 See what's new on the Burlington Waterfront. There to my viewers, my name is Melinda Moulton and I'm your host of On the Waterfront. And my guest today is Kim Jordan. Kim, thank you for joining me today on my show. I am honored, Melinda. It is an honor to be a guest on your show. I'm so excited to talk to you about your work. Now to my viewers, Kim is the director of the Safe Space Anti-Violence Program at the Pride Center of Vermont. So that is what you're doing right now. But you have a very rich and long and extraordinary history in the field that you work in of anti-violence and justice. And so we're going to talk a little bit about that. But before we get into that, I'd like to ask you a little bit about growing up in your childhood and a little bit about your life. Can you share that with our viewers? Yeah, well, where do I start? How much time do we have? It's a short show. Well, my early life, originally, Riverdale, in the Bronx, New York, when I was five, my family moved to Riverside, California, in Southern California in the Inland Empire. And it was never a place I resonated with. Not many people looked like me. We were one of the few Jewish families in our area. I was one of, I think, two Jewish kids in my school. I call Riverside lovingly, not lovingly, the Bible Belt of Southern California. And I left when I was 16, but one of the, I'll back up, one of the kind of, I'll say, saving graces of my childhood. I had a fine family. Everything was fine, but I never really felt like I fit in my community and school. But when I was five and a half, my parents enrolled me in Riverside Children's Theater, which still exists. And every Saturday, I had voice and acting and dancing and monologue study and scene study every Saturday from kindergarten through eighth grade. And it really helped give me a foundation of public speaking, feeling comfortable in front of people, eventually speaking truths to power, writing monologues, performing stories. And in my life, I realized that what I had was off stage fright, not being on stage, was very weird to me and having to deal with people and their idiosyncrasies. But being on stage, everything made sense. So I became a theater person. And when I was 16, I left home to go to an All Girls boarding school in Westchester, New York. And back in the Northeast, I felt much more aligned. And All Girls school felt really good for me. I didn't yet know I was queer, had no idea that I was a baby lesbian. But All Girls school, even though there were no antics, like any of those after school specials or teen fetish movies where things happen in an All Girls school, that's not what happened at my school. But it did give me a foundation. And then I went to college at University of Miami in Florida. What a coulda shoulda if we could live our lives over again, all the choices we made. But I got into stand-up and improv. And after graduating from University of Miami with a communications and sociology double major and a marketing minor and realizing that's not what I wanted to do, I waited tables at Hard Rock Cafe in Bayside Miami while I was doing stand-up and improv and then came into a relationship that wasn't the world's best but helped get me to Southern California, where my then boyfriend and I lived in LA and I was going on castings and working at Hard Rock Cafe Hollywood and doing stand-up and improv and started hosting a stand-up comedy show in Glendale, California once a week. And then for many different reasons, needed to find a place that felt aligned with my mind, body, and spirit. And through many fits and starts, I found Burlington, Vermont. The person I was dating and I at the time broke up. He moved back to wherever he came from. And it was just me and Burlington. And that was in 1998. And Burlington was very much in Vermont. But I'll say, you know, Burlington is very close to Vermont. So I love Vermont. And I know that my Burlington experience is very different from a lot of other Vermonters formative experiences. But I do believe that Burlington was kind of a safety net that nurtured me back to life and wellness and supported me in flying. And I really feel like I've flown through many different atmospheres since then, but always rising. I mean, you know, also falling. Trauma's happened. There we are. But yeah, that's the early to midlife. What a great story. What a great story. So what was it about? Because it was the East Coast. You felt comfortable in the East Coast. But what was it about Burlington? It's sort of random that you ended up in Burlington. What was it about Burlington? That's really- Yeah, well, let's go over that part. Right. So the person I was dating at the time had been planning on moving to New York City. I had my heart moving on moving to East Village, Greenwich Village. And we realized that if we moved there, it'd be our entire savings gone in one month, which was not much savings, but could definitely have gone farther in cities that were in New York. As we were sitting in the living room of his parents' house, then I'm not even going to name the town up because if I ever go to hell, it will be that specific town that I revisit. And we looked at Providence and Portsmouth or Portland, and I just don't remember, but no, it wasn't Portsmouth, New Hampshire, it was Portland, Maine, or Providence, Rhode Island, or Burlington, Vermont. And we actually saw an ad for the Woollen Mill, and I didn't want to live in a big city again, thinking Burlington was a big city. I wanted to live right on the outskirts, and I loved the name of the town, Winooski. So we decided to take a three-day trip starting in Burlington. And I remember getting out of the car on Main Street right outside of Muddy Waters and standing right outside the car and facing toward the lake and realizing this is the first place in my life that I'd ever felt at home. Wow. And oh, the feeling of home is a sensation, and I had never recognized it before. And so we didn't