 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. These words from the Declaration of Independence are familiar to many of us, and yet it took 143 years for women to get the right to vote and 189 years for black people to get the right to vote. And still today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are still only words for many people. Here in Boston, life expectancy varies by 30 years depending on where you live. In Roxbury, with many poor and black people, life expectancy is 59 years. In the back bay, wealthy and mostly white life expectancy is 91 years. It's tough to have liberty when you are in prison. The United States incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 people. Our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most countries in the world. Millions of people in our country don't have health care, a decent job, good education, a home they can afford, and that makes it pretty hard to pursue 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. Hello, my name is Michael Jacoby Brown, and we're very lucky today to have on our show, we hold these truths. Great social justice organizer, my friend, and soon to be yours, Horace Small. Welcome, Horace. Thanks for coming here. Thank you. No, thank you. We're honored to have you. I wonder if you can tell us a little bit, Horace, about where you were born and what your upbringing was and what led you to have the values that you have today. In other words, how did I get into becoming a professional troublemaker? That would be easy enough. I'm a kid from West Philadelphia. My father taught a class at Temple University, but he also worked at the post office, like other good black men in that generation. My mother was a nurse and she was the first black director of nurses of the hospital in the city of Philadelphia at Metropolitan Hospital. So I basically was raised black middle class, and I was also raised black Republican, because remember, Lincoln freed the slaves, we owed them one kind of deal. And even when I was a kid, my father was active in the civil rights struggle, like I did go, I was one of the young kids that did go to the march on Washington. But the thing that got me into this for real, because what I remember about the march on Washington was the hardest day ever. And I couldn't buy enough ice cream, but I didn't know Dr. King was speaking and everybody listened to that. But what got me into this work was my cousin. My cousin got killed in Vietnam. And he was my role model, and he was the person that I always ran to when I got on my parents' nerves, my sister's nerves, and everybody else's nerves. He was always a friend. So when Roland checked out in Nam, you know, if I was 12, 13, we started a thing called Students Against the War. The person that got me into this was a guy by the name of Bob Brand, who was an organizer for, I forgot the name of the organization, but he was at the University of Pennsylvania, he was a student, and he was the organizer against the war. And so he gave me a place where I could go to, you know, and put my 12, 13, 14-year-old nine to work. So besides playing sports, we did this. So that's how I got involved in this. And I know, what was that like? I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about what happened during, with your experience during the war in Vietnam. I know you went to prison eventually. Yeah, yeah. It was, well, when I was doing the work, one of the things they taught us to do was they taught us how to be draft counselors. So one of the things that was really interesting was that, you know, here are all these like 12, 13, 14, 15-year-old kids talking to college kids, you know, about what their options were and what they needed to do if they wanted to get a student deferment, a CO deferment or what have you. So I did that. But when it came to my turn to register for a draft, I just didn't. You know, no big deal. I'm going to like, I'm going to college, I'm going to play ball, and I'm going to be involved in student issues. And so what happened was when I was 19, I just happened to be going out with, my girlfriend was the head of, was the daughter of the registrar. And he was also the draft counselor, Dr. Van Cleave. And we were going out together and she said, well, you know, if things start to look like they were peeking, starting to perk up, she says, you know, maybe they just started this thing called the lottery. And so maybe, maybe if you register, you know, getting lottery, you don't have to worry about this. So that's what I did. I went back to Philly at Christmas break, I registered. They said, you're late. I said, yeah, I know. And they said, well, if you probably, you know, we probably wouldn't have caught you. I registered for the draft. I was eligible for the next lottery, which was that February. And my number was four. So I was getting, I heard from the draft board like two days later. And then I began this journey of writing my, I had to write, I wrote a nine-page paper to the draft board about why I felt I couldn't serve. Because I don't believe in killing anything. You know me. I don't kill bugs, right? You know, my wife better hope that God's not a lobster. That's all I know because she's thrown a lot in pots. I can't do it. But I went through all that, went through