Kazembe Balagun

Lewis: [00:00:00] So… Today is June 4, 2019, and I'm Lynn Lewis here with Kazembe Balagun

Balagun: Yes.

Lewis: for the Picture the Homeless Oral History Project.

Balagun: Right, hey...

Lewis: How are you?

Balagun: I'm doing good, I’m doing good. It's a nice, sunny day here in East Harlem. I love walking through East Harlem. I made sure I walked through Lexington Avenue—you know, I love like, hanging out… Like, this is my favorite thoroughfare. I'll tell you the story later—remind me about my stories of East Harlem when I was at Hunter College. [Laughs]

Lewis: All right, I will. I ran into Max crossing 3rd Avenue. Now there's a social work school here.

Balagun: Oh, that's right! Silverman's [Silverman School, Hunter College] over here.

Lewis: I see people that I normally wouldn't see.

Balagun: Yeah, I remember for a long time when I was at Hunter we were just like, “It would be great if El Centro [for Puerto Rican Studies] was up in East Harlem.” And now it's up in East Harlem… I’m like—no shit! [Laughs]

Lewis: Yeah, it's nice.

Lewis: [00:00:56] Well Kazembe, I wanted to ask you some questions and get to know you a little better, so could you tell me where—where you're from, where you grew up?

Balagun: Yeah, it's funny—because like, these days because of my name people think I'm from Nigeria, [laughs] but I—I’m actually… My birth name was Keith Alexander Mitchell. I was born on May 26, 1976, in Mt. Sinai Hospital, which is not too far from here, about… I guess the other side of the park, right? 5th Avenue, 100 and maybe 3rd [103rd] Street, 5th [105th] Street. I'm the youngest of three kids altogether, the son of Benjamin and Mildred Mitchel, both of whom are from Charleston, South Carolina. They immigrated here in the 1960s. My—it was my—it was actually my mom first who came up. My mom was the one who left, and…

Balagun: [00:02:01] My mom and dad were high school sweethearts. They went to the Black high school in Charleston, which was called Burke High School—which still exists. Bernie Sanders spoke there a few months ago. Still a Black high school, but you know—Charleston’s not the… You know, when they were growing up Charleston was about seventy-five percent black and twenty-five percent white. Now it's about twenty-five percent Black and seventy-five percent white. You know, and so that's a demographic shift, and most of the Black people now have been pushed off the—off into the—off the peninsula into North Charleston, so now North Charleston is where the high concentration of Black people are, and Lower Charleston, where the country is—where most white people live.

Balagun: [00:02:53] But, you know—they were actually the children of tenant farmers and domestics. And so, my dad grew up in the Sea Islands [South Carolina] in a place called Wadmalaw [South Carolina], and my mom grew up in a town called Cross [South Carolina]. And they both lived—my grandparents, both sides—immigrated to Charleston. My dad grew up in downtown Charleston—you know, Catfish Alley [Charleston, South Carolina] hanging out with DuBose Heyward, and like—you know, Porgy and Bess. He grew up in that neighborhood. My parents—my mom is the second of ten children, you know. I have five uncles and five aunts on my mom's side, of whom about eight are still amongst us, including my mom.

Balagun: [00:03:54] So, my parents now—they met after school in Charleston, you know—going to whatever social function that happened downtown Charleston after school. My dad had to walk to school. My dad was a football star, [laughs] very popular—along with his brother, my Uncle Allen. And then my dad, long story short, when at some point they graduated, my dad got a scholarship to Bethune-Cookman, which is in Daytona Beach, Florida. He went down there, and then when he came back up, I think probably at the end of the first semester, maybe at the end of the first year, and he went to look for my mom—went to my mom's house, you know—and like—my grandmother and my Aunt Jean were like, "She ain't here. [Laughs] She done gone to Charles—she done gone to New York."

Balagun: [00:04:55] And she—at that time, she went to work as a domestic, I think at Rockefeller University… Or nurse's aide, something to that effect. It was some sort of domestic situation, but she'd gone up there, and my dad was like, “All right, well, I want to go up there and find her and hang out with her.” So, my dad ended up coming up, and my dad ended up getting a job working kitchens in south Jersey, along the shore that summer. And I think he was maybe making—maybe like sixty, seventy dollars a week, which was a lot of money back then. He, called my uncle. [Smiles] He told my uncle how much money he's making. Then the following week my uncle showed up at his door. [Laughs] And so then, like—you know, and at that point, my dad was like…

Balagun: [00:05:49] My dad had—my grandmother had my dad when she was sixteen, you know—so very young, and so she never had a chance to go to school, or go to coll—to go to high school or whatever… So anyway, so my dad kind of made the decision. He was like, you know… First the fact that the scholarship thing wasn't really working out because in those days scholarships were kind of fluctuating, and they were just like—depending on how much they had that year, or whatever. And the fees probably outweighed the experience, but long story short my dad made the decision he was not going back to Daytona, and he stayed in New York.

Balagun: [00:06:29] And so, my dad and my mom kind of made a life together in New York. My dad, worked—like, you know… Pretty much my dad worked within a ten-block radius [smiles] of… For his entire working life in New York. He worked in the Garment District, you know he—in like the high 30s on the West Side, and he's very proud to say it. He said, "I never pushed those carts." You know what I’m saying, "I had a degree. I was a clerk." You know?

Balagun: [00:07:08] And then like, my mom was always some sort of domestic—like nurses' aide, working hotels, working different things, but they kind of pooled their money together. My dad—you were talking about housing—and like, back then—it seemed like my dad lived in an SRO [single room occupancy], and so—and my mom lived in one of those boarding houses for women.

Balagun: [00:07:35] So, it seemed like back in those days it was like… It seemed like a luxury if you had a one-bedroom apartment by yourself. If you were a single woman or a single guy you lived in a room, in some sort of boarding situation. And there were a bunch of hotels apparently, all throughout Harlem, that you could just like, get a room for a week or two weeks or whatever… And he shared—at certain times he would share rooms with his cousin. His cousins would come up... He would share a room, and he'd be complaining, and you have to do a hotplate situation or whatever… But they kind of—it was kind of like—a lot of different ways, you know?

Balagun: [00:08:08] But fast forward, I think about [19]65, they got married. [19]65 was also—my sister was born, [smiles] of course there was a coincidence… They get married and my sister's born, [laughs] my older sister, Wanda. And then, at that point they had moved to Sherman Avenue [Bronx, New York] in The Concourse, which was really nice for them. They just like, super nice—they were like... It was a five-story walkup. They lived on the fourth floor. My mom would tell about having a big carriage and leaving the carriage on the ground floor and carrying my sister up the four flights of stairs, and then taking my sister out to the park around 161st Street, and stuff like that. And they had their life. You know, my dad—I think my dad actually got laid off the day my sister got born, and like—you know, he was freaking out, but then he found another job. He had another garment job, and then four years later my brother was born in [19]69, Ben Junior, and then… And by that time, they were still—I think that they had—they had actually… I’m trying to think… Yeah, they had moved to the Polo Grounds.

Balagun: [00:09:35] They had moved to the Polo Grounds… The Polo Grounds were across the Macomb’s Dam Bridge. And so, that story was basically—like, they were like—they had friends who would stay in Harlem, and they were just like, "Oh, you know… We want to…” You know, they were like, “Maybe we should move to Harlem. Harlem's a lot of fun. A lot of our friends are there." Because, by this time—like, all the high school people are in New York, you know what I’m saying? Some of them are camped out in Brooklyn. Some of them are in the Bronx, but most of them are in Harlem, right? The concentration in Harlem, right.

Balagun: [00:10:10] And so… You know, my parents… My mom was like—and at the time, like—they had this, you know…  The Polo Grounds were like the stadium that the Mets and the Giants, and the football Giants used to play at? Or something like that? [Laughs] And so, at some point I guess the baseball Giants had moved to San Francisco, and then the Mets had started playing there, but then the Mets were only playing there until they got a new stadium in Queens, which was Shea [Stadium]. I guess that's how the way... But anyway, long story short, [laughs] they tore that stadium down.

