Leah Rothstein, Coauthor of JUST ACTION, the Sequel to Color of Law

Introducer

This is the ARCC of Change with Donzel Leggett, a podcast from the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition, an organization dedicated to eradicating racism and hate and spreading anti-racism. Listen as Donzel talks about the relevant topics that will inspire you and help build your capability to take action and change the world, because none of us are doing enough as long as racism still exists. And now here's your host. Donzel Leggett.

Donzel - Intro

Hello and welcome to the first episode of season four of the ARCC of Change with Donzel Leggett. In this episode, I welcome ARCC members Dina Kinkaid, Dan Mouse, and Rachelle Landry to formally launch the ARCC Personal Transformation Experience, our unique methodology designed to accelerate your journey to be anti-racist and to adopt the mindset of HOPE, that's HOPE: How Optimistic People Endure. Now let's get started with our show. 

Podcast Start

Donzel Leggett

So, I am Donzel Leggett, host of the ARCC of Change Podcast and founder of the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition, or ARCC. Our vision at ARCC is to build a racism-free world, and our mission is to provide inspiration, education, and support for you to transform, practice, and spread anti-racism and anti-hate. Now this begins with our three-step process of personal transformation to anti-racism. The first step is erasing your ignorance about racism and hate. The second step is educating yourself about anti-racism. And the third step is building the character and confidence to stand up, speak out, and take action to spread anti-racism and anti-hate and make positive change happen. Now we start and ended season 3 focused on hope. That's HOPE: How Optimistic People Endure. We highlighted the fact that although progress is slow in the fight to end racism, in the fight for equity and social justice, we all must dig deep, stay optimistic and endure the struggles, the setbacks and the frustrations because eventually, progress will be made. Especially if you've transformed yourself to be anti-racist by following those steps. Those same steps that I say every single episode of the arc of change. Those same steps I just reviewed a few minutes ago. Step one: erase your ignorance about racism and hate. Step two: Educate yourself about anti-racism. And step three and most importantly, building your confidence to stand up, to speak out, and to take action to spread anti-racism. Now, as we start season 4, we're going to be introducing our unique methodology to actually help you accelerate your journey by facilitating and leading you through each of these three steps. I believe this is the biggest milestone achieved for us at the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition or ARCC. This unique methodology is called the ARCC Personal Transformation Experience and we're launching it now. And formally making it available for you for the very first time. 

Now let me give you a little history. I developed the first ARCC transformation training and deployed it internally back in 2021 with a cohort of over 30 ARCC members. Now each of them reported incredible personal transformation and capability-building results that were not only much more impactful than any training that they had received elsewhere. Diversity, equity, inclusion, training or belonging training, or all those other types of trainings that they had experienced, this was, they said, was much, much more effective and much, much more powerful in building their knowledge. And more specifically, in preparing them to take anti-racist action. But they also said it impacted their lives positively outside of the genre of anti-racism by building greater self-confidence. Many of the attendees reported doing things that they would have never done before if it weren't for the increased self-insight and self-confidence that they built going through that ARCC training. Many reported taking career steps that they wouldn't have had the confidence to take before if it weren't for that ARCC training. It was an impactful trend. 

Unfortunately, there was a problem. Yes, this initial training was super impactful. But it was also extremely content- and self-study heavy with a lot of reading and a lot of research required, making it less approachable and less accessible for some people, especially those with different learning styles and different capability levels, it also wasn't the most time efficient as it needed to be, I knew that those things had to be addressed if we ever wanted to make this training available to the public. So, I chartered a team to refine the training and make it more approachable, make it more accessible, make it more interactive, and make it more time-efficient, while maintaining or increasing that differential impact that we know we achieved before. The impact had to continue to be at that extremely high level. That was the most important outcome of that initial training. This group of volunteers, initially led by Monica Kakowski, evolved into the powerful team of Dina Kinkaid, who volunteered to be the project leader to get it over the finish line, Dan Mouse, Rachelle Landry, Carlos Caballero, and Gabby Davis. The team has now developed what I believe is an even better arc personal transformation experience than my first version. I'm confident that this experience— in fact, we stopped calling it a training as we have before. It is an experience. Will inspire, educate, and support you to transform, practice and spread anti-racism and accelerate your journey to be anti-racist and to adopt the mindset of hope. HOPE: How Optimistic People Endure. Joining us in the next segment are three of the members of the team that developed the ARCC personal transformation experience. And these three ARCC members will also act as the primary facilitators of the experience. Dina Kincaid. Dan Mouse and Rachelle Landry are all here. And they join me next.