the hearing, went through, you know, about all the draft stuff I need. And the next time I know I was in Lewisburg. So that was it. And for the next five and a half, six months, I was working to, with other CEOs, you know, who are behind the wall, you know, helping guys get their GEDs and things like that. So you could have gone to Canada or someplace else like some people could do what you did. You know, at the time you didn't think of it, honestly, because, you know, there was so much going on. And there was so much that you felt you were going to lose. Like for instance, you know, the relationship that I had with my father, which was I always thought was kind of strained from the beginning, ceased to exist at that point, you know, because I felt like when I needed him he was not there. And the tragedy is that state that way through the rest of his life, and he just died a couple of years ago. So, you know, we had no connection, no relationship. The purported shame that it brought on the family was something that people didn't really talk about, you know, the sense that my father was World War II, so you're a coward, you know, and he couldn't understand that the principle is nonviolence and a commitment to nonviolence is probably far more powerful than picking up a gun or hitting someone with your fist. It's a profound belief that, you know, I don't kill anything. And, you know, and with that said, like I shoot, I'm against the next hundred billion trillion skillion wars. So that's just the way I'm cut out. But family-wise, we lost a lot. I lost a lot. You know, but I was 19. When am I going? Yeah, I was 19, 20. Well, can you tell us, you know, after that you, I know, got involved with the Philadelphia City Council and lots of other organizing. Can you tell us sort of what are some of the things you did after that? Well, I came home. Well, the thing that, one of the things, and I think if you talk to those people who were CEOs, whether they went to jail or whether or not, you know, the struggle that you went through, like, to this day, I still remember getting a small book to talk about life in a federal penitentiary, you know, to help influence you in your decision on what you're going to do. You know, we came home more committed to this thing called social justice and everything. Started a program called Young Adults United for Community Progress. Started working with young people and what have you. And then the Carter campaign called and said, look, you know, we need somebody that, you know, we would like to bring you. We'd like to talk to you about being the minority affairs, one of the minority affairs coordinators from Pennsylvania. So I went to work with the Carter-Mondale campaign and the chairman of the campaign was a state senator from Massachusetts, a guy by the name of Joe Timothy, who I thought was the coolest white man I've ever met. You know, he was the epitome of somebody who racially got it, who could operate in a lot of different circles and communities with ease. And, you know, and he also taught us. He taught a lot, much of what I learned about the game of, because it's really kind of a game in many ways, you know, is, you know, I learned from him. And we ended up, you know, we won Pennsylvania by hair because at the time you could register voters who weren't convicted of a statewide crime. So you had people all locked up in prison an old bit because they go to Fort Bale, you know, we registered them and we got them out and we registered them, got them absentee ballots, they voted, and Carter won Pennsylvania by less than one percent. Well, and what were some of those lessons that Timothy taught you? What did he say or do that? He said he, you know, got people. Well, I think, you know, I think the biggest lesson that we learned, I mean, one of the, the thing I learned is that if that organizing is political, all organizing is political. What do you mean? Well, when you bring community people together to talk about it, you know, when they come together, they talk about issues. They begin to start talking about things that really matter to them, that, that, that, that they tell you are, are something that's actually impacting the quality of life in their community. So you have to determine what's the difference between a problem, what's an issue, and they would tell you that. So they tell you like if recreation was a, or lack of recreational opportunities was a, was a problem for kids and kids had absolutely no place to go, then the challenge for us is organizers working with community people is to come up to a solution to a problem. So the solution for, so what is the solution? The solution could possibly be more funding for, you know, community programs. It could possibly be engaging citizens to say, well, what is it that we want to do that's going to benefit these kids? Maybe we start sports programs, maybe we start after school programs, whatever kids you have to come up with solutions. You know, show in a movie on a Thursday night, you know, whatever the solution is. And Timothy was involved in that stuff, not just getting people elected. Timothy talked about what Joe talked about was the importance of listening to people, right? To come up, you know, listening to people, listen to their needs and concerns, and