Balagun: [00:10:54] Like—they were like, “We're going to build government housing.” You know, and I think my mom had somehow found out. Maybe she had saw it being built from Grand Central, maybe she was—from Grand Concourse, and maybe she was like, "What's that?" You know? But anyway, she had gone down to Harlem, got an application, put it in, they got accepted.

Balagun: [00:11:16] And then got like the first apartment, a two-bedroom apartment in building two, which was the building that was kind of closer to 155th Street and 8th Avenue [Harlem, New York] and closer to the street. And then, when I was born—May 26, 1976, they got a three-bedroom apartment and that's how we ended up in Harlem. You know, we ended up like… That's how I ended up being, you know—born in the Black cultural capital of the world, Black American cultural capital [smiles] of the world in that time.

Balagun: [00:11:56] But, like—my, you know… My dad would tell me stories. I mean, my dad would just be so fascinated by just being—because I think that growing up in Harlem you just become so self-conscious of your Blackness in a way that's really like—it's hard to explain to it you.

Balagun: [00:12:21] Like, the way… I work with Europeans. I work with European Black people, right? And so, there's Black German folks that—there may be five Black people in their town [smiles] and their cousins are four of them. [Laughs] You know, it’s like… And if you're a Black kid growing up in Ypsilanti, Switzerland, like—good luck. You know, there’s really… If you don't have MTV, then I don't know what you're going to do with your life, you know?

Balagun: [00:12:52] But like, the way in which racism works in society… You know, we had segregation, but then we had this mass concentration of Black people down here. So, then you grow up… And then you just—and it's just different. You become self-conscious of yourself. You see other Black people—even unrecognizable of your sensibility, or your neighborhood and those traditions are formed, and then you understand what certain things are and what they aren't.

Balagun: [00:13:19] And so like, an example of that is—my parents were like… What my dad used to tell me—he was like, "Yeah, I came up to New York in the sixties, and there were so many Black people here… We had a Virginia bar… You had a North Carolina bar, and then you had a South Carolina bar." And the South Carolina bar was called Andrews. [Smiles] And it was like—I think it was at 132nd Street and Lenox. And you know—that's where people from like Charleston hung out—there. You know, you get your meal there... You can make a phone call there... You can just hang out, get news from home, meet people. Like you know, people just went on a Friday night, “Let's go to Andrew's.”

Balagun: [00:13:56] In fact, it was so popular that my grandmother who had never been to New York, would go brag to her friends in Charleston and be like, "Yeah, when I get up to New York I'm going to go up to Andrew's and have a martini and hang out and do whatever." [Laughs] You know, like… Because then it captured the imagination because then you realize that people down in Charleston were hearing these stories, and these stories were also becoming ways in which people are wanting to move up north, too—right? And so, and that's the way it was, I mean...

Balagun: [00:14:26] So, by the time… And you know, and so by the time I grow up, it's in the '80s, and in a lot of ways Harlem was still a Black southern… When I was growing up Harlem was still a southern Black community, transplanted up north. You know, my parents were one of the most original people who moved to the Polo Grounds, knew a lot of the old Southerners, you know what I’m saying—who came through, grew up with them.

Balagun: [00:14:53] My dad had this crew of people; we called the Polo Ground boys. That, you know—they would all hang out in front… There was like—so, Polo Grounds is kind of banked off from like the—the terrace, so it's in the valley. So, there's the Harlem River, and then there's like this cliff, in the middle is the Polo Grounds. So, it's the kind of valley, and right next to [unclear] and Bradhurst [Avenue, Harlem, New York] in the Polo Grounds project, is the parking lot. And so, like my dad would hang out with the dudes in the parking lot, and they were like the Polo Ground boys. And they were like a group of twenty, or fifteen of them—like you know—rotating cast. They always had colorful names, I could never understand—like Stretch, Duke, Rizzo, you know what I'm saying? [Laughs] Just all sorts of shit, just like—you know, as a kid… And my dad had a car... You know, my dad… This car story was hilar—I got to tell you this car story. So my dad—at one point my dad didn't have a car. He’s just relied—he was like, “I'm a subway rider. I'm going to do whatever.”

Balagun: [00:15:59] And then, at one point he was trying to get my sister and my mom to go to Charleston and no one would give him a ride, and so after that he was like, “I'ma learn how to drive and get my own car.” And after he got his own car, he stopped. He did not take the subway for like, close to forty years.

Lewis: Damn.

Balagun: [Laughs] Exactly. He drove everywhere! Like, you know what I’m saying, if he had to go to the store, he would either walk or if it was too far, he would drive. At one point I think it was 1991. He had came to me, he was like, "Is the subway still a nickel?" [Laughs] Because he just didn't know.

Balagun: [00:16:33] Like, there are two things that my dad did not do. He did not do his own laundry—great guy... He cooked, a great cook, always cooked, always cooked for his family… Because my—my parents—my dad was… So, I'll tell you the post office story later, but like—so mom—my dad always had a car—but you know, he learned how to fix the car, and that's what the Polo Ground boys did. They just kind of hung out with their cars.

Balagun: [00:16:56] And then… Just work wise, I mean—it was just like, my dad… I think it was in ‘71 or ‘70… Like, my dad worked for the post office, and he retired from… And he ended up working at the large post office on 34th Street—right next to where he used to be doing the Garment District stuff. And my mom worked over at—ended up getting a job at NYU [New York University] and, you know—joining 1199. So, I had that kind of twin experience.

Balagun: [00:17:27] So like, I joke with my sister now—I say like... I tell her right now. I say listen, “I know my mom loves me. I know my dad loves me, but when you have your first kid and particularly if you have your first kid and your kid, you had them when you were in your twenties, that kid is going to be your ride and die—no matter what.” [Laughs] You know what I'm saying? Because, like—they grew up with you. They went through all the shit you had to go through, and they had to experience all the mistakes you made and everything else?

Balagun: [00:17:57] And so, like—by the time I came to the scene, I had—the family was already gentrified. [Laughs] You know what I’m saying? I'm born in a private hospital... I got the insurance kicked in. You know what I’m saying? So like, my shit is just like… My parents were just like… You know, but like me… And my sister and my parents are tight—because my sister had to go through all the shit of my parents being young and Black and new to the city and surviving. So, whatever my sister did—you know what I’m saying—to this day, I feel my sister's always going to be—have a little bit more of a leg up than I would. Even though my parents love all of us, it's like my sister's the go-to, and so—yeah! That's it. So, that's my parents.

Balagun: [00:18:44] And so in '76 I was born. You know, my years of schooling—I went to Morningside Day Care, which was downstairs in the Polo Grounds, the daycare in the Polo Grounds. Then I went to the school across the street at P.S. 46. That's where I learned the Black National Anthem and like, you know—Michael Jackson songs and break dancing. And then my parents took me out of that school to take me up to—for me to go to school in the Bronx at Grace Lutheran, which was on The Grand Concourse, and then Valentine Avenue—the first campus and then secondly on The Grand Concourse, and then I went to Hunter College, and you know, Hunter College is… First, I went to Senior Westbury [University] in '94, did two years then, then transferred to Hunter and in between that time, that's when I started getting politically active.

Lewis: [00:19:44] Nice. Well, thank you for taking us through all that.

Balagun: Yeah.

Lewis: And, I'm curious a little bit... You said your dad liked to cook. What kind of food did your dad cook? [Smiles] What was your favorite food that your dad made?

Balagun: Man… You know what I’m saying… My dad—so, then my dad's… So I was double-sided, you know what I’m saying—I was double-sided, I was—I was like, cornered. Because, my dad’s a savory chef, and my mom's a dessert chef. So, my dad would make like, red rice, sausage, pork chops… Like, you name it—fried chicken… You know, fried chicken so good, macaroni and cheese, collard greens, lima beans… When we were kids, he would make us eat like—liver, all the time—eat liver, fried liver, fried liver with fried onions, rice...