look anywhere else. We actually went to Esauks, the lovely dive bar for a drink. The bartender showed us the apartment Wannads. We found an apartment, applied for jobs, and moved here the following month. And... Wow. Yeah, good stuff. Well, how lucky are we to have you here? I mean, hard-same. Really, truly. I mean, this Burlington is so much better by having Kim Jordan here. So thank you for that. Thank you for that great, beautiful expose about what brought you to Burlington in your early life. So let's talk a little bit about your work. Your life's work has been focused on, as you say, bolstering human rights. Can you explain this to my audience? What does that mean, bolstering human rights? Because you really, this is really what you do. And it's not what I always knew I would do. I was a theater artist. I was a teaching artist at the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts. I was a theater teaching artist. I worked in their arts integration program, training teachers around the state to use theater as a teaching tool. But before that, again, fits and starts random moments of life. I think I had, I was waiting tables and I had quit and been fired from my job waiting tables in the same night. And a friend who I called and said, I don't know what to do, said, why don't you come to a poetry slam with me? And so I went to a poetry slam, the Burlington Poetry Slam. And then a couple of months later, I became the host. And this was like in the late 90s, early 2000s, the Burlington Slam mistress. I became kind of Burlington famous, which is so cute. And hosted poetry slams, wrote performance poetry, started performing performance poetry about my experience, my experience feeling challenged with weight, my experience having developmentally disabled sister. And through kind of just being a, what I didn't name as myself, an identity, but being a cisgender woman in the world, recognizing also that I had privilege and toured around the state, started leading performance poetry workshops in schools and for adults and recognize that the people in, that the students told me, I mean, that the teachers told me, the students that the teachers told me were the problem students, were the ones who I should watch out for, or like that fourth period, seventh grade class are the worst ones, but my third period are the best, you're gonna love them. In the process of leading performance poetry workshops for youth, and hosting these youth poetry slams around the state, I realized that it was the ones that people in power in that school decided were the problem kids, were the ones who were really interested in speaking their truth and sharing their voices and not having rules around how they were allowed to be. And once they kind of shared their voice and were acknowledged by their classmates as, whoa, you're good or you have perspectives that I never knew about, that they were seen differently by their classmates, but they also saw themselves differently. And so I started getting really interested in poetry and the arts for social issues and went to grad school. And that led me to focus on theater for bullying prevention and performing arts for bullying prevention. In between that time, I experienced a very, very intense family trauma. So that also led me to looking at what makes people cause harm and can performing arts, can anti-oppression work that is based in the arts and in theater and in writing, do anything to heal people who experience harm and prevent people who cause harm from causing more harm. And then after graduating, I founded a, actually my graduate thesis was founding a theater for bullying prevention education program called Theater in Action. And I toured around, toured around. I did artist residencies in schools, trying to do that while adjunct teaching and piecing it together and doing a lot of the gig economy work, but through all of that recognizing that people who experience harm, if they don't find healing, chances are they will cause harm. We all cause harm just by virtue of being humans in this world, but people who cause intentional harm, there's something that they need that they're trying to get met. And when our rights are taken away, when we don't feel like we've got autonomy, when we feel like we don't, when power has been taken from us through violence, through abuse, through marginalization, we sometimes try to access that power in any way that we can. And so that got me really like through various, various aspects of life and education and work. Recognizing, I recognize that kind of bull string human rights for all, not just rights for some is kind of a foundational value that is part of my life's mission and why I feel I'm on this earth. And so through doing education work, I got a job working at Vermont's Women's Prison, Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility with a program called DEVAS, which stands for Discussing Intimate Violence and Accessing Support. I was hired, I thought I was applying for an education job. I was really trying to get into work, doing work in prisons because of the fatal family violence that I had experienced and trying to kind of steer into the world of people who are impacted by and housed within the criminal legal system. And I started working with these incarcerated women and realized, oh, this isn't just an education job. I am learning about trauma. I'm learning about the trauma to prison pipeline. I'm learning about people who experience violence and are criminalized for their survival skills. I'm learning about how there are, it's easier to be a poor, there's a statement that I'm not gonna get right, so I'm not even gonna try to quote it, but how there are no rich people in prison. And so many people who are incarcerated, especially people who identify as women and trans and gender non-conforming are incarcerated because of the harmful systems that they are bound up in. And we know that anyone who experiences incarceration