provide them, you know, and what organizing does, it provides people the roadmap in order to take control of their lives and to, and to, and to address the problems that they're concerned about. The organizer brings people together, essentially functions as a cheerleader, you know, helps them, helps them, you know, helps them believe in their skills, helps them believe in their capacity to do things, and helps them learn how to structure. You know, a good organizer helps you structure things, you know, to get, you know, so that things can get done so you can measure your progress. Yeah, that's unusual in an electoral campaign. Most electoral campaigns are votes from me and I'll take it from here. Well, the thing is, you know, but Paul Wellstone did the same thing. Right. You know, and Paul was a dear friend and he was a brilliant organizer in Minnesota. The things that he did in rural Minnesota are still talked about, but it all comes down to talking to people, listening to them, listening to them, you know, and, and, and, and helping them. Because one of the things that you always had, the organizer was, well, we can't. Right. You know, we can't. Well, you don't think we can get 10 people to the meeting next week? We tried it before, right? Yeah, you know, we've done this before. Okay, I said, well, let's make a deal. All right. Well, what are you willing to do to get to help us get 10 people there? Right. So are anybody here willing to bring three people for the next meeting? I mean, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's challenging them, but friendly. Right. You know, hearing them. Not asking them to bring 30, but three. Right. 30, forget it. Right. But hearing them. But hearing them. Hearing them and hearing their concerns. And then reminding them each time we had a success. See, I told you we could do it. Yeah. See, I told you, I told you we could do this. I told you we could do it. Well, they got to see it for themselves. Yeah. And ultimately, like, okay, so now if we're talking about the change, I remember the one of the hardest things that you had to convince people was some of the simplest thing in the world was getting a stop sign. Right. You know, sign petition, we go downtown, we get a stop sign. But to help people go, they're not going to listen to us. They never listen to us. They don't listen to anything in this community. And then you pull it off. Then you show them how to do it. I mean, you walk them through, you know, you know, you're like, well, let's, well, it says here that we have to do this, this and this. So we need a petition. So who's willing to write a petition? Do you know what a petition is? Yeah, well, you know, sign, blah, blah, blah, blah, make statement, blah. And we do that. And, you know, and that's the, that's the organizing. Quite honestly, Michael, I miss, I miss that grassroots, you know, that, that, that let's organize this block, that we go over to the next block. But we stopped the drug trafficking in Philadelphia back in the late 80s, early 90s. That was the model that was used, you know, organize blocks, chase them to the next block, and just keep organizing these blocks. Well, you've been here in Massachusetts now for over 20 years. And I know you founded and led the Union of Minority Neighborhoods. I wonder if you can talk a little bit about some of the lessons and some of the work you've done there here in, in Massachusetts with the Union of Minority Neighborhoods. I have always thought of this has been some of the harder work I've done. There's a lot of reasons for that. There's, there's culture, there's class, there's race. I mean, like, you know, one of the first things that we had to handle when we first started was the idea that, that, that, that black people actually have the ability to do this, because like the general sense was the role of white organizers was to save everybody else, right? And so I remember going to a funder with an emerging board member and we talked about the things that we were doing, that we were really doing, and that we were doing like for nothing, because when you're an organizer, you know how to make things happen with nothing, because you're used to having nothing. You work with poor people, poor people don't have anything. And the guy said, said I was lying. He thought I was lying. Now, the filly in me was like, now I gotta get up and beat the bejesus out of this white man. But, right? Right? But the, the, the, the, the, the, um, um, the nonviolent harm. Yeah, the nonviolent harm, I said, but this is what we had to deal with. And with all Boston foundations, with all these various foundations, the reason why black organizations weren't getting funded was because the foundations didn't value the work. Or we didn't have the same, we didn't have the same grant writers writing, you know, flowery proposals that, that, that they like. Or that, you know, that, well, if we don't see it, because we're never in your neighborhood, if we don't see it, then it can't be real. And so that was a constant fight. So everything from, from when, when, um, when Mitt Romney decided to kill affirmative action, you know, we forced him to put it back. It took 10 days. But, you know, we forced him to put it back by pulling together constituencies from around the state