Balagun: [00:20:34] Like, you know—my dad went to work at night, so my dad was at home during the day. So, my dad would come home from the post office at 9:00 a.m. We would already be at school. He would sleep, you know—wake up when we came home and just start cooking. You know what I'm saying? So, by the time my mom got home, dinner was already served. You know what I’m saying? And then my mom would take over, and my dad would then go back to sleep, take another nap. It was my job as a kid to go wake him up at 9:00 o’clock, [laughs] and then he would go down to the post office—drive to the post office and work at like twelve… I think he worked from maybe 11:00, or maybe 12:00 to whenever—7:00, and that's it… And that's the way they did it—just rotated, you know what I’m saying? It was like clockwork. For forty years, that was the schedule.

Balagun: [00:21:31] My dad was like… And he loved to cook red rice. My dad, like he really was into the red… Because he would cook red rice for parties, and people would request it. Like red rice… You have to understand, my dad comes from a Gullah Geechee tradition, so rice is very important. Like rice is like… And the red rice comes from the kind of dishes that he had as a kid because they used to eat spaghetti on top of rice. You know what I’m saying? [Smiles] I tell people that, the carb conscious people just like—pass out. [Laughs] You know, it's like, “What are you doing?” But that was a meal! You eat spaghetti on top of rice. And so then, he—and so then the red rice was just like—tomatoes… You know, the different spices like salt, pepper, garlic—I don’t think garlic powder, but salt, pepper, maybe some garlic powder like, you know—fry up some peppers. Cut some peppers, fry them up—fry them up with some onions... You know what I’m saying? You cook the rice, you put it in there, you swirl it in there—mix it real nice with the tomato sauce.

Balagun: [00:22:41] Then he had like a nice—like some fried sausages. Like, my dad was a sausage expert. My friend jokes with me. He was like, "You know you're from the South because the sausages have names." [Laugh] Like Roger Wood, Jimmy Dean… Like, they have all the names—like, you know what I’m saying? But he would take those sausages and red sausages, cook them up, put them inside there, and then like—you know, and then that would be a meal! And then like, on top of that he would be like, “Alright, that's the starch.” And then the vegetables would usually be like… If he made red rice he'll make green peas. He'll make peas or something like peas, or like string beans for a vegetable, and then he'll serve some pork chops. He'll serve meat with that—pork chop, fried chicken... Then later on, I think he got into baked chicken. But like—they were just like… I mean, my parents were just like—you know, they were just like Southerners. They eat like that.

Balagun: [00:23:41] And I realize that to me, this is so funny because I don't cook like that, and that's something that we’ve—I feel like I've lost because I feel like—you know, I wish my son would experience that, but that shit, the thing about it was that the ability for them to cook like that was a requirement of having a commitment to a really deep home life where they worked together. You know what I'm saying? When my mom had an assignment, and my dad had an assignment, and they never really broke from that assignment. The would just be like—my dad was a cook. My mom cleaned.

Balagun: [00:24:18] And the thing about my mom cleaning, was that—what I realized recently, is that my mom is a professional cleaner. I didn't realize the first seven years of her life in New York City, she was a domestic. So, the fact of the matter is she cleans like really clean, and she does it really fast, but she does it right. Like, I can never clean like my mom. My mom is like—tucks it in... She criticizes me. She's like, "You didn't tuck that in right." When I try to make the bed… Because, I'm just like, “Well hey, it's made—shit.” [Laughs] You know what I’m saying? It’s like, you know—my mom tucks it in, and she knows how to do it because she's been systematized, in terms of being able to do it.

Balagun: [00:24:57] So, that was a tremendous amount of, I would say, cultural household domestic power. And then on top of that, my mom was like—she loved to make pastries. She made pie. She made lemon meringue. She made blueberry pies. She made apple pie. She made bread pudding that just melts in your mouth, and she would just make stuff. She was like, "Oh, I'm bored. I'm just going to make some bread pudding..." She would make all of our cakes. She never bought a cake, you know? Unless it was really requested, I'd be like, "Oh Mom, I really want a Carvel cake." But her cakes were so good, like just straight from scratch—make you like, a lemon cake, a coconut cake, a lemon coconut cake I still love, carrot cake.

Balagun: [00:25:40] And other people in the projects too, they were known—because the thing about it was like—you know, soul food was so prevalent. I mean, so we had like… So, we lived on seventeen—we lived in building seventeen… So we lived on the 17th floor, three-bedroom apartment, and I think that we were probably the only people on our—and we were a pretty middle class family in the projects—compared to other families, but most other families were like that—working class, but it was working moms or whatever.

Balagun: [00:26:12] So, everyone was sorta, kinda stable… But then you had like—you had the apartment down the other side that was a five-bedroom, and they had like twelve kids—and they were like—bad. You know what I’m saying? My mom would be like, "You can't play with them. You got to watch out for them." But they would sell food all the time, and that's how they made rent. They were like— some of them would work... They would sell food, sell plates—five dollars… Food was banging! You know….
 
Balagun: [00:26:39] And I think that for me, I think about that a lot, to me… Because I feel like the way what which I noticed the drug culture came in, was the fact that you didn't really have the twenty-four-hour spots, until crack came in. You know what I’m saying? I felt like when I was growing up, like—if you had fast food it was a real treat. Like, my mom was like… It was Friday—my mom will be like, "Oh wow, you know, I'm tired. Here's some hot dogs. Here's a hamburger, or whatever. I'm not really cooking for you all."

Balagun: [00:27:12] But then like, you know—once in a while she’d be like, "I got some KFC!” And we would just go wild like, "Oh my God! Oh my God! Oh my God! I can't believe it!" We would start crying and shit. [Laughs] Like, you know? But then I noticed that with '86, '87, '88, '89—the bodegas started being open longer. Maybe it was just me growing up consciously, but I just noticed that—it was like more… There was more fast food options than I noticed before. Like, I just felt like… It was like—you had a Chinese spot, but then the Chinese spot was more like a restaurant. It wasn't a takeout spot, like the traditional one.

Balagun: [00:27:54] And, you know—and I just I felt like… There was this kind of thing where like—because I felt like maybe there was, because the war… People on the street hanging out later and later and later at night. And so, it's something that I just noticed, but it's something that I grew up with, and so that's what I… So, that’s the food thing. The food thing was just like—my dad just cooking all the time, all the time.

Lewis: [00:28:22] When… A little before we started recording and we were talking about books and that you have a lot of books… When you were a child, were you one of those children that was reading all the time?

Balagun: Yeah, yeah… I told my mom. My mom was shocked with this—my mom was like, she was like—at some point someone asked me… I remember I was with my babysitter Miss Ruthie [Brock]. Miss Brock was my babysitter, and someone asked me, maybe I was six years old, "What do you want to be?" I was like, "I want to be a historian!" They're like, "What!?" [Laughs]  Just like, “What kind of weird child is that?” And I was like, “You know…”

Balagun: [00:28:58] But like—my parents had the whole set of the World Book Encyclopedia, and that—for me, that was the internet. You just sit there and read, look at the color pictures, look at these different articles, you know—and I spent the whole entire day doing that. And like, my dad on Sundays… Sunday was like—my dad at a table, like this having a stack of newspapers, reading the Daily News, reading the Amsterdam News, maybe reading the City Sun occasionally… And then listening to the news—watching the news, watching the Black shows, watching the McCreary Report, watching Like It Is, watching the regular news, watching Charles Kuralt—This Sunday Morning.

Balagun: [00:29:45] So, there was a whole gamut of information that really kind of resonated in our household. That was really important. My dad was a reader. My dad valued literacy like it's nobody's business, and my mom valued being cultural. You know, like—she was somebody who was just like—took me to museums all the time. She was someone who was like—you know, trying to, I think in a lot of ways, trying to get me to be much more outgoing in terms of the arts. She took me Harlem School of Arts. She would take me to different… I remember one time she took me to these experimental plays down in the village. I don't know where she found out about this stuff, but she would just do it. She would just say, “I want to figure out what to do.”