Introducer

The ARCC of Change broadcast is brought to you by the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition. Visit us at joinarcc.org to learn more about ARCC and join our movement.

Donzel Leggett

All right. Welcome back to the ARCC of Change. And as promised, we're here with Dina Kinkaid. Dan Mouse, and Rachelle Landry. Dina, Dan Rachelle, welcome to the ARCC of Change.

Dina, Dan, Rachelle

Happy to be here.

Donzel Leggett

Fantastic. Thank you all for joining. I know you all very well. But the audience doesn't know you, so please take a few moments and introduce yourselves.

Rachelle Landry

Well, wonderful. Well, I can start first. My name is Rachelle Landry. My pronouns are she/her. I would say identify as a white, able-bodied, heterosexual woman. I grew up in a middle-class family and considered my life path one of privilege. I was born in Canada but was honored to move here 12 years ago to the United. States, and I have the privilege of being a part of two countries as a citizen, so that's really fantastic for my life journey. I currently live in the Twin Cities, and I have a fulfilling career in the field of health safety and environment. I carry multiple hats, so I'm proud to be a wife, mother, aunt, niece, sister, cousin, friend to many, and I do spend a fair amount of my time outside of work mentoring, providing resources, and volunteering my spare time specifically in the areas of building a racism-free world, protecting our planet, mentoring women in the workplace, improving food security, as well as supporting the well-being of children during crisis. So, some of the organizations are obviously ARCC, the Minneapolis Crisis Nursery, Second Harvest Heartland, the Mentee program, and I'm also actively involved in a very important volunteer council at my place of work.

Donzel Leggett

Wow, that's a lot. Thank you so much, Rachelle. Who would like to go next?

Dina Kinkaid

Rachelle's amazing and I'm honored to call her my friend, but I'd like to introduce myself. So, my name is Dina Kinkaid and I'm from Australia. I live currently in the United States, and I also consider my life path one of privilege. At work, I'm known as a coach and a mentor, and I've spent my whole career working in food factories around the world. My education background is in engineering, and I'm currently studying to complete my Masters in Business Administration. Outside work, I try to be the best mum I can. I'm a wife, a community member, and I volunteer at the local high school, at ARCC, and then at mentoring and mentoring. And then for fun, I'm an adventurer and a globally ranked endurance athlete.

Donzel Leggett

Wow, setting the bar high, Dina. All right, Dan, what about you?

Dan Mouse

Yeah. Pleasure to meet you all. Yeah. My name is Dan Mouse. My pronouns are he and him. I identify as a white heterosexual, able-bodied male. I was born and raised on a small family farm in central Minnesota. So, we did not have a lot of money growing up, but we were privileged and we were always able to eat and we had clothes on our back and we were able to go to school. I currently reside in the Minnesota Twin Cities suburb of Minnetrista, married to my wife Anne for 27 years and we have three adult children that were all fortunate to be able to complete college. I love to spend time focusing on my health, although I am not globally ranked as Dina is, I'm going to have a passion for biking that I developed a couple of years ago. I love the outdoors, and my wife and I travel anytime we can often to visit our children who live outside the state of Minnesota. I currently volunteer for the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition or ARCC, Launch Ministry, another local engineer organization here and then the Minnesota Fastpitch Organization, where my daughter played for many years. And then finally like Rachelle, I volunteer on the Council at my office.

