Episode 87, 49 min listen

If you care about making the world a better place, this episode is for you. My guest, Omkari Williams, asks us each to consider, "What if an activist looked like you?" In our discussion, she will share the ways that we can make activism and micro activism part of our daily lives. Along the way, she shares the main archetypes of activists. Spoiler alert: All activists are not headliners. Sometimes we're simply the folks who make the coffee or show up day after day. Listen in to begin to answer the question: What kind of activist are you?


AUDIO PLAYER

You can access this episode wherever you listen to podcasts via our pod.link.


ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

Join us for these events in Greenville, SC next week:

Visit her site and learn more about Omkari Williams.

Order her book, Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without a Bullhorn).


OMKARI'S BIO

Omkari Williams is the Gold Nautilus award-winning and bestselling author of Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without a Bullhorn). Her book helps readers identify their “activist archetype” and map a personal action plan for engaging in small, change-making activities with potentially big impacts.

Omkari has worked as an actor, political consultant, and coach. Though she has an affinity for supporting activists who identify as introverted or highly sensitive, as she does, she welcomes all people into the world of micro activism, a sustainable path to change-making based upon honoring the inherent dignity of all people.


FULL TRANSCRIPT

-Event Invitation (Insert)

Hi this is Ame here. If you live near Greenville, South Carolina, you’re in for a real treat. Omkari Williams will be in Greenville next week!

On Thursday night, October 23rd, she will be at MJudson Bookstore on Main Street for an In Conversation Event from 5:30-7:00.

Then, on Friday, she will lead a transformative workshop on everyday activism at the Village Engage 2025 Faith and Justice Forum: Voices of Courage.

I’ve put links for these two events in the show notes for you. I’ll be at both events. Why don’t you join us?

-Introduction


Omkari Williams  0:00 

The way people think and the things that concern them, and the way they engage with the problems that they see because of their jobs or because of where they live, I just love that. Because right where we're planted, we can all make a huge difference.

Ame Sanders  0:27 

This is the state of Inclusion Podcast, where we explore topics at the intersection of equity, inclusion, and community. In each episode, we meet people who are changing their communities for the better, and we discover actions that each of us can take to improve our own communities. I'm Ame Sanders. Welcome.

So, today we are happy to welcome Omkari Williams. Omkari is a speaker. She's a coach for activists. She's a fellow podcaster, and she's the author of just a wonderful book, Micro Activism: How You Can Make a Difference in the World (Without a Bullhorn). Omkari, thanks so much for joining me. 

Omkari Williams  1:16 

Thank you so much for having me, Ame.

-Definition - Activism and Micro Activism

Ame Sanders  1:19 

You know, Omkari, I just recently read your small but mighty book, and I feel like it was just what I needed in the moment. So, maybe a good place to start our conversation could be to ask you first to just share what you consider as a definition of activism and micro activism.

Omkari Williams  1:39 

Yeah. Good place to start. So to me, activism is really based on just the etymology of the word. It's the same root as the word action, and it's literally about taking action around things you care about. And micro activism is about taking small actions around things you care about, because so often we think of activists and we think of world famous people like Dr. King or Greta Thunberg or Mahatma Gandhi, people like that, right? And absolutely, they were activists. But that's not everybody, nor should it be.

So, micro activism for me was my way of inviting into the world of activism everybody else, because I believe that everyone has a role to play in making the world a better place, and micro activism is a sustainable way of making change, rather than burning out by trying to be someone you're not.

Ame Sanders  2:49 

So, I love the examples that you just gave, because as an introvert, I'll admit that I've only really recently started to think of myself as an activist. And still, I have to admit, I have a little bit of imposter syndrome, because I don't resemble those sorts of major actors out there in the world who have made such a big difference for so many of us. But you know, just like you said, it takes all kinds. One of the things that I loved in your book was this idea of the activist archetypes. I'm a sucker for a good quiz to kind of diagnose myself, so maybe we all so maybe you can talk a little bit about the archetypes of activists that you see and how you think about that too.