Balagun: [00:30:29] And like, my sister—who's eleven years older than me—was already a projection. So, by the time I'm five—she's like sixteen, right? And she's like—out and about in the city, punk hair styles, very different, and like, you know—and just very much part of New York City. So then, I have a model of what the city looks like, and you know—at the same time, you know—at that time it was just like, you lived in Harlem… There was only two places—there’s uptown and downtown. You know what I'm saying?

Balagun: [00:31:05] And so, downtown was this very different thing. You know, it was where the white people lived. You know what I’m saying? It was much cleaner, much more well orderly… Much more, better in a lot of ways I thought—and there was uptown! Right? [Laughs]  That's where we lived, you know? And then shit was crazy, you know—and... But then you just kind of like, hear things. You just say, “Oh wow, this person should go down to the village.” I remember growing up being like, “Man, maybe I should go down to the village sometime.” And like, when I was a teenager I used to go down there and get a copy of The Village Voice and, you know—and read The Village Voice. I didn't even understand sometimes half the stuff I was reading sometimes, but I was like—I also felt like I wanted to be a part of something.

Balagun: [00:32:00] And so that was it, and my parents kind of encouraged that. They were also kind of like—they were also down home folks. They weren't pretentious. Like, my parents were like—I think my parents came up in the age of 1960s where they were conscious, but they weren't pretentious. My parents liked to have a good time. They went on cruises. They went to bars. You know what I’m saying? Like, all throughout their working adult life they still went on dates. The just were like… I think part of it was that—they had such a gap in children, because they were like… My sister could just babysit, [laughs] so they were like, “Fuck it, we don't have to pay you for shit—you know, just make sure you don't kill each other.” And just go on a date… Go downtown, and have a fun time… And there was always a stereo, and there was also music, and they liked to be with each other. And a bigger thing too was they had the community here. So, the Burke Alumni—so, they had a Burke Alumni Association, and the Burke Alumni Association raised money for students at Burke High School in Charleston, and they raised scholarship money. So they would have dances and trips to Atlantic City, like you know—and so we were a part of this whole network of Black folks who would just like... My dad would take me to the Grambling game at Yankee Stadium.

Balagun: [00:33:17] Like, there was also this connection with Black culture that was never, "Now, we're going to go see Black culture." It was like, [laughs] you know what I'm saying? It was like, “Motherfucker, we’re going to the Grambling game.” You know what I’m saying? And then there'd be bands and shit, and like—just Black shit would be popping off, and you'd just be like… I’d be confused, like “What's going on?” But it's just what it was!

Balagun: [00:33:38] Like it was nothing… And I feel like that's the difference today—where like, our generation… Whereas, we're not as—because of gentrification and because of a lot of shit that's going on culturally and because we're so educated—we're way more pretentious and it will be like, "We're doing something Black today!" You know what I'm saying? We like, announce it and shit, you know? Like, “Okay! We're doing something Black today.” But my parents were just like, “We're living.” [Laughs] And I think that's also something that's also a reflection of too, because like—they never had any white friends—to this day. They don't dislike white people. They don't not like white—they're not racist. I've never heard my dad say—call anyone a white-whatever. My mom never did that either. But it was just like—a Black world. That there’s a compass… They were just like, “This is the world we have. That's it.” And then I think that when we grew up, we went to college and because the employment situation was different, it required us to be more acculturated with white folks in our day-to-day practices and lives. That, you know—that was beautiful! It required solidarity, it required struggle, it required a lot of things… But my parents were just like, “Yeah!” They’re like, “Okay, we're just doing this... We're just living. That's it. Keep it moving.” So that was it!

Balagun: [00:35:10] I mean, that was my education—and reading and some of the other cultural stuff, with the literacy stuff and things like that, you know? And… I'm trying to think what else; I think that… I went to like, an all-boys… So, my parents were like… So, my folks come to Harlem in the '60s, and this is actually probably during Vatican II, so everything's kind of opened up. So, my brother goes to a Catholic school. My mom finds out about the Bronx high school science test and was like—kind of like cursed the nuns out. It was like, "How come you didn't tell my son about this test?" And they were like, "Oh, he wouldn't have passed anyway." And my mom was like, "Oh yeah? He's taking the test." And he took the test, and he passed with flying colors, and got into Bronx High School of Science. I wasn't so lucky. [Laughs] I took the test. I didn't get in, but I did go to Cardinal Hayes. It was an all-boys Catholic school, played football there at Cardinal Hayes, went there for four years. Yeah, yeah, yeah—that was like, from '90 to '94.

Lewis: [00:36:23] Since I've known you, you've always been very politically active and thoughtful and making people think, and so when you were in middle school and high school were you aware of political things going on in the world?

Balagun: [00:36:40] Yeah! Always. I mean, so like—the political stuff that I grew up with—in like, middle school—was the Free South Africa Movement. Like, that was big in middle school. I remember—I tell this story all the time, but I remember when I was maybe in sixth grade somebody came to school wearing Reeboks, and Reeboks used to have the British logo on the side and the kids in the school roasted the kid like, "Don't you know they're in South Africa? Don't you know they're killing us in South Africa? You can't be wearing Reeboks." You know? It was a whole thing—they were just like—because we self-identified with what was going on in Apartheid and the freedom struggles that were going on, and a lot of rappers like Stetsasonic, had albums that were like, Free South Africa. There were a lot of groups that were doing that stuff. I remember that song—seeing, like a video music box set—that great video, “Don’t Play Sun City.” That always kind of resonated with me.

Balagun: [00:37:38] And so, we were always self-conscious of ourselves as like, part of this Black community that was global, and you know—even on the playground. And then, I think for me—I think what happened was… I got radicalized fairly early, so it was—I think two things happened. In '92, I was sixteen years old, and that April was the Rodney King verdict and there was a riot—a rebellion happened in Los Angeles. That quickly radicalized me.
 
Balagun: [00:38:17] I would just say even before that—and that was also maybe the—maybe year before I had first gotten my first SYP [Summer Youth Program] job, and I felt—I just started feeling like… As I was growing up, I started feeling the kind of—weight of oppression or the weight of being self-consciously Black in this city—you know, and like… And being perceived as a threat. You know, I was a big kid, very happy, very outgoing, but people would, you know—give me weird looks. People would follow me in the stores… You know, like—people refused to let me into stores. Like, you know—there was all these things. This stuff that happens—that happened to me then, that don't happen to me now… That I'm like, what—was that a dream? Or was that—you know, I don't know what to call it, but I just remember just being this self-conscious threat.

Balagun: [00:39:16] And my parents would be scared for me. You know, and as much as that was going on, there was also this other—this very—excitement, because as I’m growing up—like, I'm witnessing hip hop, you know what I’m saying? And I’m like… My brother's listening to Public Enemy… I'm listening to Eric B. & Rakim. I have a different posture and stance. Like, those Jamel Shabazz photos are so great because they’re not… Black people aren't just posing like that—like that's the way we really stood. [Laughs] It’s like, you know… I remember being like that was our stance.

Balagun: [00:39:51] Like, we were very defiant. It was like—you know, it was “us versus them.” We were like—you know, it was like a war, and we were very clear about who we are, and then within that context too, there was all this alternative education that I experienced—just like walking home from school, going to high school, and then going past the Five Percent Brothers who had their little table with the incense, and the Malcolm X tapes. And then like, you know— I remember there were brothers and sisters from like, December 12th Movement who would just be in front of the 155th Street subway station, handing out Arm the Masses or like, trying to sell copies of Arm the Masses.

Balagun: [00:40:29] You know, and that stuff like that had, you know—made impressions on me. And so, I knew—somehow when I saw stuff like that, I knew something could be different, but I could make a finger to it… Until like, after rebellion—I think it was '92, that was also the same year, I think, that the Democratic National Convention was in New York and my sister was working downtown, and one day my sister was like, "I got all these crazy newspapers from all these people who... Do you want to read these?" And I was like, "What?"