Donzel Leggett

Well, thank you, Dan. And for those of you who may recognize Dan's voice and you’re listeners who have been with us for our four seasons, you'll remember that Dan appeared on a podcast before. If I’m not mistaken, I think it was season one, maybe episode 9 or 10, but please go back and check that episode out, Dan was tremendous in that episode, and I'm sure he's gonna bring the fire. And today, uh, now with, with those introductions. I'm really happy to move into the topic. It's so exciting to talk about this because what we're going to talk about today is something that ARCC or the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition has been working toward for a long time. This is one of our biggest and greatest milestones, as far as I'm concerned. So I would like the team to start telling us about the new ARCC personal transformation experience that you've all been working on. Let's talk about and let the audience know what it's all about and why it's so critical to ARCC’s vision and ARCC’s mission.

Dina Kinkaid

I have a few words to describe what it's all about, so if you just want to remember one thing from the transformation course is the idea of becoming a changemaker. But most people, when they first join ARCC, you know, they don't know how to be their best changemaker. “I wanna be better” “I wanna start becoming a changemaker. How do I do that?” And the transformation course gives you a fast-track to becoming a change maker in your network, in your community, in your world. So we're gonna think about how do we do, we build together a racism-free world and how do we spread anti-racism? The course has three key objectives to help you do that, so one of them is just thinking about erasing your ignorance about racism and hate, so we all have blind spots, things that we don't know about. So, education training helps us remove our blind spots and we consider that to be part of your race and your ignorance path and accepting ignorance that we have and then moving on through education. Action and then specifically, the education's gonna focus on anti-racism. So, we know that we want a racism-free world, but the idea of what is anti-racism is often quite mysterious to all of us because we don't have that in our lives yet. So it's our job as ARCC to put that put that out there and create a common definition for all of us to use about what is anti-racism, because that's what we want to be all about. Then coming to this concept of well, “I understand my ignorance. I'm working on it. I'm educating myself about anti-racism, but now I need to build confidence, courage, I need to build my own abilities to speak out and take action.” And that's actually a huge road for all of us. And I'm even— I'm on that road today. So this is my first ever podcast to talk about anti-racism. So all those steps that each of us take small actions. To begin, our confidence, to speak out and take action against racism, and so that that's the last part of the course is to really focus on each of us building that within our own network, within our own community, in our own way. It's structured over five classes, each preparing you to take action in your own personal transformation in your community, and then we build knowledge using readings and assessments and videos and articles and some deep reflection time in small groups so your peers in this course really make a difference to your learning as well. And then the homework’s minimal. We're just focused on helping you decide what progress you can make to impact your world with your new knowledge. You take that taking that perspective and finding a way to expose yourself to complexities and pain of racism, and then building your confidence with your classmates that make you feel ready and eager to create change.

Donzel Leggett

Wow, that sounds incredible. And Dina, I want to commend you for role-modeling. Like you said, this is your first ever podcast. I know when I first approached you to do it, you weren't jumping for joy, you were a little bit nervous, but you are coming across like a star that's been doing this a long time. And I'm guessing it's because the character and confidence that you've been building by working on this experience. I'm now think—talking about this experience, I mean, I am again very excited about it. I think it's again the biggest milestone for us in our 3 1/2 years of being in existence to be able to offer this, this training to the public or this experience to the public. You've all had diversity and equity inclusion, types of training before. What is different about this ARCC or ARCC brand new experience that we're bringing forth today? What makes it different and why is that difference important? Who's going to take that?

Rachelle Landry

I can take that down. So it's Rachelle. You are correct. We've all been exposed to various different DEI training and there's a lot of different types of trainings out there. And there's some good ones. You know, I've been through some, I've learned a lot from those experiences and trainings. The one thing that I would say is that they're predominantly. Focused on building empathy with a goal to create a more inclusive and equitable world. Where everyone's contributions are valued, and that's good. That's a great, great goal, and, you know, you can learn a lot from those trainings and experiences. But what I believe is often missed is this opportunity for really true deep self-reflection in the presence of our own ignorance, which in my opinion is the first step to true transformation. So, I can educate myself, I can go through all the things that I need to learn, but if I don't really take a step back and really understand who I am and the ignorance that I have, it's really hard to start a transformational journey. I also feel like a lot of the trainings that I've been part of, skim the surface of what action truly is to spread anti-racism and anti-hate. And So what I really love about this new personal transformational experience is that we're going to dive deep into some topics we often don't have the courage to discuss. And this is going to be pivotal in building our confidence to do so much more than what we originally thought possible; if someone told me three years ago I was going to be a facilitator for a transformational experience like this, I would have not believed it. And however, through the resources of ARCC coupled with this, the three clear steps that Dina discussed when you asked the previous question, here I am! I'm recording a podcast with you today and I'm getting ready to facilitate our first cohort. So I'm an example of following the process and doing that deep reflection and really truly immersing yourself not just in a training but in an experience, really elevates the capability. And when I say capability, that courage, confidence, character that you need to be able to really take, what I would say, more meaningful action to make positive change in this world.