saying, no, this, this, this can't happen. And we did it with nothing. We, we kept Ben Franklin Institute from being closed because, because Manino wanted to sell the property and put the money in the, in the, in the city's bank account. We're like, no, you can't do that. Kids go here. You know, the real kids go here. And, and, and the school's not any, any financial crises. It's just that you want to sell the building that was owned by, we backed them off of that. Corey Reform was something, you know, that we started, and we started with nothing. We had absolutely nothing. Right. Can you explain what that is? Not everybody, certainly a lot of white people, including myself, didn't know that Corey wasn't a girl's name. Yeah, well, that's what I thought. I was like, I just hoped to God I'd never meet her. But the reality was that, that Corey was a, is, is you're basically a criminal record. Yeah, criminal offender records. Yeah, information, criminal offender records. That's what it stands for, right. Is what Corey stands for. And at the time, once you got it, you can never get rid of it. It stayed with you. And it, it kept you from getting jobs. It kept you from getting housing. It's a huge problem in the black community. Oh, it's outrageous. In the white world, as you would say, people never thought of. Well, you know, it's also his class. Yeah. Okay. Because the thing about it was, there was a boatload of labor guys. There was a boatload of folks in Southie, Charlestown. There's a boatload of labor, you know, kids, people in Taunton, you know, East Bridgewater, white, you know, what we refer to as white world, right, that were affected the exact same way. Couldn't get jobs. Right. In fact, Tom Riley ran for governor and he had a Corey from when he was back in the day. So, you know, when he ran against Deval Patrick, and he was the attorney general. So, you know, the challenges that we had to, that we had to work through in order to get people to pay attention to the work. The first thing we did was we were able to convince Mayor Monino that people deserve second chances. So, the strategy was let's win citywide. Let's win a citywide effort so that at least in the city of Boston people with criminal records can move on. And we did that. So, we got that done, then it was on to statewide legislation, which took roughly about seven or eight years. Took about seven or eight years to convince the legislature that people not only deserve second chances, but they deserve a life. And what worked to convince legislators? What was effective? In my theory of organizing, you have to use multiple tactics at the same time, right? You have to talk to the faith community about, like, this is wrong. We need you to get behind this. You have to talk to, you know, we talked to the Greeks, you know, the Black fraternal organizations. We talked to firefighters. Or said another way, you know, our strategy is, and our saying is we will talk to Lottie, Dottie, any damn body in order to get to where we needed to get to. And ultimately what we built was we built a, we built, we were influential in building a statewide movement of folks that brought, brought constituencies together saying this needs to be changed. And it was at that point, it was at that point that they decided to change. Because the problem that we had, you know, it took eight years, because the problem that we had was Finnerer was the speaker. And he gave all his committee chairs full power to do whatever they wanted. And in our world, the judiciary chair was a guy by the name of Eugene O'Flaherty from Malden, who was not, who was law, he was a law and order type. And we had the votes on the committee. We had the votes in the house. But as long as he was the chair, and as long as we had prison guards who we found out, prison guards really have a powerful union in the state. When the prison guards were telling them, no, we don't want this, because we'll lose our jobs if this happens. You know, we had to fight that and that took almost eight years. And the thing that was also really helpful was the sister by the name of Gladys Vega. Because Gladys Vega is the queen of Chelsea. I know. And my dear sister, I love her to death. And she, and the one area that was represented by Eugene O'Flaherty was Chelsea. So just so happens that election, I think it was Obama, 2012. It was that election that Chelsea, you know, had officially had enough immigrants that moved in who were then eligible to vote, which is a problem for Eugene O'Flaherty. So Eugene O'Flaherty went along with the legislation. And that's how we were able, excuse me, to get done. That's helpful. Now, I know you recently left being executive director of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods. If you look back on all those years, what are some of the lessons you would like to pass on to younger organizers who are taking up the work now? Read newspapers. Okay. That's a start. I mean, that's a start. The few that are left, right? Well, I mean, like, you know, I start, I'm thinking of this as millennial organizing kryptonite. Okay? You know, you have to read newspapers. Do you have to read bury articles? You have to read books. You have to be engaged in the world broadly and know what's going on. Not just newspapers, but books