-Activist Archetypes

Omkari Williams  3:39 

Yeah. So first, let me just say that I am also an introvert, so introversion is not always what it looks like to other people. I don't have a problem talking in large groups or anything like that, but I really need my quiet downtime. I think that the archetypes kind of came out of my understanding that, first off, humans are complicated. We're not just one thing, but also that there are sort of themes that tend to run through our lives. And so the archetypes for me, I based them on the way I would think about a movie set, because in a previous life, I was an actor, and I spent a lot of time on sets. You could very clearly see the roles that were laid out. And I thought, huh, these are kind of the same in activism.

So, the archetypes, I have four of them. The first one is the headliner, and that's the one everybody knows. That's the face of the movement. The next one is the producer, and that's the person whose natural gifts are around organizing a large project. They can see the whole picture, and they then will delegate a portion of something to someone else, and that person would be the organizer. So, on a film set, if you've ever worked in movies, you know that no movie in the history of movies was ever made without coffee and food. You have to have coffee and food.

Ame Sanders  5:22 

Nor any movement either!

Omkari Williams  5:23 

Exactly. I mean, let's be clear about what keeps things going. So, the person who's responsible for the coffee and the food, that's one role for an organizer for instance. 

Then you have the largest and in many ways the most important category, and that's the indispensable. And the indispensables are the people who are behind the scenes, doing the work really quietly. You never know their names. You don't know their faces. But without them, nothing would happen. And the analogy that I like to use is so August 1963 there was the March on Washington, and Dr King is at the Lincoln Memorial. There are a quarter of a million people on the Mall below the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Without that quarter million people on the mall, Dr King would have been a tourist that day at the Lincoln Memorial. It was the 250,000 people who had picked themselves up, taken themselves out of their regular lives for that day, made the trip to steamy, hot Washington, DC, to hear someone speak to something that was really valuable to them. But it was the number, the sheer number of people that got the attention that made this national news, rather than just a small event.

The same is true for Greta Thunberg. She started her school strike, and it was just her. Now there are millions and millions of people who follow Greta Thunberg, who pay attention to what she's saying, who have been inspired to take their own actions on the climate crisis and other issues. It's those people behind her that make her important. Without those people behind her, she'd be just a kid who sat outside of school on Fridays. So, I think that we often underestimate the power, the necessity, and the impact of the people behind the scenes. But you only need one face of a movement. You need millions of people in the background.

Ame Sanders  7:44 

I love those archetypes, and I loved exploring--you know, had my own idea after reading what kind of archetype I was--but I loved exploring with your quiz what it would tell me about myself. And I found that I'm probably first a producer. I have multiple things in there, pretty much all of them, but primarily a producer and an indispensable. That's what I learned about myself, which was not all that surprising. I knew I, for sure, was not a headliner. So, it was really helpful to be able to see those different roles, because I think it does what you mentioned at the very beginning, which is, it welcomes us all into beginning to think of ourselves as activists, no matter how that looks. 

Omkari Williams  8:30 

Yeah. And also, I think the thing is, we often tend to want to sort of pigeonhole ourselves and say, "This is who I am." We forget how much we evolve over the course of our lives. One of the things about the archetypes is that things change depending on the circumstances that you're currently facing, depending on where you are in your life. I mean, your archetype if you are in your 20s and have small children, is likely going to be different than your archetype when you're in your 40s and your kids are out of the house. You're not responsible for them anymore. There are going to be through lines, but they're going to be times in your life where you fit into a different role because of the other circumstances of your life. 

I think that that's one of the things that's important about archetypes, is yes, there's an overarching theme, but all of us are sort of at the mercy, or not the mercy, but we're at the affect of the circumstances of our lives, of the things that are around us, of the people around us. We don't just live here in a vacuum. And I think that's really important to understand so that people give themselves grace when they feel like, "Oh, I should be doing more." Should you? Maybe, but maybe not. Depends on what else is happening in your life. 