Donzel Leggett

Well, thank you so much, Rachelle. And yes, I want to commend you as well for stepping up to the plate and role-modeling what taking action really looks like. Rachelle is probably one of the most empathetic people I've ever met. She cares, and you can feel it anytime you're around her. But to see her taking this kind of action and demonstrating that kind of courage and putting herself out there really, really impressive. Rachelle, I know it's going to make a huge difference as you're helping facilitate these sessions. 

Now, you guys all again mentioned you've been in DEI sort of courses and you probably are aware that there's been a backlash as of late in the current environment against diversity, equity inclusion, anti-racism work, anti-woke, whatever they want to call these terms. This sort of feeling seems to become pervasive in our politics and even some companies have been walking back their commitments to the diversity and equity inclusion type of work within their organizations. What inspired you guys to want to develop this transformation experience with ARCC? And do you think it's more or less important in this current environment that we're in right now, who's got that one?

Dan Mouse

Yeah, I can. I can take that one. And this is a starting point here, Donzel. You know, first, I'll give you a little bit of my history as it relates to racism and anti-racism. The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis in May of 2020 is really what pushed me to accelerate my racism and anti-racism learning journey. Now looking back, I would classify myself as a non-racist. At that time, I didn't understand that terminology at the time, but I do now I immediately became involved with the Minnesota Business Coalition for Racial Equity. And began learning from many diversity, inclusion, and belonging professionals. I was a member of the Launch Ministry Board and we all participated in a diversity course as part of our role on the board. And then finally, I joined ARCC in the fall of 2020 and participated in, I guess what we might call kind of the alpha diversity course taught by ARCC, which Donzel led for us. And in that course in particular and for ARCC as well, we read a lot of books, we watched videos, and we began having some discussions about anti racism. Both of them were heavy on reading, very time consuming. I've been involved in the learning and development space at my place of employment for over 20 years and learned a lot about adult learning principles over the years, and so I knew we had to apply some of these principles into the new ARCC anti-racism course. So I volunteered to help create this next version, which we now have available. This work, this learning work is even more important today, and it was following the murder of George Floyd at that time. There was a lot of energy and passion from a lot of play. This is to do something and I don't know that a lot of people knew what to do, but they came together and they learned and talked and discussed, and in many cases that action was defined as empathy or allyship as was mentioned earlier. You know, now it's been four years since George Floyd's murder and many organizations and groups and individuals are stepping back from that, due to the political nature of our country right now, and so we're losing momentum in that anti-racism journey, this course will energize or reenergize participants to learn about themselves and their actions or inactions and give them some tools to respond and act against racist words and behaviors, and I can honestly say, I was playing golf about a year and a half ago with a with a couple of my old college buddies and some comments were made, and it is the first time that I was actually able to speak up and put an end to the conversation in the direction that it was going and while that wasn't easy for me, and looking back on it, I certainly could have done it differently. I was proud of the fact that I was prepared to at least say something.

Donzel Leggett

Thank you, Dan. And all of us are just trying to learn more everyday, build more confidence everyday, surround ourselves with positive thinkers who are in the same sort of journey that we're in, so that when those situations occur, we're ready. We may not be perfect, but at least we acted, so I really appreciate what you said, Dan, because like you said, man, four years ago, there was outrage and there was pressure and many companies and many organizations committed to doing things. And now four years later, a lot of those commitment, actually, were never lived up to. And progress that was promised to be made, not only was it made, but actually ground was lost in many, many instances. It will take real committed action from all of us to make progress. And it starts with us as individuals. Now it's one thing for you guys to be willing to spend time developing this experience, developing this content, it's another thing to do with, Dan just talked about, take action. What Dina talked about, take action. What Rachelle talked about, take action and commit yourself and your emotions and your well-being to actually being a facilitator, where you're now right there helping teach, providing examples and leading people through this experience. You all have agreed to do that. What inspired you to want to be facilitators and what do you think has helped prepare you to take on this challenge?

