes and DeMonte Sabonis probably doesn't work well. So you know what? Send Rashaan to Chicago. We got, I really got nothing. I think that if Tyrese becomes what we think he can become, it's like the Warriors gave up Curry instead of Monte. But y'all that don't know this, sorry. But for y'all that don't know this, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Warriors were in conversations to make a trade. The Warriors tried to trade the Milwaukee Bucks, Steph Curry. But Milwaukee was like, we'd rather have Monte. Milwaukee saved, saved that organization. And that's not a good parallel. I mean, that's not a terrible parallel. Again, you'd have to see Tyrese turn it to Steph Curry, which is unlikely considering Steph Curry one of the greatest of all time. You know, just by the odds, Tyrese probably won't end up being one of the greatest of all time. You know what? The subreddit ain't as bad. So on Reddit, I saw, I mean on Twitter, I saw something saying that the subreddit was going crazy. But I think that these people have went through their stages of grief.  But a lot of this stuff is like, hey, y'all don't really understand how good Subbonus is. And I don't think there's a person in the world that would tell you that Subbonus is not a good pickup. It's just about what you gave up to get Subbonus. Subbonus is a hooper. I love this trade, you know what I'm saying? So it's like, it's very interesting, very interesting. And you don't look terrible in that jersey. All right, let's talk about the second trade. And that is CJ McCullum getting traded to the Pelicans. I don't know why this trade broke seven different times. Like they told us, okay, they're in conversations. And then they said, oh, it's a deal has been created. Oh, now it's this for that compensation. It took them like seven different trades to tell us the full package. But I finally got it, okay? First, let me. All right, okay, full trade. The Blazers get Josh Hart, Tomas Satorancy, Nikio Alexander Walker, Didi, and a protected 2022 pick. Two second rounders, CJ, Larry Nant, and Tony Snail are going to the Pacers. And this is the second time this trade deadline. Well, I'm looking at the Blazers like, what is going on? Again, they tried to face this as, hey, we gon' have $60 million in cap space. What a reality. If you look at the 2023 free agency class, it's James Harden, okay? It's Kari Irvin, okay? It's Russell Westbrook on a player option low key. He's gonna take that $44 million. It's Zach Levine, it's Deandre Aden, it's Miles Bridges.  Like a real second star. Not a CJ who's been really good. People forget that just last year, CJ was the average of 26 before he got injured. CJ's really, really good. He just didn't fit alongside Dame for the long term. Do you really think that you're convincing your fans that that $60 million in cap space is enough for them to root for? I do not think so. So what I think might happen is that you're gonna get today off season, you're gonna strike out on a lot of stuff that's gonna make Dame happy. And then this is the last straw. This is the, whatever it is to break the camel's back, whatever to say it goes. Dame, if this off season does not go perfectly for y'all, which it probably don't. Nobody's blaming you, dawg. Nobody's blaming you. And the Trailblazers organization, nobody is blaming you if you trade them away. They trade a CJ McCullum for Nicky Alexander Walker who has shown flashes. Nicky Alexander Walker can hoop, but it's just like, can he put it together full time? Josh Hart, who's younger but older, you know what I'm saying? He's younger but older. And then they got a first round pick that's protected so weirdly that it's like you might not get that pick dawg. You know what I'm saying? The Blazers, you might not get that pick this season. Only way you get it is if it's between five and 14 and the way things are going, the Pelicans will probably be a better team this season than what they are looking at right now. So you might not get that pick to convey this year. But Kenny, we just added one more first round pick. That's always a W. We got young assets and you never know when a disgruntled star is gonna be up there. You absolutely right. You don't know that. But that's just so much ifs to be building your organization around. Listen, I think majority of NBA fans came to the realization last year or even a year before that that the Dame CJ backcourt had run his course. You got to the Corvus Finals. It was a great run, but it had run his course. I don't know why it took that organization so long. Before the season started, people were mocking up CJ for Ben Simmons' trades and you had to settle for Josh Harden, QLZ and the Walker in a heavily protected first rounder. Not ideal. And the thing that confuses me the most, they don't have a general manager right now. Will they put up Joe Cronin and tell him this off season, you get the job full turn? I don't know. They have an interim dude making the biggest trades in their organization's history. An interim dude. Now imagine, he trade everything. Yousef Narcissus gone next and Dame is still there. We got all his camps.  