Ame Sanders  10:00 

Also the idea that it isn't only your circumstances, but also maybe even the area that you want to take action in. In some areas, you may be more capable of being playing one role than another, and then in another area that's of importance to you, may be just one of those 250,000 people. So, it depends on what the issue is and what your experience and knowledge and commitment to that issue would be.

Omkari Williams  10:32 

I completely agree. I mean, let's say you are a nurse, and so you have expertise in medical care. That for you is easy, and you can step up into that role when needed, whereas someone else is like, "Oh, I don't even know how to put on a Band-Aid." Right? But then, if you're the nurse, and it's 20 years later and you've decided, you know, I need to step into a different role, you can. You can step out of that nursing as your primary role. The skills are still there, but you can decide,  "You know what, I’m really ready to take a step back and let someone else step up." Or, "I'm really ready to take a step forward and stretch myself into a leadership role, which I never thought about before." You know? I mean, again, we're not stuck in who we are. We have a lot of agency. I think it's important for us to remember that we get to make decisions about what we do and what we don't do, and it's in making those decisions that we sort of shape our lives and shape our activism. And I think that that's kind of a lovely thing.

-Deciding Where to Focus

Ame Sanders  11:55 

So, that leads me into the next question I wanted to ask you. So, I want to take advantage of your being an activist coach and get a tiny little mini coaching session from you for our listeners. And one of the things I wanted you to kind of give us a coaching session around is just as you were saying, we can choose the areas of focus and the ways that we shape our lives going forward. But there are only so many hours in the day. So, we have limited capability. So, how do you advise activists who look out there and they see so many injustices and so many issues that need support and attention? How do you advise them to think about where to put their energy and their focus?

Omkari Williams  12:44 

There's always going to be the thing that hits you hardest. It doesn't mean that there aren't other things that hit hard, but there's always going to be the thing that, no matter what, you're always going to stand up and speak up about that. I sort of, in my book, I discuss your origin story. Now for me, for instance, the thing for me is injustice. From the time I was a little child, I could not tolerate what I perceived to be injustice. If I said to my dad in particular, "That's not fair" once, I must have said it a billion times, and he would patiently say, "Life isn't fair. It should be! Right? That is still me as an adult. That is still me.

And so everyone has something like that. It might be animal rights, it might be the environment. It might be people being unkind to children. It could be drug abuse, and giving support to people who have problems with addiction. Whatever it is, there is something that you can always look at in your life and go, "Yeah, this is the thing that hits hardest." And sometimes when people are really struggling, I have them do this little game where I say, "Okay, so you've got your list of 20 causes that you're really interested in. Let's look at the first two and compare those two. Which of those two is most important?" Then we just work our way down the list until you get to the end. So you're never comparing more than two things at once, because otherwise it's just overwhelming. But if your list is drug abuse and reproductive rights and social justice for immigrants and racial justice, you would just start at the top and say, "Okay, well, do I care more about drug abuse and helping with that? Or do I care more about reproductive rights?" And then whichever one fell off the list, you'd go, "Okay, reproductive rights, and then immigrant rights." You just keep working your way down.

Ame Sanders  15:11 

I love that.

Omkari Williams  15:12 

Yeah, because it's otherwise, your brain just sort of explodes. It's like, I care about all these things.

Ame Sanders  15:18 

It feels like the eye doctor test where they say, "Is this better or worse or better or worse?" So, you worked your way down through it, right?

Omkari Williams  15:25 

Yes, I had not thought about it that way, but it's basically the eye doctor test for activism. There you go. 

-Deep vs Shallow Work

Ame Sanders  15:32 

So, one of the pieces of advice you gave was to find just a couple of things that you can really focus your energy on. Then you introduce this concept that I want to talk a little bit more about, this idea of deep versus shallow work. Talk a little bit about that, and what you mean by that, because that was really eye-opening for me.