Rachelle Landry

Well, I think that's a really great question. Thanks for asking. You know if I self-reflect on that question and I think about my personal journey, I started really, truly my transformational journey when I joined ARCC over three years ago. I think I would say that because I'm a very empathetic person, as you mentioned and I'm a nice person, I thought well, that's all I needed to be. And society is just “be nice and smile and treat others like I would like to be treated.” But over the course of my time with ARCC, as well as just surrounding myself with diverse perspective of my colleagues and friends and family, you know, I knew I had to do something a lot deeper than that. I also took the original alpha course that ARCC provided, which was really a launchpad for me. 

So, I would have to say in the last three years I've taken the time to really erase my ignorance. I'm not perfect, but I'm trying to make sure that I'm always seeking diverse perspectives and always in a mode of learning through education, reading books and such, listening to stories, and participating where I need to. And then you know, you know, as you start to go through those first two steps with ARCC, you start to build a little bit of confidence. And so, I started taking these small action steps so that I could build my confidence through conversations with family members and volunteering. But even my volunteering was more behind-the-scenes volunteering. So if you think of my time at ARCC for the last three years, I'm part of member care. So I look at emails, I send welcome notes. But that's kind of behind-the-scenes. And as I continue to build more of that character and confidence, I knew that I was starting to get to a point where I'm like, “I can do more.” I can push more and Donzel, you've been a you've been a great mentor, you always, you always know how to inspire and push to say, but we can do more. And so I'm at the point in my in my journey where I think it's time to take, I would say, more meaningful outward action to really live the mission and vision of what ARCC is trying to  achieve. If I and as we've talked about, I'm not gonna lie, it it's a big step, right? To be, you know, on a public podcast to be in front of people that you don't know. This is not just your friends and colleagues. These are people you've never met before. Yeah. And so, it can be intimidating and it can be a little bit scary, but I think that's just part of your journey, right? You have to lean into the uncomfortable if you want to get to a next level of progress and where you're trying to go. So I'm really ready for this next step and I'm really super excited to meet our first cohort. And Dan and I go way back. So, I'm really excited to be able to co-facilitate with Dan and work with Dina, who've been who've been by my side along this transformational journey. So really excited. I'm just ready. It's part of it's part of the journey and you get to a point where you're like, “OK, let's do something bigger.” And this is going to be my next big.

Dan Mouse

Yeah, Rachelle is amazing. And I'm sure Donzel will comment on that again more later. But I'm lucky to be partnered with Rachelle and with Dina as well, as we bring this this course together. So I think by being surrounded by other individuals who have strengths and are going to help me grow along the way is really, really helpful. I'm a firm believer in the fact that teaching. Is the best way to learn. It forces us to dig deeper to force additional learning to force deeper understanding and to consider examples of my personal behaviors. So, teaching also provides a great opportunity to learn from everyone else, to learn from all the students that are taking the course. So teaching itself is a great learning opportunity. Facilitation in general is the strength of mine and something I truly enjoy. So, applying this skill to teach anti-racism is a perfect way for me to take action against racism, to take action, to help eliminate racism. And I think that's important for all of us to couple our strengths and our passions in the space of doing something about it. And so, everyone's got to find what that is for them. And this is just one of those things that works well for me. Rachelle is an amazing teacher-facilitator. As I said, we've got Dina partnering with us as well to help lead this course. So, I couldn't ask to be part of a better team moving forward.

Donzel Leggett

While so well said, both Rachelle and Dan, thank you. Even with all of that said, though, it's gonna take a lot of your time and a lot of your energy. You've already put forth a lot of time and a lot of energy, but to facilitate these courses, it's going to take a lot more of your time and energy. A huge commitment from you. Why are you so committed to this?