Joe Cronin should be your full-time guy because he made two huge trades for your organization. These are bad, objectively. These are bad. If the QLZ and the Walker could turn into something and Qion Johns could turn into something, then we'll look back on this in three seasons. But it's right now. This is bad. And now they got a million guards, a million of them. Anthony Simon, Eric Bledtoe, Dennis Smith, Junior, Nicky Alexander, Agatoma Satoransky, Ben Macklemore, CJ LB, Qion Johnson. Those are eight guards. And some of them can run like shooting guard wing positions, but that's eight guards. And you don't have any bigs other than the use of nuggets who might get traded anyway. I don't love this trade for them. I don't. The bright thing is that, hey, CJ is good enough to win you games occasionally and now he's gone so you can really bottom out and go for that top five pick or whatever it is. And if that's the case, and you get a Jabari Smith or you get a chat home groom, then you can look back on this trade and say it was worth it because we got a top three pick. But again, everything has to go in your favor. You got a 14% chance to get a number one pick if you're the worst team. Odds are a little bit different than they were four or five years ago. For the Pelicans, I like it a lot. I think CJ McCollum is definitely more of a three option on a good team than a two option, right? He's gonna be behind Zion eventually when Zion comes back. He's gonna be behind Brandon Niggum because Brandon Niggum is a bucket. And now you got CJ McCollum, which is great. The other thing I worry about is is this team is the 27th ranked defense in the entire league. CJ doesn't help that. CJ doesn't help that.  They're gonna be scoring and scoring and scoring and scoring and hope that we hit the last shot at the end of the game. But if you're asking a team that basically gave up a young player in the Q-Allies and a Walker who was one of the odds on favor to win a most improved player and he ain't done none of that. And a lottery, heavily lottery protective first round pick, I would do this trade nine times out of 10. You know what I'm saying? What scares me a little bit is that CJ this season hasn't been great and he's already a 31 year old guy who's got a couple of years left on his contract. But it's a chance you got a team. This team still has a ton of draft capital. The Lakers trade, the Drew Holiday trade, they got a ton of picks, y'all. They got a ton of picks, got young players, Herb Jones is gonna have to defend everything. Brandon didn't even play some defense. But the inclusion of Larry Nance came out of nowhere. This trade went from one is like, oh, I messed with it for the Pelicans. To now add to Larry Nance, I'm like, yo, this is a really good trade. And Jackson Hayes has been hooping his butt off recently. Maybe they got something in him. Maybe he's more than just a dude that's in and out of the G League. I'm excited. The trade deadline is always a good time for me because I always love watching basketball, but I get kind of tired of watching the same teams. And now with all these movements, it's like, oh snap, this is basically a new Pelicans team. This is a new Trebley team. That's a new Indiana team. That's a new Kings team. So I mean, if I'm grading this one for the Pelicans, I'd probably give it like a BB plus. And for the Blazers, maybe a C minus, maybe a D plus, something like that. Let me know in the comment section which I'll think about all these trades. Y'all know these are just rambles more than anything. I may have misspoke a million times, but whatever.


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We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. So on this show you are going to meet people who are making it possible to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People today who are making the words of the Declaration of Independence come true. Hi, my name is Michael Jacoby Brown and I'm your host for We Hold These Truths and today we are very lucky and honored to have Ken Galston, the former lead organizer, founder of the Intervalley Project, which has community groups throughout New England. Ken, welcome. I wonder if you can just tell us first a little bit just what the Intervalley Project is. You are the founder and have been for decades the lead organizer and then we'll talk a little bit more about you personally. Thanks for being here, Ken. My pleasure. Thanks for having me. Intervalley Project, which I retired from as a lead organizer in June of 2020, is a New England community organizing network. Its first member group is the Nogga Tech Valley Project in Connecticut, which was founded in 1983 and that organization helps spawn the growth of similar groups in a variety of southern and northern New England communities. The original model focused on bringing together congregations, labor union locals, and other groups like public housing tenant organizations to stand up for their own needs and rights in communities that were hard hit at the time by plant closings, the loss of factory jobs. The organizations also from the start had an interest in starting cooperative and democratically owned undertakings such as an employee-owned home healthcare company helping create employee ownership, white and blue collar ownership of industrial jobs, community land trusts, cooperative housing. That's some of the background of the organization and it's helped develop scores of talented organizers and leaders over the years, achieved a lot of victories, helped build community cross lines of difference, and I'm very