Omkari Williams  15:56 

So, I spend a lot of time thinking about our cultural influences, because it shapes how we move through the world. We do things really differently depending on the cultural influences around us. One of our, to my mind, unfortunate cultural influences is scrolling, right? Because you just sort of scroll and the next thing you know, an hour's gone by, and you haven't really gotten into anything in a meaningful way, but you still just spent an hour of your time. I realized that this is kind of what we're doing on the regular. Instead of going deep into something, we're just sort of staying on the surface of a bunch of things. It's not that I believe you have to go deep into everything, but there is a real difference between deep work and shallow work.

Deep work has an impact. Deep work has legs. It moves things. It gives you a sense of fulfillment that shallow work doesn't give you. It moves the needle on things. Shallow work just is sort of like cotton candy, right? It's just these empty calories. It doesn't mean that you always have to be doing deep work. Stocking coffee where your group meets to discuss their activist plan is not deep work, but it's necessary. So, there is a place for work that is not deep work. Everything doesn't have to be so important. But to have an awareness of what am I doing? Is it actually moving something forward, or is it just sort of scratching that itch for a little hit of dopamine, and then I just keep going from there, and I don't really notice that we haven't made the change we're looking to make? We haven't advanced the cause we're looking to advance. So, I think it's just an important thing to think about. I don't want people to use it to shame themselves, but just keep it in mind. It's like, "Huh. Is this doing what you needed to do?" If not, that's fine. But, you know, make a different decision. 

Ame Sanders  18:19 

I like the notion that you're talking about in terms of deep and shallow engagement and work. But I also, I loved that there was an example that you gave that had to do with thinking about the change that you want to affect, and choosing a change within that system or that structure that will affect the system. You gave an example in the book about recycling, and I thought it was really insightful, because sometimes we do an action that can still be quite involved or take time, but it doesn't really change the system. 

Omkari Williams  18:59 

Yeah. So, recycling. I kind of feel like I want years of my life back from recycling, because I started recycling as a child, and it wasn't until I was an adult that I really understood that, in a lot of ways, recycling is just a scam that companies put out there to make us feel better about product packaging that is polluting the world. I mean, a minuscule amount of plastic is recycled. A small amount of paper is recycled, and these companies have known this for years. Also, I don't like being lied to. But with recycling, I think now, when I think about it, I think about the goal for me is not to recycle, although I still do. The goal is to get those kinds of companies to change their packaging. The goal is to get away from plastic. The goal is to get down to things that will break down in a reasonable time in the environment, not outlive me by hundreds or thousands of years.

Making decisions based on that is better. So, I don't use liquid detergent. I use laundry powder, which is what I actually grew up with when I was a kid. Laundry detergent came in a box. So, I've gone back to that, because the paper bag that it comes in will break down in my compost bin, and that feels much better to me. But also pushing companies to do that and saying we're going to withdraw our money from you if you're not upholding our values. That's across the board. Doesn't have to just be recycling. It's just if a company is not in line with your values, why are you supporting them? And that's also part of deep work. It's like looking and seeing who was upholding my values and who was violating my values.

-How Far To Go

Ame Sanders  21:12 

So, I want to take a minute and revisit something that you were talking about earlier, which is in addition to this question of where you focus your time and how you can choose your priorities, there's a question of how far to go. You mentioned earlier that that can change for us over time with our situation and our context, but it's something that I've been struggling with a little bit lately about how far to go. I just want to explore that a little bit more. I don't feel like we exhausted that a minute ago. I feel like there's still some more to talk about there. Because, for example, this summer, I've been focused on immigration justice and working with some community members around that, and I have asked myself, "How far should I go? Would I go? Would I be the Underground Railroad, or am I the person fixing coffee for the movement? What am I doing?" So, maybe you can coach us a little bit on that in terms of how far we go and how to think about that.

Omkari Williams  22:25 

That makes me think of a question that I get when I give a talk, probably more than any other question, which is, What can I do? What should I do? What can I do? And my answer is, I can't tell you that, because there are so many elements in that. One of them, especially right now with the immigration situation, is what's your risk tolerance? You know, let's be honest. What is your risk tolerance? Are you willing to risk being grabbed by these guys with no ID and face masks over their faces? So, you don't even know who's grabbed you, or are you not? Who would be impacted by your actions? 