Balagun: [00:41:01] And so, she just gave me this stack of newspapers, and they were all like—red literature, communist literature, like socialist literature and I was like… I couldn't believe it! And it was like—It was for the first time ever—I was like, “Someone understands me.” Like, “Someone gets it!” Like, “What’s going on?” And, I just poured through it, and I just kept reading and reading and reading. And I was like—and all day I knew—I was like, I wanted more. You know what I’m saying? I ran into the Schomburg, and I was like, “I want to read about people, people I haven't thought or heard about.” I was like, “Give me stuff about communism. Give me stuff about socialism…” And they would tell me… Gave me little vertical files on Angela Davis, and I would try to read and try to think through stuff.

Balagun: [00:41:43] And then, one day—and then finally I had screwed up enough courage and like, I think at some point—don't take this the wrong way, but this is actually what happened. I think at one point I was like, “I'm going to make a decision between the socialist or the  communist.” And I was like, “Well, the socialists sound cool, but a communist sounds badder.” [Laughs] You know what I'm saying? And I was like, “The communists!” And so I was like—then that's when I ended up joining the Young Communist League, when I was sixteen and then they actually had a campaign in my neighborhood. I couldn't even believe it. I felt like it was crazy.

Balagun: [00:42:23] And then like… The funny story about that was—when I joined, [smiles] I remember they invited me over to this woman's house to have a detailed talk, and the woman was like, “Oh, come up town to Washington Heights...” And I remember seeing her car, and seeing a panda with the initials WWF [World Wildlife Federation] and being confused. Like, what does a panda have to do with wrestling? [Laughs] You know, and I was like, “Okay, well, whatever…” So, I jump in the car, and like, they were talking to me and like… You know, and that time, I went to see—we went to a party meeting with a bunch of old folks, like really old, and they were just singing a song. And didn't know what the words of it were, but it just—it just spoke to me, and it was The Internationale. You know, and I was like, “Oh my God, I'm part of something.” And I felt like I was a part of this weird club. [Smiles] You know what I’m saying—and like…

Balagun: [00:43:26] You know, so then they dropped me back home—went upstairs… My mom was like, in front of the door. She was like, "Where were you?" I was like, "What are you talking about?" She was like, "You know, Miss Ruthie saw you jumping in a car with those white people? And we—and I sent Jamie down to go find you. He couldn't find you." And this is of course, the time before cell phones. "He couldn't find you, and we were so worried. We thought you got kidnaped… Those crazy white people…" And I was like, "No, Mom." I was like, "It's okay. I'm a communist." And my mom was like, "What?!!! What?!!!!!!!!!!!!!" Starts screaming, my dad starts screaming. But I was like, “That's it. I'm a communist. That's it.” And you could not stop me from talking about communism, all the time. And, you know—and that's the way it was. I really was.
 
Balagun: [00:44:17] I was sixteen years old, and I was in. I was in. I was like, I'm a communist. I'm a revolutionary. I'm going to do whatever it takes to like—do whatever, and I did it. I just like—you know, I handed out newspapers… I wrote articles... It was the first time I actually had the experience of writing. I tried to do public demonstrations… I handed out—like, you know, I did everything. You know, when you’re sixteen years old, you have endless amounts of energy and endless amounts of curiosity, and endless amounts of… Like things... And people just gave me stuff to read, you know, and I would just read for hours, and the stuff make sense because like, you know—the CP's [Communist Party's] education thing is very Catholic, right? [Laughs] Other groups, they're like, “We have read the Collected Works of Marx, and we have to read Capital.” But the CP was like, “Here's a biography of this cool guy who did cool organizing stuff.” And I was like, “Oh cool!” And I'd read William Z. [Zebulon] Foster and be like, “I want to be like this!” You know what I'm saying? And that was my political education.

Balagun: [00:45:19] It was like… I learned through reading about biographies of other leaders to model myself as a leader. You know what I’m saying? And that's how I became more conscious of like—what I should do, what I shouldn't do. And so like, my—and so like… I didn’t start reading… And then there would be these little readers on Marx, but they'd be these short paragraphs where you just read a little bit, and you kind of get it. You know what I’m saying? You get a little bit of Lenin, but it wasn't this kind of heavy thing where you just kind of overwhelmed yourself. You just got… You just… You embodied what people's history was, right? And so that was how I got educated. And it was fun! You know, it was crazy. It was crazy going downtown. It was crazy seeing the different groups. It was crazy to learn about the differences between our group and different groups and stuff like that.

Balagun: [00:46:14] And, you know—but it was fascinating… I felt like I was part of something that was bigger than myself. And the… And yeah, it was a fun time. It was, you know—and my parents—I think my parents were just dismayed. They were shocked. They were crazed. They were kind of weirded out… I think they were happy that I started doing better at school [laughs] because I was reading so much. But, you know—I feel like it was something that was worth it. And, you know—I look back at that time and I realize that it was a time of transition. It was a time when like, you know—the world around me was becoming, like—I think it was the beginning of the '90s. I think it was the end of the South Africa—like, you know—Apartheid had ended in South Africa. The Soviet Union had fallen apart. But I felt this great sense of possibility, and I felt like my whole world was opening up.

Balagun: [00:47:13] And I remember this was also coinciding with like—you know, stuff opening up for me culturally. I mean—so by the time I'm eighteen years old like—it's like Wu-Tang Clan is like playing... It's like grunge music... You know, Clinton's elected and you get to watch Maya Angelou read a poem at the inauguration. In the following year Toni Morrison wins the Nobel Prize... So, there's all these things are kind of popping up in the '90s that I felt like—as a young Black kid who was fashioning himself as an intellectual, that I was really kind of going into it. I was like, “Wow, this is the world I want to inhabit.” And that's when I first started getting an inkling that maybe there's something I can do with the world of ideas. Like, “Can I do this? Can I actually be like—a writer? Can I actually be like—a thinker? Is that possible?” And then, one day I remember I was at party headquarters, and then somehow—like someone was telling me… I was reading one of the party's things—maybe newsletters—and they were like, “There's this radio station called WBAI.” And I was like, “What?!” So I turned it on, and I was like… And I never turned it off again. [Laughs] And I listened to it. I was like, “Oh my god, this is amazing.” And then I read.  
 
Balagun: [00:48:33] And they were like, “Oh,” Somebody told me, “Oh, you know what? There's this place called the Brecht Forum, and this guy named Cornel West who's a Black philosopher who's going to be speaking there tonight, and he wrote this book called Race Matters, and he's really good, and he's Black, and he's a Marxist. I think you would really dig it.” And so, I was like, “Oh my God, that sounds amazing. And then I realized that I had heard of this guy before because I had seen a New York Times article, and so I was like, all right. So, I think that event started at seven o’clock? Well, you know, [smiles] the Brecht doesn’t even start until eight, [laughs] but seven-thirty or whatever... I got to the Brecht at four. You know what I’m saying—that's when the Brecht was over at 27th Street in that loft on the tenth floor. So, I go up to the loft, and I see this big library and this big space, and it's the first time I'd ever seen something that was affiliated with the left, that wasn't the party headquarters.

Lewis: Hmmmm.

Balagun: [00:49:33] And it was nice… It was airy... It was open—you know what I’m saying? It didn't seem like there'd be too many old people. It was kind of like a bunch—and I remember there was a bunch of old couches by a window, and you know—I was hanging out, and there was like, a water cooler... And there was like—it was a very chill vibe. And I just kind of sat… And they were like, "What brings you here, young man?" I was like, "I heard Cornel West is speaking, and I want to attend. I don't have too much money..." I asked them about this. They were like, “All right, don't worry about it.”

Balagun: [00:50:04] And I waited there for three hours, so for three hours, and I got a front row seat. And then Cornel West goes and speaks, and he gives one of the best lectures I've seen in my life—like blew my mind, talking about jazz, talking about blues, talking about all these people that I'd never heard of… And it was all very unorthodox. You know what I'm saying? Like, you know—it was such an opening thing, because you have to understand the context I'm coming from. I'm coming from a party structure where it's very much like doo, doo, doo, doo. But then he's just coming out, and he just blows it wide open, and he's talking in way that felt very southern and familiar to me, but he was talking about things that I cared about. And I was like, “This is amazing! This is unbelievable.” I was like, “I can't believe this.” And then I realized, I was like, “I think I want to do this! I want to be this guy! That's who I want to be.” And then, you know—and then it just kind of started.