proud to have played a role in helping build those groups. More than played a role. I wonder if you can just tell us a little bit about where you come from Ken and how you got the values you had to do this kind of work for now almost four decades and longer really I know. Yes, you know when I think about how was I shaped so that I was interested in pursuing this work, I really of course go back to my roots. I'm Jewish, I'm the children, a child of two parents whose own parents, my grandparents, fled persecution as Jews from different parts of Russia. They came here in their late 1800s, early 1900s, settled on the Lower East Side and eventually moved to the Bronx and my parents therefore were first generation Americans. The values that shaped me in some ways are identified strongly with Jewish values but of course they're not exclusively Jewish values. They have to do with the dignity of individuals, with justice, with teaching and learning and when I think about my parents who are wonderful people, my father was a doctor and had a strong sense of right and wrong. My mother wrote but also was a homemaker and two things. My mother's mother died when my mother was 11 and my mother said at the age of 93 before she died that she continued to think of herself as a motherless child and practically speaking what that meant was that when she was in a group she often was the one that sought out or could identify people who might feel a little bit on the outs and she connected with them. She was great at building community and as I said I think from my father I got and from both of them the strong sense of justice. The one other thing I'd say is that as I went on and my organizing which went over as she said decades I really saw the parallel with healing that I think exemplified my father as a doctor. Can you tell us a little bit about your first experiences as an organizer and what you learned and who taught you and mentored you along the way when you were younger? Sure. You know I'll just say that as someone in my retirement as we've discussed I now I've been co-teaching of course at Tisch College at Tufts University with Dany LeBlanc, an old colleague and one of the exercises we have people engage in is to write their story of self meaning the story of what drew them. How do they think of their first experiences with justice with bringing people together and so for me in some ways the earliest experiences that I sometimes use as an example would be gathering neighborhood kids to go shovel out snow from a neighbor who might be older and not able to do it so that some of it it's gathering even gathering kids together to do stuff. As a community organizer I first learned that there was such a thing as getting paid to do this as a college student in a senior seminar on religion in American life. This is in 1967 where I learned about the work of Saul Olinsky as an organizer and I ended up writing my thesis my honors thesis about him. By the time I graduated from college I sort of knew all you could know about him from what was published. I had spent some time in Rochester, New York a brief amount of time learning about one of his groups fight and so on paper knew a lot about this. I'd also been involved in on campus in trying to bring together students to fight for benefits for people I went to Brown to people in Providence through the anti-poverty program. In terms of real learning I would say the first experience was as a VISTA volunteer in North Carolina sort of small town city of 10,000 Clinton North Carolina where I got to try out some of what I'd been reading about but I'd say that in some ways the most important introductory mentor for me was Dick Harman who was with the industrial areas foundation Olinsky's group and at a 10 day workshop for what they thought of as campus radicals I was coming there as a VISTA volunteer. Harman talked about organizing as art as creative work and that really connected with me. What was about what Harman said about creative work? How did that connect or why? I think that until that time I'd seen it as very interesting activity. I saw it as something that I would as a Jewish kid from Long Island that being in rural North Carolina was helping me understand America much better and that even then I thought I would go back and get a graduate degree and teach in a university American history or literature. Harman talked about his example in the workshop was what does the word issue mean and after 10 minutes of people talking about issue as a noun he finally said isn't issue also a verb and he then went on to use that to say issues emerge from communities a good organizer has to immerse themselves in that community in its history in everyday life in what's the background of people and it's he used the example of and this is a little bit arcane and organizers like someone who's sculpting in wood and of course it makes the community too passive but he was trying to get at you have to understand the grain of the wood you have to immerse yourself and it's very creative and I came out of that workshop I remember standing on the station of the L taking me from downtown Chicago to where I was staying feeling as if I'd met the women in my dreams not not Dick Harman organizing right well that sounds great and can you tell us a little bit about your you know earliest experiences where you immerse