I have a take that is probably not going to be the most popular with some people, but I was thinking about the bill that just passed Congress last week, that is going to take health care away from millions and millions of Americans, and so many other really wrong things in order to give a huge tax break to the already obscenely wealthy among us. People were really excoriating members of Congress for voting for the bill. And as much as there's part of me that just wants to honestly shake them till their teeth rattle in their head, there's this other part of me that says these people are scared, and they're not scared just for themselves, which is one kind of fear. They're scared for their families. We just saw a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband murdered in their home, and another lawmaker and his wife shot in their home. These people are afraid for not only themselves, but for their families. And as much as I would like to get up on my soapbox and say, "Yes, but you decided to run for office. You should be brave." They may be brave for themselves, but is it even fair to ask them to put their families at risk?

So, I'm struggling with, how do we navigate in this incredibly violent moment that we're living in? Doing what we know to be the right thing, and where we are? That's why I say, I really think it's about your personal risk tolerance, and that there's not an easy answer. I don't think it helps us to expect our elected officials to be braver than we are. It kind of pains me to say that, but again, it's not just about them. It's about their families. I think about what I would do for my family, and I can't fault them in that way. I can fault them for the decisions that have gotten us to this point. But I understand that kind of anxiety and fear, and I think it's a really challenging time, and we need to be as courageous as we can be. And I think we need to not shame other people who may not be as brave as we are.

Ame Sanders  25:52 

And I would say similar to what you said a minute ago, not shame ourselves either. Because we have to find, as you're just discussing, the risk that we're willing to take for ourselves and those that we love and that are around us. You used a term in the book that I really liked, which was called, you said, "radically realistic." That's the idea that you really concentrate on being realistic about what you do.

-Radically Realistic

Omkari Williams  26:18 

You know, I am both an idealist and a pragmatist. There's a world I see in my mind's eye and I am really, really pragmatic about, how do we move from here to there? Part of that pragmatism is not expecting people to do things that they can't do. You're not going to get blood from a turnip. Don't try. Do something else. Look at what's around you. What can you move? What small step can you take? What small win can you get, instead of looking for the huge win that is maybe just not out there for you right now and understand the value of moving things forward.

-Making Micro Activism Part of Everyday Life

Ame Sanders  27:04 

So let's stay with that for a minute then, and let's think about. Let's say that we've taken your advice, Coach Omkari, and we have prioritized the just two or three things that are the most important to us. We have assessed our level of capacity and risk tolerance to move forward on it. We've understood with your archetypes what our role might be, and we've found ourselves in those sort of micro activism places. Small actions can be really mighty, like you're saying. They can make a difference when you stay at them for a long time and when you do them every day. So, talk a little bit, or coach us a little bit about how we can make these micro activism part of our everyday life and stay committed to it over the long haul.

Omkari Williams  28:01 

Okay, so the first thing is to go back to what we were talking about in terms of choosing. It's really easy to stay with something that you really care about. Don't pick something that's just like it's the trend to care about this thing. It needs to matter to you if you're going to stay with it for the long haul. Then, once you have the thing that matters to you, I always suggest finding at least one other person, because teamwork is just better. You know, as I said, I'm an introvert, but still, there are things that I do with other people because it's just more effective. It's more fun. Activism is not meant to be a slog. You can have a lot of fun, and fun is good. Finding the joy in your work and finding the joy in the small successes is really important. You will not stay with something over the long haul if it's just painful all the time. Not if you don't have to, you won't.

And so finding your way to bring joy to the work that you're doing, which is often about, how are you making someone's life better, and seeing that. It doesn't have to be huge. You're not solving the problem of world hunger, but maybe you're feeding one person. Maybe you're spending one afternoon a week at the food pantry, and you start to get to know the people who are there, and you start to build community with them, and you start to see what you're helping make possible. Then it's easy to keep doing it. You know? It's when it feels like it is not paying off that we tend to drop things. So seeing the payoff, even if it's just tiny, makes a huge difference. And recognizing your job isn't to fix this problem. Your job is to help fix this problem. It's to move things along. If you happen to get to the end of the problem, yay. 