Balagun: [00:51:02] And then… That year, that summer I started—I went to college, and then I took an intro to philosophy class, and the woman who taught it was Maureen Feder-Marcus and she had us read Letter from a Birmingham Jail as part of the philosophy class alongside Socrates' Apologia. And so, then I'm getting these cross-cultural references around like, philosophy and Civil Rights Movement, and I was like—my thinking began to expand. Like, it was starting to be broader and more in-depth with things that I was feeling and who I was and—and you know, started to zip—zip-zoom between different reference points.

Balagun: [00:51:48] And I noticed that I was beginning to develop a style that was like—very much wanting to know a lot, about a lot of things and wanting to just develop that stuff. And you know—and I would just read all the time. I went to the old… So OSV, you know—it was the old experimental college, like from back in the day. A lot of Young Lords went there, a lot of the Panthers went there, and so they had this rich library. They had all these plays, and originally I wanted to be a playwright, and so I would read all this Amiri Baraka, you know, this Jean Genet, and the librarian was like—unbelievable, like, "You're reading so much, and what are you into?" And stuff like that. I'm was just like, "I just want to learn as much as possible. I just want to know. I just want to know. I just want to know." And then, it just kind of like—it just exploded from there from that point on, and you know—and I just became different. You know what I’m saying?

Balagun: [00:52:53] It’s kind of like, you know—I remember [laughs] I remember years ago during Occupy [Wall Street]. Like, I went to Occupy with a friend of mine, and he was just a real straight-laced computer programmer, and he knew me from the Brecht, and I was like, "Oh, I'm on my way to Occupy. Do you want to come with me?" And he was like, "All right cool. I heard about Occupy. I'm coming to that too." So, we went together, and somehow we had got lost, and you know, and I just got some pizza and I left.

Balagun: [00:53:20] I come back two weeks later, that motherfucker was still there dressed like Jimi Hendrix. [Laughs] You know what I'm saying? Like… Jester hat and shit, like... He had not left. Like, this motherfucker was there, and he stayed there I think probably until the end. And I was like… And he told me, "I quit my job... This is me now..." And I felt like that's when that moment when I met Cornel West in the Brecht Forum, that's the moment that I had too. That was my Saul to Paul moment. That was my moment when I was like, “This is who I am now. This is what I want to do.”

Balagun: [00:53:55] And yeah, I think at a certain point it was mixed within the protest movement, because I think that—just real quickly—that '95, I was about nineteen years old, there was a massive protest among CUNY students and SUNY students against the budget cuts, in city hall. And I went there, and that was again, like—twenty-five thousand Black and Brown students… Another point where my conscience got so raised, and there were so many different groups.

Balagun: [00:54:24] That I—you know… Just like, the things like—for me—being part of an old left organization just didn't make sense any more to me. It had shifted. I was like, there's nothing that could really contain what I had felt at that time—the kind of joy, the kind of eroticism of being nineteen and being a part of this protest, and then being there I was asking people, I was like, “Well, you know…” And people were like, “Oh man, all the militants are at Hunter.” You know what I’m saying? And my brother went to Hunter, and so—and he was like… “Yeah.” And my brother used to bring me Black newspapers from Hunter. So I remembered Hunter was this place where like, Black shit happened, but then the people were like, "No man, revolutionaries, man. There's this group called SLAM [Student Liberation Action Movement]. They’re so badass, they do so much great work, and they're all at Hunter."

Balagun: [00:55:14] And like, at that point I was commuting to Old Westbury. And Old Westbury started to feel smaller and smaller. And, at one point my philosophy professor, in the middle of class, was like, "You know, some kids, you know, they stay here, and they graduate with a degree of philosophy here. But you know, some kids, they're just go and transfer." You know what I'm saying, “To a place like Hunter.” She just dropped that, and she just looked at me like... And I'm like, “Let me try this.” So, in '96 I transferred to Hunter. Going to Hunter in '96. My first classes at Hunter was more philosophy, Nietzsche, Intro to Black History, and Marxism. And my—my dad [laughs] saw my transcript and was like, "You ain't trying to get a job are you?" [Laughs] And I was like, “Nope, I'm pretty much not.”

Balagun: [00:56:14] And then in my Marxism class I thought all I have to do is go say, “Armed struggles, class struggle…” All that stuff, and they were like, “Nope!” You got to read Herbert Marcuse, watch Samir Amin, the Frankfurt School, you know, some of the Russian literary theorists. We had to read Lukács, and so it was an introduction to a whole other European tradition that I had no idea even existed. Because, I'd never been exposed to that stuff even within left party struggles, there was never a deep sense of that type of stuff because that stuff was hidden from you.

Balagun: [00:56:48] So, I read that stuff, and I was like, “Oh, this is a whole different other intellectual way of doing stuff.” But then I was a part of a group that was trying to liberate the City University, and so there was also this dualism between organizing and doing political work and doing theoretical work, and then I got involved in like, the student newspaper... I started writing again and editing the newspaper. And that was part of my intellectual life from my college years, and you know, in between that always trying to bring both that intellectual street energy to all the things that I did, and it was cool. To this day, I’m still like… The comrades I'm friends with, I'm still a part of it.

Balagun: [00:57:41] And so, where our story starts is that at some point I graduate, and I'm trying to figure out what I want to do with my life, and someone—there was a call at the Brecht Forum, and they were like, we're looking for teachers. We're looking for people to teach. And I said, “Oh, fuck it. I remember this place from when I went to see Cornel West. Wouldn't it be crazy if I just taught a class there?” And I ended up teaching a class there. I taught a class on Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, and the Essay on Liberation. I was twenty-seven years old, maybe twenty-six, Black, queer, no familiarity [smiles] with the Frankfurt School, just wanted to teach something [laughs], do something. [Herbert] Marcuse was always a touchstone for me because I felt Marcuse is like—Marxism—was where my Marxism was at, which was more about people orientation—as opposed to like, objects and things. And I wanted to bring that up and to me that was also a part of that too.
Balagun: [00:58:46] But like—I'm skipping a lot of stuff too. I'm skipping the fact that in between that time I went to Chiapas [Mexico] to do solidarity work. I went to a Black Radical Congress… Bunch of street fighting in the '90s around Mumia, like—all that stuff was all happening. So, by the time I got to the Brecht all that stuff had already happened, but there's this thing that I remembered about wanting to be like Cornel West came back to me. And that's when I started making the classes, and that's where I first met Max Uhlenbeck, Teju—and a bunch of people. And then I met Ros Moshe, who's a jazz musician, Sam Anderson who's a theorist, and I just hung out, you know—and that's when I became a part of like, the kind of intellectual left.

Balagun: [00:59:37] And then six years later, you know—maybe when I was thirty-two, you know, there was Liz Roberts, who would have been an organizer at the Brecht Forum had left, and there was a job opening! And at that time I was considering—I was about to become a school teacher. And I had, and I gave it some thought, and I was like, “This could be something I want to do.” I kept going back to Cornel West—that time I was at the Brecht. I said, “This is what I want to do. This is what I want to do.” So, I talked to God about it. I talked to my brother about it. I talked to my sister about it… And everyone said, “You should do it—apply.” And I applied, and I got the job as an outreach coordinator 2007, 2008—I started, until 2013. So, by that time we were at—where we were? 451 West Street in the West Village, way in the West Village.

Balagun: [01:00:47] And that was—and that was… I think that’s where I met—I’m feeling like that’s where I met you and the PTH [Picture the Homeless]. That's when the story—that’s when the PTH thing starts.