yourself in community and issue was a verb for you well I mean what I was doing in North Carolina yeah did fit that I mean I was again as a white 21 year old going door to door in this black neighborhood of Clinton knocking on the doors of African-American families who I'm sure I would after I got to know people people said that in the early days they wondered if I was a revenue agent they couldn't quite make sense of who was this guy and what was he doing right but I that was an early immersion because I really understood that my job was to listen to gather them together and to see what they thought of as their most urgent concerns that they wanted to act on I was there in the months after Martin Luther King had been assassinated he was April 68 I was there by July and there had been an outpouring I understood of people from the black community when that happened around the courthouse square and I think people were you know it's obviously much bigger than anything I was doing I think people were sort of primed to speak up and where did you go from there I mean I I know you've been to Yale School of Management and later founded the Inter Valley Project in Waterbury Connecticut but I wonder if you can talk a little bit about where you moved from there before you got into founding the Nagatuck Valley Project. Well I had I was you know very fortunate when I graduated from Brown I was one of three seniors who received what was called the Samuel Arnold Fellowship which was at the time $5,000 and you had to submit a proposal but you got it was a traveling fellowship and I had between when I submitted the proposal and when I did it I had really grown interested in the whole question of democratic voice and so I set out and looked for examples where people had voice over jobs over their communities and that meant a year 11 months in places like Belfast Northern Ireland where a very talented organizer Bob Overy was from England was trying to bring together Protestants and Catholics around common community issues I spent time in what was then Yugoslavia which had mandated self-managing self-management structures in schools factories interviewing people to understand what was that like I spent time in West Germany where the allies had mandated that the boards of coal and steel factories in other words companies that would be critical to any future war had to have union representatives on their boards it was called co-determination with the idea that that might slow down a march to war time in Sicily with Danilo Dultry who was organizing tenants tenants I mean peasants so anyway it was a very rich experience I came back I had gotten connected with the industrial areas foundation through that workshop they were starting a school as Alinsky was you know in his 60s to teach organizing to young people and I spent two years in Chicago organizing with a midway organization out near midway airport with Dick Harmon and then alternating between Dick Harmon and Ed Chambers as my mentors and what was that like extremely powerful I learned so much again I was by that time 24 I was working with leaders blue collar leaders this is an area of Chicago that was as far south and west of the inner city as you could get at the time police and firefighters had to live in the city to have their jobs and because of race this is where a lot of people moved and a lot of the leaders I was working with were in their 30s 40s they were what have been would have been considered a silent generation the people that Nixon and the Republicans were after trying to move Democrats to the Republican party and part of the idea was to engage people in public life with the hope that they would you know see the value of that they would instead of feeling absolutely alienated and driven maybe to that party that they would feel that they had some agency so I learned a huge amount working with them on pollution flights stopping the crosstown expressway with the city white campaign yeah what would you say you were the main lessons from those years that what did you feel like you learned from Harmon and Ed Chambers and you know from doing the work obviously yeah yeah well the first thing I'd say was you did weekly reflections you it was interesting you actually dictated a weekly report that was typed up by a talented office manager and given to Harmon or Chambers and so the first thing was that you took the time to reflect on what you and it's key yeah it was absolutely key I remember some early examples Harmon asking me about did we take time after a given action to do an evaluation with the leaders which absolutely key I mean some of the stuff you learned from these guys uh that they had instituted and their predecessors were so powerful for any group whether it's community organizing or anything so one was evaluation after the action you leave the room and I said he said did I do an evaluation with them I said well you know we just didn't have time and he said god damn it Galston the only reason you do the action is so you can do the evaluation yep um so the emphasis on leadership development absolutely key and learning obviously and reflection yeah you know I think that's uh uh as as you and I know that that is key and often unfortunately sometimes neglected yeah and uh so why don't you tell us a little bit uh you know if we can fast forward because we don't