But that's not most of us. Most of us aren't going to see the things that we care about fixed the way we would like to see them fixed. But it didn't stop our forebearers from fighting against slavery, right? They didn't say, "Oh, well, if I'm not going to see the end of it, I'm not going to do it." It didn't stop the people who built the pyramids from building the pyramids. They didn't say, "Oh, you know, oh, well. I'm never going to see what this looks like. So, you know, forget putting this stone in place." There's a collective vision that gets shared, and we do our part in advancing that vision and continuing the vision and handing it over to the next generation. I think we need to give value to that and not just look at it as, "If I can't see the end of this, then this is not really worthwhile.

Ame Sanders 31:14

You’re right. So many of the things that we would have at the top of our list are things that we will not see the end of in our lifetime, most likely. Nor have generations before us seen the end of them either. So, I think that’s really good advice to be practical and realistic about our contributions and to recognize we are, in some cases, one of those 250,000 people. We aren’t THE solver, which is hard for some of us to take. And also, there was another piece of advice that you had that I really liked that spoke to me, was also systematize some of this stuff for yourself. This is a simple example, but if you’re calling your elected officials once or twice a week or once or twice a month, have them on speed dial on your cell phone. Don’t be looking them up all the time or wondering how to get in touch with them or what to do. Go ahead and set it up so you can be successful in the long haul.

Omkari Williams 32:19

You know, not only have their numbers in your phone, put the day you're calling them in your calendar so you don't forget, right? The more you can make it like brushing your teeth, something that you just do without having to debate whether you're gonna do it. You don't think, I don't think, “Oh, I'm gonna brush my teeth.” You just brush your teeth. If your activism can be set up like that, it makes it so much easier. Having to decide is so annoying because deciding takes energy. If you don't have to decide, then that energy can just go to the work like, “Oh no, this decision has already been made. This is when I do this thing.” And you just do it at the end.

-A Word About Story Sharing

Ame Sanders 33:02

I wanna change gears a little bit from this discussion and ask your opinion. So, you're a podcaster and you're a speaker and you're a storyteller. I wanted to ask your opinion about story and to talk a little bit about story. Particularly, you know you talked already about the origin story that each of us carries that helps us identify what's important for us to be active about. Talk a little bit about the use of stories–our stories, other peoples’ stories– to move a movement forward and or to shift culture in a community because I know you have some wisdom on that to share.

Omkari Williams 33:50

Well thank you for saying so. I love story. I think that story is like nothing else because I remember being maybe seven or eight years old and saying to my parents that there were only like seven stories in the world. There were just all these different little sub-stories, depending on the person, right? I just saw the world as these broad stories that we all shared, and then our lives were just little individual chapters, little short chapters, and a story about love or a story about jealousy or a story about need, right?

So, I've always felt that we are connected by story like nothing else because they're just aren't that many themes that humans are really interested in. When we tell our story to someone and they receive our story, we are opening a window into our lives, and we are giving them a gift of our truth about something. And it may or may not resonate for them in terms of they experience that truth the same way, but it will trigger something in them, which says, “Even if this particular story, it lands a little differently for me, I have a story that it makes me think of.” And so even when we really disagree with people about something, I feel like if we can get to my story of why I think this way and your story of why you think the way you think, that at the very minimum, we've closed the gap between us a little bit. We understand each other a little bit better, and from there, who knows what happens. But I think it's incredibly important that we understand that this human experience is a shared experience, and no one gets up in the morning and says, “How can I ruin my life today?” Right? We all get up, and we want the day to go well. We want the people we love to be safe and cared for. We have different stories about what that looks like and how we get there, but the underlying desire is the same, and if we can get to the underlying desire of things, then there's a different conversation that gets to happen.