Lewis: Do you have a memory of when you met PTH? Or of a…

Balagun: I’m going to say like—you know, PTH… Well, first of all, I had [smiles], you might get this a million times, I'm so embarrassed. So like, when I first heard of PTH I thought you all were an arts organization. [Laughs] And I was like, “That shit is hot.” Like I thought… I was like, “I want to know what they're doing.” I thought you all were a gallery, and I was like, “Maybe I can go up there and check out some of your work” And shit like that. But then they were like, "Nah… They actually do shit." And I was like, "Word?" And I found out. And then Liz Maestres, who was my boss at the Brecht Forum, used to talk about PTH all the time because she was like—she was good friends with David Harvey, and Harvey used to talk about PTH, and they were like, "You got to do stuff with PTH. You got to deal with Picture the Homeless…" And stuff like that.

Balagun: [01:01:52] So like, I have this memory, but I remember—I feel like—it may have been a Harvey talk that some of you all came through. In fact, I think my clearest memory was a talk that—it was David Harvey, Monami [Maulik] from DRUM [Desis Rising Up and Moving] and Jean Rice from PTH were all on a panel, and I sat through that motherfucker and my mind was fucking blown and I was like, “What the fuck was that?” [Laughs] Because they were all brilliant and real smart and really funky and eclectic, and like, you know—and really talking about… And it was also the time I first learned about Right to the City, and I had never heard that concept before. And then like, it just became this thing, where I just remember this… And I remember, I think you were there, and just remember just being like, “That's cool.”

Balagun: [01:02:41] And then—I want to say that, at some point when I was doing outreach I would come up to you all's office. Now you guys were in the Bronx, right?

Lewis: Yeah, we were in East Harlem first, well, Judson [Memorial Church] first, then East Harlem. Then we went to the Bronx.

Balagun: Because I have a feeling I came to the East Harlem space, and then I came to see the Bronx space, I feel like by the time… Because the Bronx space is where FIERCE is now, right?

Lewis: Yeah.

Balagun: Yeah, so I actually hang out there a lot, because our church people are up at Fierce, so I go there. I have fond memories.

Balagun: But I remember doing that. Maybe I just remember having outreach and like bringing flyers or bringing stuff like Brecht paraphernalia up to PTH, you know what I’m saying—and seeing people like Jean or seeing you… Or then, there would be demonstrations and I would see people and I was like, “Oh, that's PTH—yeah, they do cool stuff.”

Balagun: [01:03:41] But I think that the deepest cut I remember, was the one we had organized. I think we had organized a conference after [Hurricane] Sandy, which was the Brecht had organized a conference after Sandy, and there were a bunch of city groups. It was with Miguel [Robles Duran] at the New School, and I think I remember you guys. But you guys were always a part of like—the tapestry of the Brecht. Like, I feel like every time I've been at the Brecht I always remember Jean being there, you being there, I remember Rob Robinson being there, just a bunch of people that who were like a part of the scene. And then, people who I knew and respected started working there, so there were people who hung out—younger people who hung out in the Brecht, who worked at PTH. So it was like Divad [Durant] and there was Teju, you know what I'm saying? And there was like—there was a Brian [Welton] at one point.

Balagun: [01:04:34] Oh my God, I remember that party! [Laughs and claps hands]. Lord! I remember that party we had at the Brecht one time, and we—you all turned it out. It was so hilarious. It was so good. It was good. It was good. So, everyone who I really respected who was a part of PTH was there. And they were all part of the larger left circle.

Balagun: [01:05:00] And, but I remember—one of the things I remember was also just the militancy, because I remember you guys being in front of the South African embassy… I remember you guys having a crow bar as a symbol… Like, there was all sorts of shit that I was like—I remember seeing you guys with powder blue shirts with a crow bar as a symbol, and I was like, “Damn, that's kind of dope.”

Balagun: [01:05:26] It just kind of hit my head, and it was that time when like—I think that for me… There was always this kind… Oh yeah! You know who it was too? That was super important too? Brandon King—because Brandon King, now the Brandon King connection is great, because Brandon was a part of three different axis or organizations, that really founded—were foundational for the Brecht. So, he was a part of PTH. He was part of MXGM, and then he ended up being part of the arts collective at the Brecht, which is called Ground Floor because Brandon was also a painter, as well as a DJ. So, then me and Brandon kind of clicked because Brandon was very like, proto Afro-punk. He was Afro-punk before there was Afro-punk. Right? You couldn't quite say it, but that was who he was. He was like—he came in on a skateboard, wore suspenders, had tattoos and shit, and I remember him being, like, the kind of emissary amongst like, other folks.

Balagun: [01:06:30] There was a ton of folks that you guys had that were just emissaries to like the broader left community that got around, and it was good. And then—because then, I feel like folks had a connection to the organization that was, and the organization began to be part of the conversations that were crucial. Because, you know—I think at that time there was this—I think there really was this kind of like—it was a dramaturge around the 2000s. It was like—there really wasn't the socialist movement as defined right now, but it was definitely this kind of sense of this kind of Marxist analysis, with like an anarchist twist.

Lewis: There was APOC.

Balagun: [01:07:16] There was APOC. There was this very anarchistic, like very militant, confrontational kind of, aesthetic. So, you had APOC. You had Critical Resistance. So things were about busting out and breaking free, and I feel like PTH was a part of that kind of like, broader milieu. So, at that time there were different movement spaces around the city. There was 388 Atlantic Avenue, which was a Critical Resistance.

Lewis: Yep, and MXGM…

Balagun: And MXGM, yes, which is down the block where Prison Moratorium Project was, also Atlantic Avenue. We had the Brecht obviously. What else did we have? We had like, a bunch of these different spaces.

Balagun: [01:08:05] I think a lot of us were like mutants. We were like mutating. We would just go from space to space, so I would hang out a lot at 388 Atlantic, at Critical Resistance and got to know Ashanti [Alston] and Kai [Barrow], had known them from the SLAM years, but then helped them move with them to Critical Resistance, yeah! And definitely the APOC thing was huge. It was huge. It was huge in the '90s and 2000s. Yeah, so that was kind of like, my memories.

Balagun: [01:08:43] You know, it wasn't like a particular moment where I sat down with people,  it was just like a series of encounters with people who I considered very important and people who I considered very serious. I feel like when I saw Jean I had a similar ah-ha moment when I had with Cornel West, you know what I’m saying? Because I feel like Jean was giving life to an intellectual tradition. I don't think I can really describe it, but there's something about a soul force that... I’m not actually very religious, but I do believe. And there's something about when you see the spirit of God working in somebody. And even if the word Jesus is not even mentioned [smiles] or God is not mentioned you can recognize that soul, you know what I’m saying? And that's what that soul force is—what Jean kind of… I saw in him.

Balagun: [01:09:57] There was a soul there, and it's not to be taken lightly because I feel like soul is not just about—it’s about spirit, but it's also about an attitude of non-commodification of values. You know what I'm saying? And like, there's that sensibility around that… That somebody's greater than money—you know what I’m saying? That someone's greater than capital. So I think that was something that I really felt, and then knowing Jean—it really got me thinking about how I saw the street again, because then I looked at Pathmark on 125th Street, way different than when I met Jean.

Balagun: [01:10:29] Then I realized that at 125th Street, around survival economies… I used to just walk through 125th Street and not even think about it. But then when I met Jean and I heard him talk, and I heard him talk about canning or bottling and stuff like that…  I was like, Pathmark 125! And it shifted the way I thought about the street. You know what I'm saying? Like, I tell people all the time, “You don't need Google glasses if you—if you just listen to people. [Laughs]. You know, that's the thing, so… That's what I felt about Jean. Jean—Jean—Jean was a move, right?

Balagun: [01:11:04] And then, there were people around PTH too—you. I remember seeing you, when you guys moved to the Bronx, and then I remember—there was just like… Like, seeing you there and then seeing—first of all, I used to love going to the PTH office because it used to be this like—I just remember everyone was just super polite, and super busy and like… But always made time for me.  
 
Balagun: [01:11:35] Sam! Sam Miller—in the Bronx, me and him used to talk because we went to his office. I'd be like, "Here's something that's going on in the Brecht, blah, blah. Can you come through?" And stuff like that. He'd be like, “All right.” You know, he would be good. Seeing you dealing with a bunch of stuff, you know—but always having time and being really friendly. It was always just kind of a friendly vibe I always got; you know. And it felt like—and you know—to me, I've been in movement spaces, but it felt like a movement space. You know what I’m saying? It didn’t feel like—you know what I’m saying… That's the way I felt about it, so… Did that make sense?

