Healing & Grassroots Organizing with Sikander Iqbal
Lindley Mease: How did you come to work with Urban Peace Movement?
Sikander Iqbal: I interned with the Youth Uprising Center in Oakland. When I graduated from college I went back to work with Youth Uprising and I met Nicole Lee and Xiomara Castro who founded a program at the Ella Baker Center in 2006 called Silence the Violence in response to the high number of homicides in the city of Oakland. They decided that they wanted to do something about that. Silence the Violence developed its own legs and became a Bay Area-wide event where everybody came out.
Silence the Violence was really about finding ways to address community violence and that quickly led to finding ways to address state violence, because we understand that community violence is just a symptom of — or caused by –state violence that happens at every level. So, like, not just police murders and police harassment but poverty, hunger, and homelessness. These are all forms of state violence that lead to community violence. The effects of –and the ongoing– war on drugs has decimated our communities.
How did Urban Peace Movement evolve from those roots?
Sikander: In 2009 Silence the Violence left the Ella Baker Center and Nicole and Xiomara launched their own organization called The Urban Peace Movement [UPM]. They had a phase of doing vigils, events focused on community cohesion, building relationships, and getting people to coordinate and communicate across neighborhoods. Because of the war on drugs and other forms of state violence, there is tension between neighborhoods. A lot of the work of Urban Peace Movement has been on breaking down these barriers that have been put up because of state violence.
The first thing Urban Peace Movement is addressing is community violence by addressing state violence or systemic violence. The next is healing organizing.
Healing–rather than just mental health–is a really powerful thing, because it includes mental health, non-traditional, and non-Western forms of healing. Mental health itself is very stigmatized and very inaccessible for lots of us. We work really closely with a network of healers and prioritize healing and mental health.
This is a long process that got us here and it’s going to be a long process to get us out, so we are very dedicated to getting people to maintain in the movement not for just themselves but for the movement. It is so beneficial to get people who stay engaged and involved long term, who want to evolve as leaders, but also to pass on lessons to the next generation of leaders as well.
We also know that because of the level of state violence we experience and even vicarious trauma, it is important for us to have methods in place for us to heal while we are also organizing. We need to recognize organizing and empowering as a form of healing, right?
The fact that you can actually do something about the conditions you are experiencing–you can change things–is very transformative. A big part of trauma is helplessness and hopelessness. So organizing and empowerment is really a way for people to deal with the amount of state violence they experience.
That’s the theoretical part. In terms of what we do on the ground, in the early years Nicole Lee and Xiomara Castro and their small team of three, organized a bunch of folks who did music or were involved in the music industry–video, graphic design, production, rapping, singing — and they would have these things called Turf Unity Events where they would have these really big concerts and produce an album with people from rival neighborhoods who would do this together.
They launched a Black men’s group called DetermiNation that still meets. It’s an annual program and we continue to bring more young black men into the program. The focus is on directly-impacted and systems-impacted young Black men.
We also have LitMob which is a program for high-school aged students. It’s for anyone who is interested in having a leadership role and addressing the criminal justice system. We just started working in South Alameda County. There is a large need there, so we started doing base-building in the Ashland/Cherryland.
Those are the three main areas where we bring people in and do leadership development.
For people who emerge from these three groups as leaders, or with the desire to do more, we have The Social Justice Committee.
As members of the Justice Reinvestment Coalition of Alameda County we are anchoring the District Attorney (DA) accountability work which is really pushing as hard as we can to de-criminalize and to de-carcerate Black and Brown communities in Alameda county. A lot of that is about navigating relationships with the DA’s Office because the DA holds so much power about who goes to jail and who doesn’t. We are really pushing them on progressive policies and to enact real justice. It’s an uphill battle constantly.
The Free Our Kids campaign is our work against juvenile probation, which is a massive system that has a lot of power and really negatively impacts the way young people are dealt with in the county. We partner with organizations who are focused on the Sheriff’s Department and adult probation.