is also experiencing a trauma. So I became really interested in liberation for people who are incarcerated in policy work, in restorative justice and restorative practices that can kind of address and dismantle the criminal legal and carceral state. And then I became a restorative justice practitioner and worked at one of our state community justice centers in Burlington and got really interested in transformative justice and recognized how transformative justice is really looking at the systems that converge where people cause harm and experience harm and how can we uproot those systems where harm happens to create a more equitable and supportive community. I just wanna say that you're a very interesting human being on so many levels, on a lot of different levels, but what amazes me about you is you are really a philosopher. Ah, but you base a lot of your philosophical with practicum and also science. I mean, you take both sides and you sort of bring it together and you make sense of it all. And I just love that about you. I love talking to you, I love listening to you because you make sense of it all and you do it coming from those two different sort of diametric places. So I don't know, you may not agree with me, but I find you to be very philosophical. I love it. I'll take it, I'll take it because sometimes when people ask me a question, I have to share an entire backstory and then tangent off and then some runs me of this and then finally coming back and I think I eventually answer the question but it's a journey to get there. So you can call me a philosopher, I love it. I love it, I will take it. Well, I just, you know, well, there you have it. So there you go with that. Now, as the director of the Safe Space Anti-Violence Program at the Pride Center, you wanna talk a little bit about the work that you're doing because you're there now. This is your current job. Welcome to my office. Yes, I love it, We the People. Talk a little bit about your work and about the center. Thank you. Yeah, We the People, right? Because you and I are on the ACLU board together and I'm an ACLU nerd and we're talking about human rights, civil rights and yeah, liberation for all. I very much believe that the ACLU is an ally in that. So the Safe Space Anti-Violence Program is a statewide organization for LGBTQ plus people, lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer and questioning, intersex, allied, HIV positive and so many other folks who fought under the LGBTQ plus umbrella. We're a statewide organization for folks who experience domestic violence, sexual violence, trafficking, stalking, bias, hate, workplace discrimination, housing discrimination, harassment, we have a support line and I'm on call right now. So if I get a call, we will pause this interview and we also offer systems advocacy and education I provided a training just yesterday. We are a small team that we have statewide reach and we are housed within Pride Center of Vermont. So we're an anti-violence program that is housed within a community center for LGBTQ plus people that also serves the entire state. So Safe Space is one of the programs and Safe Space is a member organization of the Vermont network against domestic and sexual violence. So we are part of statewide conversations and one of the aspects that I really find, I've been here eight months, I will say. So we, but I think I've got my sea legs at this point. I've already hired someone. So I have that experience. It turns out I had never supervised anyone before but as it turns out, I'm a pretty great supervisor. I really love power with and I'm not interested in power over at all. Like let's just have our supported autonomy and meet in the middle and find out how we can get the work done. Yeah, but I'm also interested in, we have a hotline as I mentioned for people who experience any type of harm but I'm also, we're looking at expanding our services and I've gradually started expanding our services for people who cause harm because that's how we're gonna end violence. We can support survivors and people who've been victimized and hope to get their needs met and we know that we always need housing. We need transportation infrastructure. We need training for every single person in this state to understand what bias and discrimination look like, how to unpack power and privilege and people who cause violence also need support in figuring out how to end that cycle of harm, how to change their harmful behaviors. So we're gradually going into that work too for anyone who falls under the LGBTQ plus umbrella. And I can talk all about kind of minority stress theory and reasons and why harm happens and why harm tends to happen with in marginalized communities and so much of it. Systemic oppression. So this is a lot of what Safe Space does. We work with the ground level of people who experience harm but we also, and part of my kind of privilege as a director is I also get the 360 degree view of our program. So a couple of weeks ago I participated as a speaker at a convening with the White House Gender Policy Council on abusive partner intervention programs and making sure that there is equity within those programs and there's an anti-oppression lens. So I don't know, maybe the White House heard my voice. I hope so, but it's really exciting to be kind of influential on a policy level. I think your voice is hard to not hear. And I think everything that comes out of your mind is must be heard. I mean, I just think you've got such a handle on this, Kim. You really do. So I wanna ask you, this was not one of the questions that I was gonna ask you but I really wanna know what is your vision for our future with the way that we are going in this country with the voting rights and with racial justice. And I know there's a lot of hope and promise in where we're going, but there's also a lot of fear in people's hearts about where we're going in. Marginalized communities are feeling very