Dina Kinkaid

I can start with that. I think, Dan, Rachelle, it's OK if I start with that answer? Yeah, I think once if you're listening to this podcast, then you're interested in anti-racism. And so, you have started this, this idea of trying to explore the pain of racism as well. And I feel like as soon as you even understand a small part of the pain of racism, you can't walk away. So, if you start at this podcast and you're listening, you're going to finish it because you know that you can't walk away cause you know about the pain of racism and you wanna start thinking about how, how do you do something about. But then the second thing that you learn as soon as you start thinking about the pain of racism is how complex it is to become anti-racist, to create an anti-racist world, to eradicate racism. So that that I feel that sometimes the complexity is almost overwhelming. So as soon as you start to think about that then you know, “I can't do this alone.” So if you get the pain and you understand the complexities, then you have to join in with someone. And so I love that, you know, ARCC creates automatic connection and automatic network of someone that you can join right away because you get it if you try and solve this by yourself that it just you work will go nowhere, and so ARCC then creates immediate connection for you to begin to begin to open your eyes to the possibilities of addressing the complexities. Because now we're in a group, we have a group of people more we're spreading anti-racism. So I think that's what drives me forward and keeps me eager and keeps me wanting to learn more, be more confident, figure this out because I just, I wanna be with the group that I can figure it out together and that I can rely on all of us to start doing amazing things in our own world together.

Donzel Leggett

Awesome. It sounds phenomenal. I'm sure it's what our audience is thinking, but they're probably also thinking, “OK, I've heard a lot about why you did it, and then you're all committed. But what actually is it?” We've been very purposeful to not call this a training and call an experience. Can you guys tell people, tell our audience, hat could someone expect if they attend this experience? What really should they be expecting?

Dan Mouse

Yeah. I'm actually gonna kick that off with some of the feelings that they might experience. And. And I was just processing some of those and there might be some excitement, some learning is going to happen, right? And fear of the unknown. Fear of knowing what to do, maybe even examples of shame as you reflect upon past some behaviors or past inactions from your own, you know from your own life. You know, as we think about the course I mentioned earlier, the importance of adult learning principles, those principles will be applied through minimal— you know and Donzel said this is a learning experience, not training, right? So it's minimal instructor teaching but more personal learning through videos and short reading materials and then. Small and large group discussions so that we're learning from each other and everyone brings a different set of experiences. So the course provides that opportunity to learn from others thoughts, questions, personal experiences. It will be heavy on interaction and then finally it provides a list of additional learning resources following each of those sessions that you can each continue your learning journey at your own pace. So you will get out of it what you put into it, but we will do our best to help you put as much into it as you're able to give.

Donzel Leggett

Well, that sounds exciting to me, but I love this. If I'm listening on the podcast, I'm still kind of like maybe, “OK, tell me again, why should I really be excited to register for this and to make this happen? What really, why should I be excited?” Can someone answer that question?

Rachelle Landry

I can take that, Donzel. It's Rachelle. You know, as I speak to family members, friends, you know there's so much out there right now. We're exposed to the reality with what is out there from a discrimination and prejudice standpoint or it's getting exposed through it through the news, the social media, TV, movies, at work, in our own circle of friends like Dan mentioned and in our own family, it's all around us in our communities. It's hard to find the word, but I guess the word I would say is that, the reality of all this, whether it's the murder of George Floyd or other types of unfortunate, terrible things that have happened, the word I would say is it can be really disorienting, right? Because you're sitting there and you're taking in all this information on what to believe and then “what am I going to do about it?” And so it's disorientation can be a really terrible place to be because it can bring a lot of those emotions that Dan mentioned. If you are ready to act or you, you're kind of thinking you're ready to act or you're even not sure if you're ready to act and you know that you just want to make a positive change or you want this world to be better. And you really don't know where to start, or perhaps you lack confidence to take that first step. Or maybe you have conflicting feelings about the topic of anti-racism. Then this transformational experience is a great place to start. And I say that because we have created that first step for you. You don't have to overthink it. If you're disoriented or you're not really sure, but you've got something in you that says “I've got to do something. I'm ready to do that next step, but I don't know what it is.” We've got it for you, so be excited that there's a group of people that have gone through what you've gone through or similar situations where— we all have our own personal journey, but similarities that connect us together. We've created that first step for you, so don't overthink it. Simply register and take that first step with us and we're gonna be excited to have you as part of our experience.