Is the Free Our Kids campaign focused on changing policies?
Sikander: It’s to change policies and also to influence future policies, like to shutdown the DJJ [Department of Juvenile Justice]. We are constantly fighting, saying to them for example, “Why do you need 75 million dollars to build a 150 bed facility when you only have 12 kids on average per day any day of the year? Why would you need a 150 unit facility?” They say, “ We’re going to do a school-based thing.” We say, “Give that money to Alameda County Education then! Why do you need to lock kids up to educate them?”
Nonprofits are asked to show that the average cost per youth in their programs is low–you know, the lower the better, right? That makes my goal as a service-provider, a non-profit, to say that my cost-per-youth is pennies on the dollar. But DJJ can spend $400,000 a year on a young person with no long term benefit for the young person or for society! It actually has a negative impact because the recidivism rates are huge because there is no systemic thing built-in to support young people.
[See Urban Peace Movement and ACLU Report In(Justice) in Alameda County: A Case for Reform and Accountability (March 2021) ]
In the last two years the entire community healing process has blossomed so we are working through the City of Oakland Department of Violence Prevention; we are supporting people who are survivors and victims of gun violence. Whether you’ve been shot or someone you know has been murdered, we are working with you, your family, your friends, and the people impacted by the ripple effect of that violence. For example, we hold monthly healing circles and ad hoc circles at the request of families.
People don’t always know what a “healing circle” means. It is about working with families, supporting their basic and immediate needs. Imagine someone really close to you getting murdered and you are having to think: I have to pay rent. I have to bury them. I have to do this. I have to do that. We work with a network that does different pieces of that. Whatever you need, if you have things that are blocking you, we are going to help you deal with that, help you cover you rent, cover your utilities, get you caught up and try to create a space where you can process and not let this derail you anymore than it already has. There is gonna be some derailment. For example, we had a woman come to our virtual healing circle last Friday. She said it really, truly made her feel better. This is a person we’ve struggled with a lot–not because she is a problem, but because she is dealing with a lot. She lost her son and she has 2 or 3 other sons, so navigating the world having lost her son and still having to raise three sons.
Sikander chokes up for a moment, clears his throat, and audibly exhales.
We do the work because most of us are from here and most of us are directly impacted ourselves.
A lot of times we create an event that takes things that people are comfortable with and we mix in things that people are unfamiliar with. For example, we are going to do Free Haircuts and Manis and Pedis! And a Mural Project! Those are all forms of healing. We bring in acupuncture, cupping, whatever we can find in our network… elder blessings, massage, tarot cards, acupressure, a pot of loose-leaf tea. We invite mental health staff from other organizations. They float, connect with people, help create an environment that lets people know it’s safe and our goal is to help you soothe and develop healthy healing practices going forward.
We are an organizing organization. Which is to say, we want you to be healthy, to be happy, to thrive, and then we want you to recognize that the reasons you weren’t thriving are systemic. How can we plug you into our work or a partner’s work to combat these systems?
We still do a lot of music stuff, mural stuff, art-based projects. We are working on funding a mural project right now, about a number of Black men who were lost. One was lost to gun violence, but it was also a mental health issue. He was shot and killed by one of his best friends who was dealing with schizophrenia. This mural is on 15th and Webster. The lead artist is a member of our DetermiNation Black men’s group, Tim Bluitt. [Instagram @timothyb_art] I always say he is world-famous! He did the Nipsey Russell mural. He’s born and raised in Oakland, multiple generations, and an alum of our program.
Because you are from this community and work in this community, can you tell us about how it smells, feels, and looks, for those of us that haven’t been there?
Sikander: It is the opposite of everything that you read in the news! We are in these neighborhoods that people are afraid to drive through in the daytime. And we are there in the daytime and the nighttime. The kids are happy. There is a lot of laughter. Everybody knows everybody for the most part. I always love going into these spaces, because even though I’ve been in Oakland a long time and I am from a place like Oakland, it is easy to forget and buy-in to the news bombardment of negative images of where we are from. I would say that it is very beautiful, very community-oriented. As long as you come with your heart, it’s all love. The food always smells good and we make sure that we always bring food to events or partner with a local vendor to come cook.