threatened right now. So can you offer some of your wisdom on that? I am, I can. And I'm actually gonna take you on a little field trip. So as you're talking to me, I'm looking at a wall. I'm a tourist sun and Virgo rising. So I very much love like my decor and my habitat to reflect me, but also in a very organized measured fashion. So I'm gonna share with you if we can see it. Well, I'll tell you, I'm looking at three little pieces of art that I hung up. One is a Venn diagram. And on one side says what breaks your heart most about this world. So what breaks your heart most about this world. The other side, the other circle says your unique talents, skills and gifts. And in the middle, where the circles intersect is where you are now being called into service. So my vision is the skills that I have and the needs that are in our communities and cultures and society. Me being able to present and support what is truly, I believe, liberation for all. And liberation is not necessarily something that I think any humans on this earth have ever seen, but we have to be able to imagine. We can't, just because something hasn't existed doesn't mean it's not possible. So my real true vision is that no one, that everyone's basic needs are met. And then once our basic needs are met, and then we wanna talk about Maslow or whether we wanna talk about how Maslow is a cis white man who had his own systems of power and privilege. But the basic Maslow's hierarchy of needs, all of our needs are met so that when we reach towards self actualization, it's actually not just for the individual, it's for our communities and cultures. Our neighbors to know each other that there is not someone who makes so much money on the back of others, that that person is able to move into space or avoid any climate change that they help create because they're in their bunker somewhere. Like we are all in this together. And so I would love. So how do we get there, Kim? Was the word we're living at? Well, okay, so something else I'm looking at is this quote that you asked me to talk about that is one of my email signatures. Where? And it's Adrienne Marie Brown who, I don't really believe in the hero complex. I don't really believe in heroes. There are many, many people who I find inspiring and I want to read everything that they write and then read everything that they reference and then who those people reference and then I maybe be best friends with them someday. But this is the quote. Where we are born into privilege, we are charged with dismantling any myth of supremacy. Where we are born into struggle, we are charged with reclaiming our dignity, joy and liberation. So those who have power and privilege unearned, right? We're born into it, unearned power and privilege have to dismantle any belief that they're better than anyone else. Just by virtue of being born, you're not better than anyone and people who were born into struggle, right? This unearned struggle by no fault or hard work of their own. That's just how they're born are charged with reclaiming joy and freedom and access and how do they claim it? How do people who were born into struggle claim it? Because people who were born into power and privilege are able to create that equity. It's not on people who experience struggle to create equity. They're trying to wake up in the morning without experiencing more harm, right? This goes to one of our shared missions, Melinda, which is reproductive justice, bodily autonomy. Reproductive justice goes to people with uteruses being able to make choices and have voice and choice over their own bodies with free access. That also goes into bodily autonomy. People who are trans who are born into a body that is a different shape than the one that they are aligned with. They get to choose and live the life that they feel most aligned with regardless of any laws, expenses. So we all get to have bodily autonomy and live our best life. So I guess that's my long way around saying my vision is for us to live our best lives. So human beings are inherently greedy and selfish and power hungry. And we're seeing that right now in the world that we're living in. So how do we get the people of power to relinquish that to ensure that everyone is cared for and everyone has the same chances? I mean, how do we do that as humans? Because I don't know if I have faith in the human in the sapien to actually do that. How do we make that happen? Yeah, I don't know if I agree with you that humans are inherently greedy, but I think the structures that humans create, those structures of hierarchy are violent. And when we are faced with violence, we respond with whatever we can do to survive. So I think at the heart of it is toxic patriarchy, it's capitalism, it's toxic masculinity. It is our systems of oppression that support, have historically supported some people and oppressed others dismantling all of those. Cause I think humans are doing fine. It's the systems, it's the people who cause violence to those they love. And then those kiddos grow up to think that violence is the way to go. Yeah. It's the dismantling it. And I don't know if we're gonna see that in either of our lifetimes. I'd like to think that we can and that we will. Certainly I don't know if we're gonna see it in our lifetime because with climate change, there is this whole situation where people are gonna have and have not. And I don't know if you've read the book Sapiens, but it is the history of our species throughout all of history. And the modern Sapien was not the kindest one that survived. So at the end of the day, I love your energy and you give me such hope in my heart. Cause sometimes I don't feel particularly hopeful. No, I mean the same, but you can do that. You're, I mean, you, so, I mean, I don't know where your blog, I think you need to do your blog and get it out to the world. But how do we, especially with the structure that we have now where we have, you know, I'm not gonna get