Ame Sanders 36:23

Yeah. I love that idea. So, when we share our stories with one another, I can argue with your opinion, maybe even with your facts, but I can’t argue with your story because it’s your story.

Omkari Williams 36:36

Yeah. I think that it’s also really important to understand that story is how we make sense of the world, and so sometimes you know someone’s facts, they’ll just be off. They’ll be wrong. But they have made sense of the world in a specific way because of what they believe. Then there’s another conversation to maybe happen. But unless we respect that we all have our stories and our stories are not always accurate, I don’t think there’s any way for us to really connect to another person. That is what we’re experiencing right now. We’re experiencing a lack of connection and the idea that somehow what one group wants is antithetical to what another group wants. I think that’s just the surface layer. But if you get underneath it, no, we all want certain things, and it’s how we decide to get there. But how you decide to get there is actually a conversation you can have if you can acknowledge the shared desire for security or for safety for love for family, then a conversation is possible. It’s when we are missing the understanding that our dreams are not that different in their most important ways than someone else’s dreams that we get into trouble

Ame Sanders 38:16

So, thank you for sharing that. Is there anything that we haven’t talked about that you really think we ought to cover today?

-The Role of Love

Omkari Williams  38:24

That’s a good question. Something I think is really important, especially in this moment and time when we are so fractured, is to really understand the role of love in our desire for a more perfect union. And that love is not the property of any one group. All of humans, all animals have love. You know, I just think it’s really important for us not to discount that and to actually lift it up because love is taking a beating right now, and that concerns me a great deal.

Ame Sanders 39:14

Yeah. So you’ve told us to find joy in activism, and now you’re telling us to love in our activism as well. 

Omkari Williams 39:22

I think that love and joy are so closely connected, you know? I mean, even weird things like I know people who love roller coasters. I am not that person, but they get great joy out of being on a roller coaster, and I’m like, Oh no no no no. I’ll just stay here on the ground.” But you know, if the rollercoaster is the thing that brings you joy, then do the roller coaster cause, you know? Because it’s hard right now. If the thing that brings you joy is a walk in the woods, do the walk in the woods. Sit by the ocean. Read the book that has no redeeming social value but just brings you pleasure to read. These are all things that you love, and to connect to the love in them intentionally, to think, “You know, I’m reading this book because I love to read. I’m in the mountains because I love the mountains. I love looking at the mountains. I love just how my eye travels across the hills and the green of the trees.” There’s something that expands in our soul when we focus on things that we love. And there’s something that contracts in our soul when all we’re looking at is what’s hard and what’s wrong. I think that even though it is very hard and there is a good deal wrong, we need to keep looking for the things we love and at the things we love so that we don’t get buried by the grief that is so present right now.

-Stepping Into Truth

Ame Sanders 41:00

This has been such a lovely conversation. One of the things that I know you have done in the past is you’ve had a podcast. You have episodes out there that are still so beautiful and full of wisdom, and I’d like for you just to take a minute to tell us about the podcast, those episodes, even though it’s not active right now. Talk a little bit about what we might find if we go out and explore those.

Omkari Williams 41:26

Sure.  So, the podcast is called Stepping into Truth, and I think I’m trying to think. I can’t remember if I have like 70 episodes or something like that. There’s a lot. It was an experiment in the beginning. I wanted to talk with activists that I knew in various places. I started where I was living at the time in Savannah, Georgia, and spoke to a friend of mine who is honestly just one of the most amazing activists I’ve ever met. Her name is Coco Papy. I thought, “Oh, this is really interesting because if you lived in Savannah, you probably knew Coco, but if you lived anywhere else, you didn’t.” And I thought there are so many people doing amazing work around the country who we don’t know. We just don’t know them, but they are important in their communities. So, I started actively seeking out people doing really cool things in their different fields and their different locations

So, I interviewed a ton of them, and it was so enlightening because some of these people were doing things that I really knew nothing about. They were in fields I just didn’t know anything about. I remember there were two women who had written a book about how our social safety structures actually keep women and girls in poverty. I really did not know that much about that. I mean, I knew a little bit, but it was so interesting to talk to them and hear that.