It’s beautiful. They try to make it sound like a scary place. I’m sure there are people there who are scared but there are a lot things that we cannot control. There are people who are houseless. People care about that, but there isn’t a lot they can do. That’s the City’s responsibility to take care of houseless-ness. They have the resources but they drag their feet.
A lot of the focus of the people in these spaces is, “Let’s do the most that we can with what we got. Let’s uplift and pour into the beauty that we have.”
The city doesn’t care about us much, so the streets might not be as swept, the potholes are a little bit bigger, and the lights are a little dimmer — literally. We did an event called Town Nights through the Department of Violence Prevention which was a product of Defund the Police Movement. We had to go buy construction lights to do the Town Night events, because it was so dark in areas that were supposed to be lit. These were not areas that didn’t have lights. The lights were there, but they just didn’t work.
When you say “systems change” and “movement building” what does that mean for your organization?
Sikander: Systems change is really about doing policy work and having, for example, formerly incarcerated people who are directly impacted, lead that work. It’s about having policies that build and feed our neighborhoods rather than take from and breakdown our neighborhoods. Systems change is really as simple as that.
One part is developing and supporting the leadership of directly impacted folks. The second part is maintaining and operating in a coalition-building movement.
Nobody is going to do it by themselves. We have to be together on this.
There are thousands of parables about the fist is stronger than the finger. Or the one stick is weaker than the bundle. All over the world, from every culture, I’ve heard stories about the power of unity and movement building.
You’ve mentioned leadership a number of times and I know that’s a pillar of your work. How do you think about leadership in relation to doing the work of policy change and direct material needs?
Sikander: Leadership is about creating opportunities for people to plug-in and help lead events, actions, and campaigns geared toward community efficacy — like doing cohesion-building or doing stuff to help people heal or being actively involved in one of our campaigns.
Part of leadership is culture change. Culture change is getting people to think about what is possible.
Culture change is about uplifting all the beautiful aspects of culture and really leaning into what makes Oakland Oakland. And the art piece is really big, making sure that we are supporting people who are truthtellers, supporting people who are artists, who are reflecting the realities. We are holding onto the beautiful pieces and moving away from the not-so-beautiful pieces. We have a really strong dedication to get people to re-imagine justice and safety. The current system is based on the theory of retributive justice [punishment and pain, rather than reform].
Often we think–or we have been taught–that leaders are people who martyr themselves. People who say, “I don’t need to sleep! I don’t need to eat.” But what I’ve learned is that that is not leadership. Leadership is about learning, about developing people, taking initiative, stepping into spaces, taking risks, challenging systems, being willing to fight. Sometimes the most important thing a leader can do is understand when it is time for them to follow, right? It really is a developing, collective style, collaborative style of leadership. We move forward by creating spaces for people to participate.
For folks who are trying to show-up in solidarity and to give, what would you say to them about what you want to see more of? What would you say not to do?
Sikander: You know, I constantly find myself in this position. I’m not Black, I’m not formerly-incarcerated, and I am a cis-gendered male. We are all constantly navigating being open to hearing from anybody who is directly impacted and providing space for sharing, sitting with. One answer to this question–I cannot remember where I heard this–is to say, “Move at the speed of trust. Move at the speed of the people.” Always prioritize coalition and partnership. Come with questions, an open heart, and be willing to step back, especially when asked. That’s the most important thing for allies to do.
You know it is also kind of a weird thing asking, “How can I show up?” because you are putting the responsibility on that person. So maybe ask, “If you have the capacity, let us know how we can be helpful.” Or maybe propose something! That way it takes the onus off. That’s what I’d share about how I’m entering spaces where I am the ally.