into politics here, but I don't need to go there with you because you get it. But how do we dismantle in, I think maybe in Vermont, we might have a chance to do it. But in the rest of the country, I'm not so sure. Thoughts? I mean, this is a lovely moment that I appreciate what you're saying with me, but it is absolutely so hard for me to get out of bed for any of us to get unmet, especially with the weather right now, but that's not what this is about. No, I think leaving the house, this is a struggle. And I'm naming like, wow, what a blessing I have that I have a house, that my wife and I own a house. First of all, we wouldn't be able to own a house in many other places in the country. So it is much easier for me to greet the day and have energy than many other people. And I love that I've got kind of a platform to do that and I've got positional power to be able to do that and ability in all of those aspects of self. And I'm absolutely a fatalist. I'm absolutely a fatalist. I think it was maybe in eighth grade when I first read Kurt Vonnegut and one of his lines really stuck out to me, something like, look, none of us asked to be born in the first place. So now that we're here, what are we gonna do with it? And I very much feel like that, given the option, maybe take me to another sphere, another plane. I hope that when I die in and reincarnated into another being, I would rather not be on this same earthly plane as a human, as a squirrel shore, as a hawk, I'll take it. But like being a human is hard and we need to be able to celebrate the fact that we put on pants, you know, that like we can feed ourselves if that's something that we have an ability to do. So sometimes I think these little bitty successes are the ways to find bliss in an inherently really sorrowful. And they are, and you've stated this so well. We're coming to the close and I just wanted to talk to you about a dream of mine, which would be to end incarceration for women. And this has been a dream of mine for many, many years, is to find a way to lift up the lives of women who end up incarcerated and don't belong there. So I wanted your thoughts about that before we close. I want to end incarceration for everyone. Thank you. All right, there you have it. I need to expand my mind beyond women, but women tend to be where I go. Yes, I mean, we can talk, you know, this is, I could talk about this for days and days. And I teach a class at St. Michael's, St. Michael's College called Restorative Approaches to Intimate Partner Violence. And there's no way for me to talk about intimate partner violence and how we respond and say that we prevent, but clearly we don't, to intimate partner violence without talking about the carceral state, without talking about abolition, without talking about how our expertise as people in our communities has been removed from us because we expect police to be the experts on responding to interpersonal harms, how incarceration actually harms more than it helps. We can't end violence with violence and we know that incarceration is an inherently violent institution. And when people say, well, what about the rapists? What about people who cause fatal, fatal violence? What about the murderers? We can't, we have to have jail for those folks. What I respond to is that the majority of people who cause sexual violence are never justice involved. The majority of people who cause violence and harm, the criminal legal system, never, never is contacted about them. People don't call the police because the majority of people who cause specifically sexual violence are people known to the person who is victimized. And so what are we doing? So I'll say that. Oops. Nope. I'm keep going, I'm gonna change my sentence. And with intimate partner violence and domestic violence, the majority of people who experience violence do not want the person who causes them violence to be arrested, to be taken away from the family for so many reasons, they just want the abuse to stop. And with domestic violence, with sexual violence, with other types of interpersonal harm, the majority of people who experience violence never call a hotline, never call 911. They talk to their friends and family or people in their coworkers. And so how skilled up are we as the coworkers, as the family, as the siblings? What skills do we have to be able to support someone in interrupting the harm? What are, who are our pods? I highly recommend your viewers Google pods and pod mapping by an author named Mia Mingus who works with the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective. Who are our people that when we experience harm, we can reach out to? Who are the people that when we cause harm, we can reach out to help us take accountability? And there might be different pods for each of those, but we as community members, as citizens, as loved ones need to skill up. And that's the term I use regularly in order to support each other and in creating accountability circles and creating support circles so that the criminal legal system doesn't have its fingers in every single part of our lives and we expect them to solve the problems that we are able to skill up in solving. Well, I gotta tell you, Kim, we're coming to the end of our show and I wanna tell you I have been skilled up for this last half hour. And I am so just thrilled to have had this time to talk with you. I'm trying to get me into this view where I can be together with you. So here, let me go where we can be together. Our gallery, ta-ta, ta-ta. So thank you for this half hour. I could talk to you for hours and my viewers would learn so much about your work and you. And I just wish you all the best in everything that you do. And I'm so glad we're together on the ACLU Vermont Board. And I want you to stay online as I stop this recording. But to my viewers, I wanna thank you for spending time with myself and with Kim Jordan. And I will see you soon. Have a good day and take care of yourself.