have all day I wish we did uh to the founding of the inner valley project and how that came about well I okay so I had um after working with the IAF in Chicago Minneapolis Buffalo I had uh and sometime with mass fair share where I learned a lot about labor um I'd gone to the school of management was then called school of organization management at Yale I was in my early 30s wanted to take a break from organizing wanted to have an option in case I didn't want to organize and came out of that and decided that no I still wanted to organize I wanted to try out a somewhat different model from what I've been doing with the IAF at that time that was all congregation based and so I wanted to include congregations but also labor I was living in New Haven the Nagatuck Valley which begins uh 12 miles west of New Haven in Derby and Sonya Derby and goes up the Nagatuck river through Waterbury the main city 106,000 I think at the time up to Torrington um that seemed like a very powerful place to try to build something Jeremy Brecker a wonderful labor historian uh had written uh an oral history done an oral history project called brass valley and I could learn a lot about it before I even got up there um I began to uh meet with people from the Catholic Church the United Auto Workers Union which had 12 locals in that region. Connecticut is an action group and the United Church of Christ and we put together a sponsoring committee we built that got into a lot of action um initially around plant closings but also around affordable housing other issues while I was there the woman that I am married to now and I had started a relationship she was working at the industrial areas industrial cooperative association on employee ownership and we done some work together at Seymour specialty wire we knew over a period of a few years that I was going to be moving to Boston where she was and so um inter valley that start because I raised with Nagatuck Valley project leaders that I was going to be heading into Boston and they said that they wanted to help me in building a new group so they paid me full time for two years allowed me to spend one day a week building Merrimack Valley project and they decided that they wanted to recognize that for themselves so they put it in their budget a line item called inter valley which represented their support for that inter valley project came next very powerful groups you know both of these groups still going um and that was my path while I was at Merrimack people came to us from Springfield from Providence and wanted to build similar groups with a similar model of congregations labor economic development democratic development so those are the first four groups eventually we were asked by Catholic campaign for human development a main funder of this work would we go into northern New England because there were no groups like this and so we helped build groups in New Hampshire main uh and Vermont right can you tell us a little bit more about the structure and even the funding you mentioned the Catholic campaign for human development which many of us know for decades has been a major funder of social justice organizations and community organizing and how that worked with the various organizations what the funding and structure and staffing was yeah I mean I would say first of all again we're we're always building on the shoulders of people come before so I knew the model of first the first funding is to when you're creating a new group is to create you do it in two stages and you create a sponsoring committee which is sponsoring the organizing drive of 18 months two years leading to the founding of the new community group so the first thing is to see if the sponsors will put up some money the local to say the office of social justice for the Catholic diocese or archdiocese in which you're working will you get money from the Episcopal diocese from the United Church of Christ when we started Merrimack Valley Project we had 11 sponsors labor union locals various religious groups they have reformed Jewish community for example I added to that so that's the first element of funding related to building power and building these groups that it has to you have to have some local funding if you're going to build a group that's going to be strong over time you of course as you're showing that you can actually achieve something you're in a better position to go to the national supporters religious organizations who support this work they have funds you're able to go to private foundations that support this type of work what becomes really critical when you're forming these groups is to set up a do system where member our model was organization of organization so the member groups are asked to put up money they're asked to participate in annual fundraising events our groups have followed a model of mica dinners basically dinners that honor individuals from the community for their work and those have been very successful fundraisers that sort of thing that's good and I wonder you know today a lot of younger younger organizers and I know you've been very successful in developing younger people who've led the various projects of the intervalley project but what would you say are the lessons I mean I often think now many younger organizers organized through social media as opposed to developing the long lasting and