Donzel Leggett

Well, that's awesome, Rachelle. Like again, I am super excited and I would guess most of our listeners who heard that are also pretty excited. And what would you guys also say, from your perspective, is what you believe or you hope would be the outcome for our attendees and for yourselves as facilitators? What do you hope the outcome is for our attendees and for yourselves, and going through this experience?

Dina Kinkaid

I can start with that one. I know that Dan and Michelle will have really good ads, but I if I look at my disorientation, like I add the emotions of sad, shame, fright. So that that's how I feel about racial disharmony in my community in the United States around the world. And I love that Rachelle can summarize all of that in that one word of “disorienting”. But I really want for me and everybody else who signs up that we, we have a way to extend your reach. So if you have your disorienting emotions, and then you have a path in front of you to sort of to use that emotion to create positive change, and this is what the course will do for you that path, will take those emotions and put them in a way that equals, “here’s my new reach. Here's my new world. Here's my new reality.” And that's one of the most exciting things about joining the course is that new reality will come in front of you. And that feeling of disorientation will change and you'll be able to take action. Let's do this together.

Dan Mouse

Just if I could just add on to that for a moment. Thank you. Dina. I think for me, one of the big changes I was able to make is I used to it used to be situations where I would hear things that maybe I knew at the time weren't right or maybe I didn't know they weren't right at the time. And then later I was processing that and saying, “oh, I wish I would have said something. I wish I would have stopped them”. And I didn't. Now I can honestly say after continuing my learning and getting some of these tips on how to take action, I'm not great at it, but I'm better at understanding the situation in the moment and much more confident in saying something in the moment and so I don't go home feeling like an idiot that I didn't do something that I should have done.

Rachelle Landry

And I can add on to that too. Just you know, if you think beyond just the goals of the training or as we say the experience, because we really don't want to call it training. But the experience because it really will be an experience. I'm confident of that. When you come together with a shared goal to— as a group of individuals, you're going to build connection, and what I hope the attendees know is that you're not alone. I always believe that you're stronger together and you're going to make some amazing connections and you're going to realize, “I'm not alone and I'm going to create a network of individuals who share something similar to me and we're going to work it together.” And I think a lot of times when we're building confidence, it's comforting, and it helps drive even more courage when you know you've got a community of people that you've connected with that have your back and are willing to lean in and learn. And yes, we're going to make mistakes. It's going to be clunky. It's going to feel awkward as you go through your journey because we're learning. We're leaning into the uncomfortable. But we're always stronger together than by ourselves, and these experiences pull a community together, which is really exciting.

Donzel Leggett

Wow, that is awesome. I can feel it. Whoever's listening to this whenever they listen to it, they're gonna be ready to go and their question is gonna be, hey, is this thing ready? Can I register? How do I do that? Can someone answer that question?

Dina Kinkaid

I will call it out so www.joinarcc.org is our website. The button is “Take Action” pretty clear so that kind of matches our objective here, and then “personal transformation”, and you'll be directed to the registration page. And I think it would be good to add to think about this idea that I want everyone to know that everything you improve is a big deal. So it doesn't matter what level of rock bottom you are at right now or what, what you change or how you choose to make an impact in your community. Everything you improve is a big deal. Thanks Donzel.

Donzel Leggett

Awesome. Well, I'm going to let each one of you have your own last word. What would be your closing message or your call to action for our audience?

Dan Mouse

Yeah. So I mean the simple thing is: sign up, register. You know we're going to be, we're going to be taking you through this experience. We're going to be looking for feedback from you because we want to make it better. So not only do you have an opportunity to learn and grow, but you have an opportunity to give feedback to us and how we can make this experience, this learning experience even better for individuals in the future, so know that you'll have that opportunity and I'm excited to have the opportunity to meet new people that want to advance their learning and want to advance on their anti-racism journey and I hope that that many of our listeners will take advantage of this opportunity and register so that you can join us on this journey and if you're not able to register for this this next one there will be more to follow. It takes all of us to learn and change our behaviors in order to create a true racism-free world, which is what we're after here at ARCC.