and articles. I mean, it would stand to reason. Okay? Because you've got to balance what community is telling you with the realities of what are taking place, you know, in halls of government, in other communities as well. You know, you have to pay attention to that. So for instance, there's like, you know, we have Uber and those guys are trying to take away the rights of workers. It worked in California. So now they decided that, you know, they're coming to Massachusetts. Permanently taken away. They've already taken them away. Exactly. And you have to, you know, in order to understand that whole issue, you got to read about it. It's pretty complicated. It's pretty complicated, but you've got to care about this thing. If you're worried about workers not getting unemployment, not getting, you know, just wages, not having the protections that they need, you've got to care. And that also means not only do you read the article that you saw on the paper, if you're going to work on that issue, you might want to read what happened in California and find out from organizers what, you know, what worked, what did. So being really well informed is real important. It is critical. What else is real important? I mean, you talked about listening earlier. You have to, I mean, that's the second thing. The most important thing is listening. One, I think you have to absolutely be comfortable in yourself and in your ability. So you have to know who you are, what makes you tick, because that's ultimately going to drive you as an organizer. Right, because if you're lucky, someone will ask you what the hell are you doing here. Yeah, because someone's going to ask you. That's guarantee. If you're lucky. Because if you assume most of these people have heard this before. If you've had somebody live on the street for 45 years, this is not the first time they talk about, let's pull a block committee together. This is not the first time they heard that. So you have to know who you are. And you have to be prepared to answer that question. On a deep level, not just my name's hard or small. And be real. Yeah. And be real, because the most important thing that you've got, what keeps people involved, if you're the facilitator trying to bring people in, they have to be comfortable around you. You have to, and you have to be comfortable with all kinds of people. The Chattie Annie's, the ones who sit in the corner who don't say much. But those are the things that are a little bit nice. You know, the one who runs his mouth 24-7th, and you kind of balance all that. The third thing is practice your skills. Understand the difference between a tactic, which is an activity to help move your strategy along, and a strategy, your ultimate game plan. How are you all going to get to where you need to go? You need to know the difference between the two. And, you know, a tactic is not a strategy. Strategy is a long-term plan. A long-term game. A tactic is what we're doing this afternoon, press conference, whatever. But the other thing too is there's a billion tactics. Yeah, it's not just marching. Because at some point, you keep marching. The only thing you're doing is going for a long walk, and that may ultimately be good for your health, but is it moving the issue along? Of course not. There's also tactics that you've got to take people out of their comfort zone. So for instance, if we know that we're going to march, well, the police know. They already know how to handle that. Mayor's Office knows how to handle that. City Council knows how to handle that. All the policy people know how to handle a march. Been there, done that. Been there, done that. Get on the bullhorn, blow smoke out your butt, go home. What can you do to take them out of their comfort zone? What do you do to show that maybe we go to the mayor's house? Maybe we camp out in front of the mayor's house. Maybe we take over the statehouse steps and put up tents and we camp out there. That worked. Yeah, it works. And maybe we go to the bank. If we've got issues with the bank and we're opening accounts with, we're going to open accounts with $20 in pennies. Here you go. And each one. Lots of things. Be creative. Be creative. Be creative and have fun with it because people have to, you know, it doesn't work if people don't own it. If the people you're working with don't own it. They're not having fun with it. It doesn't work. They ain't going to last. They ain't going to last. And then the other thing I think the most important thing too is recognizing that systemic change takes time. Takes time and takes organization. Yeah, it takes time. So if you're going to work on an issue, it's not going to be resolved in three weeks. It's not going to be resolved. If you're going to work on it, you've got to plan for the long term. Right. And that's why we say organizers build organizations and build leaders. And you take that time to do exactly that. So they begin to find their confidence in themselves. They begin to start taking on the skills. Yeah. Harris, thank you. I guess I read my mouth too much. No, you're just enough. I'm Michael Jacoby Brown. We're really lucky to have had Harris Small, a great organizer, the recently retired director of the Union of Minority Neighborhoods in Boston, Massachusetts. And thank you for tuning in.