deep relationships that you did you know when you have to go talk to a union and or a church leader and ask them for money that just doesn't happen because they you know like your looks or think you have a good idea can you tell a little bit about some of the lessons you've learned which you think are important to pass on one of the what are the things that really stick that are really important in developing powerful organizations well a couple quick things you know part of my perspective on young people coming into this work is on the one hand there's something to be learned just as I learned from mentors who were 10 or 15 years older than I was I think there is something to be learned from people of my vintage of your you know you and I are colleagues of similar the experience of of learning and about organizing on the other hand I feel that it's there's a value in people feeling that they can shape the organizing as they see changes going on in the country in society etc so that's the first thing having said that I think that there's no replacing some fundamental practices and one is learning your own story you know being able to articulate fairly briefly how you came to be in this person's living room or meeting with them at dockets so they build it builds some trust and it begins to build a sense of reciprocity that's one number two is learning how to listen well how to ask good questions your your individual meeting is not an even exchange you're trying to understand what what is this person facing how are they shaped so that they might be interested in this work so individual meetings right uh second is being able to work with groups small groups how do you how do you help a group of people articulate individually what's on their mind and see if they can come to some common agreement about priorities right um I would say that the other thing and these are things that Danny LeBlanc and I practices that we use in our course courses at Tufts which is to underscore that community organizing on the one hand absolutely exists to win issue campaigns concrete campaigns that bring about change in people's lives but that's sort of one element of a triangle the other two sides of the triangle are building community across lines of difference and the other is leadership development that's what I would say and challenge people coming into this work are they doing those three things it's not that that if they're not their work is not to be valued most of the change that's come about in our lifetime nationally has been through campaigns around identity the civil rights movement the women's movement lesbian gay transgender movement and so on disabled movements those are to be valued women's movements um those are absolutely to be valued but community organizing has its own role and it has to pay attention to these three activities if it's going to be around over 10 15 20 years to win to enforce what it's won and to move on and develop new generations of leaders yeah and how do you see yourself I know you're teaching this course with our colleague and friend Danny LeBlanc at Tufts what other things you see yourself doing in the coming years now that you've quote retired from being lean organizer at the inner valley project uh well one of the things that I actually helped start with some classmates at brown in 2003 is something called the brown community organizing initiative um and that grew out of conversations about you know we were in our 50s it led to conversations about what comes next and one of the ideas that had come up was could we create an archive at one of the libraries at brown for community organizers materials grows the part out of the question of when are you getting this stuff out of the basement um and so we did help create that uh one of the best uh contribution to that was a series of 100 videotaped interviews uh done by Don Elmer for the center for community change verse group of organizers that's now at the archive we've been organizing workshops for people who teach about organizing in academic settings everything from community colleges to divinity schools uh to learn from each other and in fact we have a workshop coming up in two weeks for people to compare notes on what do they think is the most transformative element of their teaching so I found ways to to I think support the movement hopefully strengthen it uh the teaching at Tufts I love teaching out in the street that's why I didn't pursue the academic teaching but the Tufts now that I'm no longer out in the street which I think is fine at the at the stage of life the chance to work with young people who some of whom come into the class having been organizers in high school or or are organizers on campus it's a lot of fun that's great well we're really honored to have you on uh we hold these truths Ken Galston uh now teaching at Tufts the uh founder and former lead organizer of the inner valley project which is has done and continues to do a world of good throughout New England and we want to thank you and again I'm Michael Jacoby Brown your host for we hold these truths we are very glad to have Ken Galston with us tonight uh as our honored guest and Ken uh thank you for all you've done and we look forward to uh much more good work from you in the years ahead so thank you and to those of you who've been listening thank you for tuning in