Dina Kinkaid

And I wanna remind everybody that this is going to be a unique experience. You can't get this anywhere else. So we've talked about all the elements that will create this unique moment for you and it's going to be based on the current issues and current problems of our world and not theory. And you're going to be connected with a wonderful cohort that will help you achieve what you need to do along your way.

Rachelle Landry

You know, AARCC is a nonprofit organization with amazing volunteers. I hope you've been inspired by our personal stories. We all volunteer our time at ARCC, and we dedicate our time to build that racism-free world. And we do that through inspiration, education and supporting people like you. We all have to make that first step, so if you're motivated to do more, we'd really hope you will take that first step with us.

Donzel Leggett

Thank you, Rachelle. Thank you, Dan. Thank you, Dina, you know, as I, as I mentioned at the beginning. I believe this personal transformation experience is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, milestone achievement that we reached in our in our 3 ½ year history. And that's because it's the core of what ARCC is all about and that's transforming people to be anti-racist and to spread anti-racism. That's the essence of our vision and our mission: helping you create and helping you accelerate your transformation to anti-racism by first, erasing your ignorance about racism and hate, second, educating yourself about anti-racism and third, building your character and confidence to stand up, speak out and take action to spread anti-racism and anti-hate and make positive change. 

If you want to accelerate your anti-racism journey. While also improving your overall self-insight and self-confidence in adopting that mindset, I've always talked about, of HOPE: How Optimistic People Endure, then you must register for the personal transformation experience. It will be a positive life-changing experience. We did that alpha course that I mentioned in the first segment and that a few of our folks, I think Dan and Rachelle mentioned as well. This outcome that we felt in that alpha of training or that alpha experience, it wasn't just about driving social change. Everyone talked about the personal change that they experienced, the personal transformation, their experience, and the courage that they had to do what Dan talked about confronting things that they couldn't confront before. But they also talked about building their own confidence outside of that genre. When it just came to making personal life decisions, several people in that training told me that they made decisions and changes in their life, that they would not have had the courage to do before taking this train. So yes. We're targeting helping you to spread anti-racism, become anti-racist and build that confidence. But it's also to help you make whatever positive change you want to make in your life happen. We've seen them. I want to thank Dina, Rachelle, and Dan for being here today, but I also want to thank the entire team that worked on this, including Carlos Caballero. Gabby Davis, and Monica Kakowski for their commitment and focus in bringing this experience to life and making it available to you, the general public, for the very first time. Remember what Dina said? You can register by visiting our website www.joinarc.org. Click or hover over “take action” at the top menu bar, and then click “personal transformation experience” in the drop-down menu. We look forward to seeing you all there. Dina, Dan, Rachelle. Thank you once again from the bottom of my heart for making this come true, bringing this experience to the public and telling your stories. On our podcast episode today, the very first episode of season four, we thank you.

All

Thanks, Donzel. Thanks, Denzel. Thanks Donzel. I look forward to meeting more people through the next course.

Introducer

Visitors and joinarcc.org to learn more about ARCC. Donate to our cause and join the movement that will change the world.

Donzel Leggett

To find the ARCC of Change podcast with Donzel Leggett and learn more about the Anti-Racism Commitment coalition or ARCC, please visit us at joinarcc.org. You can also subscribe to the ARCC of Change with Donzel Leggett on your favorite podcast hosting sites. I greatly look forward to our next episode and opportunity to inspire you to become part of the movie that will change the world by eradicating racism once and for all. Until next time, stay safe and stay inspired, and continue to ask yourself, am I doing enough? And remember that none of us are doing enough as long as racism and hate still exist. Thanks for listening and goodbye.

Introducer

The ARCC of Change Podcast with Donzel Leggett is brought to you by the Anti-Racism Commitment Coalition. To learn more about ARCC, donate to our cause and join the coalition, visit joinarcc.org. Don't forget to subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And share this podcast to help spread our mission to change the world by ending racism once and for all. Thanks for listening. Until next time, stay safe and be inspired.