There was another woman who wrote a book about the bonobo ape culture, and how, in the bonobo culture, there is no sexual violence. Since bonobos are one of our closest relatives, she extrapolated and was like, “Well, what if we did with bonobos to eliminate sexual violence in our society?” I mean, just the way people think and the things that concern them and the way they engage with the problems that they see because of their jobs or because of where they live, I just love that because right where we’re planted, we can all make a huge difference. People do it in different ways, but I think that the thing I love most about the podcast is these were all people who saw a problem and wanted to confront it in some way, shape, or form. That’s, I think, that any of us can do

-Root Into Community

Ame Sanders 44:23

So, I wanted to talk a little bit about your podcast because I do think that the episodes that I’ve looked at and listen to, I think that it is very similar to the approach that I’ve had with the interviews that I do, which is to talk to people who are working in their own communities. And just as you said, beautifully, we can make a difference right where we’re planted. That is such a powerful message to maybe end our discussion on, because I think it speaks to all of the things that we’ve talked about in terms of micro activism of making priorities. It is about making a difference right where we’re planted 

Omkari Williams 45:03

Yeah. Because, here’s the thing. All we have to do is walk outside our door and if we’re really looking, we’ll see something that needs fixing, right? There’s some structural system. Maybe it’s just there’s too much litter on the street. Maybe we encounter unhoused people or we know that there’s hunger in our community. There’s always something right where we are. Or maybe you’re in South Carolina, which is really vulnerable to climate change. I mean there’s so many things. All you have to do is look. And then once you’ve looked, match what you’re interested in to what you’re seeing and work locally.

 I think, especially now, especially as things are kind of going pear-shaped in the country, it’s particularly important to pick up the slack in our own communities. To pick up the slack for programs that are being cut. To pick up the slack where if after-school programs go away, that’s gonna force a lot of women out of the workforce because someone’s gotta take care of their kids. How do we help support those women so that either they can keep working or we find out what the need is and try and meet the need. There are always, always challenges in any society in any community. Often we turn away from them and I’m saying instead of turning away, turn towards and root down into your local society. Root into your community.

One thing that I’ve been doing lately is I’ll see people on the street that I walked by and walked by every day for the years that I’ve lived here. I don’t know their names. We always say hi, but I don’t know their names. Now I’m making a point of getting to know their names. I will stop them and say, “Hi. You know, we see each other all the time. I’m Omkari. What’s your name?” It’s a small thing, but I think it’s a really important thing because it builds another layer. It weaves another thread in the web of community. So, my neighbor Jim, who I would see pretty much every day, I didn’t know his name until a couple of months ago. We have a completely different interaction now. Instead of just saying hi as we pass, we’ll stop and talk for a few minutes. So, if Jim needed something, I think he would feel much more comfortable coming to me and asking for help, and vice versa. That really matters.

Ame Sanders 47:59

Sometimes it is the small micro actions that you do consistently and with purpose and intention that can make all the difference in how we relate with one another and with our community. So, Omkari Williams, thank you so much for giving us these little coaching sessions and for sharing your wisdom with us today.

Omkari Williams 48:18

Thank you so much, Ame. It’s been a real joy to speak with you.

Ame Sanders 48:26

This has been the State of Inclusion podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, the best compliment for our work is your willingness to share the podcast or discuss these ideas with others. If you’d like to hear more about the practice of building an inclusive and equitable community, head over to the inclusivecommunity.com and sign up for our newsletter. Also feel free to leave us a review or reach out. We’d love to hear from you. Thanks so much for listening and join us again next time.

CONTRIBUTORS

Guest: Omkari Williams

Host: Ame Sanders

Social Media and Marketing Coordinator: Kayla Nelson

Podcast Coordinator: Emma Winiski

Sound: Uros Nikolic

Ame Sanders
Founder of State of Inclusion. A seasoned leader & change-maker, she is focused on positive change within communities.
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