Lewis: [01:12:14] Mm-hmmmm. What were some of the things that made you feel like it was a movement space?

Balagun: I mean, I felt like… First of all, I mean—I felt like there was just people who were just doing shit. You know what I’m saying—I felt like people were like, you know—really… It seemed to me people took the running of the office really seriously, but then I just felt like—it's hard to describe, but it also I felt like… Something that really stuck in my mind—I remember one time that there was a guy there who was going through some sort of distress. It was something going on, and he just was acting out. And you were so calm about it, and so like—caring and not stressed at all, and it really just hit me. I was like, “Wow, there people really care.”

Balagun: [01:13:17] And, I know that sounds like, “Of course, we're on the left. Of course we care.” But no… But I'm saying—there was something about that care that was trans universal, and that was really kind of important to me. And I peeped that. And you know, and I just felt like the ways in which I felt like PTH just showed up at demonstrations and actions—they showed—they really did show up. And like, really kind of—I remember just seeing them be at demonstrations and give talks, and the talks always being interesting and always being good and being informed and you know—being important and like, doing that type of stuff.

Balagun: [01:14:02] I mean, I remember like—when the stuff around the Vacancy Count started happening... The Vacancy Count felt like such a vanguard issue, because the thing for me was this like… Direct action is kind of, a humanism, so direct action is a kind of poking at what's not being provided by society but making that the ultimate demand. It's like an intellectual judo of capitalism. It's like capitalism is ridiculous, I’ll make you trip on yourself. [Laughs] Like—you know what I’m saying?

Balagun: [01:14:37] So, pointing at the vacant houses that exist in the city, is the most intrinsic critique of capitalism that you can do without even telling people that, “This shit's about capitalism.” And that shit is so slick and so smart that people don't understand they're talking about capitalism, because it's like, “Yeah! Look at all of us homeless people and look at all those empty houses. You make that connection.” And folks are like, “Damn!” That was like, the pedagogical example of people's actual practical lived experience being dignified and not theorized. You know what I’m saying? And like, just being able to point that out to people, was something I was just like… I always try to—that's something that’s just emulating—so, that's where I thought that that movement pedagogy felt like it was real.

Balagun: [01:15:45] And I also felt it was real in terms of the symbolism. I felt having the powder blue shirts and the crow bar as a symbol was this kind of—level of visibility around the issue that was just like, yeah! You know, like—we're pushing the levers of this work. You know what I’m saying?

Balagun: [01:16:09] I joke with people all the time, I’m like—sometimes we get so boring. I mean, think about how fun it was when like—when Huey and Bobby were like… Let’s call… They didn't call themselves, "We're the concerned Black Oaklanders for police protection against police brutality." They're like, "We're Black Panthers!" You know? And that's something about the imaginary—around seeing a symbol that connects you to something bigger than yourself. And I joke with people, “What if we had a group called the Black Orcas?” You know what I'm saying? [Laughs] It would be funny! But it would be true, right? People would be like, “Orca—you know, we're peaceful, but once we're fucked with, we bite you.” The imaginary was important in terms of using that language, but also symbols, and so then that was what connected us, and then what ends up happening is that people who you have no contact with, kind of just get it, and there’s not a requirement… And you know when people get it—when there's not a requirement to understanding the work between left and right.

Balagun: [01:17:26] You know what I’m saying? I feel like that's why the Brecht Forum and PTH worked so well together, because I feel like the Brecht Forum was also like—as quiet as it kept, yes, we were deeply, deeply committed to anti-capitalist values. Yes, we're deeply committed to Marxism as a science, but when you experience the Brecht Forum—you didn't get any of that left rhetoric. You just felt people, and you just felt like, “Oh, I want to be a part of this—against this.” You know what I'm saying?

Balagun: [01:18:04] And I felt like that was where that coalition kind of happened, when you have like a… And that's why I say it's a movement, because—and then, I think what anchored it was someone said to me the other day, I thought it was so good… It was like, “We have to move from being concerned with left and right to top and bottom.” You know, and I feel like that was also a thing, too. Like, who's running the organization? Who has the speaking roles? You know what I’m saying—is it privileging the people on the bottom? Or is it privileging the people on top? And that's what I saw too, so… Does that make sense?

Lewis: [01:18:43] Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. It's making me think—I did a presentation…  Marcus Moore and I did a presentation with Betty Yu.

Balagun: Oh yeah.

Lewis: And… So we used audio from the oral history project, but it was about art and activism,

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: and so I was looking through all these photos, and doing this project made me reflect on the fact that a lot of the visuality of Picture the Homeless was actually homeless people themselves

Lewis: Right!

Lewis: and putting bodies on the side walk in front of a vacant building,

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: that the people that you would avoid sitting next to on a train were going to be sitting right next to you in this event,

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: and you had to deal with them. And they were going to be speaking on a panel and being brilliant, and it forced you to think differently about 125th Street, or property or whatever.

Balagun: Yeah, totally, totally, totally, totally. That's the truth. That's absolutely truth.

Lewis: [01:19:48] What—what do you think—as a, being a person in the movement—do you think Picture the Homeless… Did Picture the Homeless change anything in the movement?

Balagun: Shit yeah! I feel like—I feel like Picture the Homeless, in a lot of ways, like—you know, shifted a lot of—I think, first of all—I mean, right now we're in the midst of one of the biggest housing struggles in the state, you know what I’m saying? And not just the state, but in the country and around the world. I mean like—the level of inequality is reflected in our cities and is a manifestation of the homeless crisis that we have right now. I think it’s like—I don't know what an exact number is, but it's about 500,000 they say—technically. But it's probably more. It's probably close to a million of home—of people who are homeless in the city, I mean in this country.

Balagun: [01:20:47] And, you know—homelessness touches every aspect of the work. So for example, you talk about education. They're like, "Well, there's only seven Black kids who got into Stuyvesant." Well, you know what? Like, you do a cross correlation between the fact that only seven Black kids is going to Stuyvesant and one in ten Black—one in ten kids in New York City public schools are homeless. You know what I’m saying? It’s a result—you know what I’m saying, so like… So, homelessness is a manifestation of the deep, deep, deep inequalities of capitalism. You know what I’m saying?

Balagun: [01:21:23] And I felt like Picture the Homeless put that on the map, you know what I’m saying? And they visualized it... They created—it was a media savvy organization that was able to do grassroots organizing work at the same time. Like, leverage and put pressure on elected officials in really serious ways. And I think that strategy, you know—is something that's taken on today in a lot of ways, by a lot of different groups.

Balagun: [01:21:58] I remember—and I also remember this PTH being, like at the center of unpopular struggles. Like, I remember before there was Occupy, there was just this shantytown. What was it called?

Lewis: Bloombergville.

Balagun: Bloombergville, yeah! You know, and I feel like Occupy got all the cred because—you know, for whatever—you know, for a variety of reasons. Like, you know—Bloombergville was like pre-Occupy. Like, there was a vanguardness that was kind of like, you know—when Kanye said, "George Bush doesn't care about Black people. Uhhhhhhh…" You know what I'm saying? He—he was trying to utter “Black Lives Matter”, but he just didn't have the language for it. He didn’t have the… You know what I'm saying? Like, he was almost there, you know what I’m saying? And it took some time later, to articulate it later as Black Lives Matter.

Balagun: [01:22:51] And so then, the same way I feel about Picture the Homeless, right— is like... It was like they did something that was so advanced—because they saw a need, and they were like, “We have to bring attention to the economic inequality. Let's create this Bloombergville…” And it was visually, like—you know, in a lot of ways… And then a few weeks later you see Occupy, right?

Balagun: [01:23:13] And so, like—you know, there was something that was… And you know, the thing about it was that like—the sense of daring you had—that PTH had was unusual because I feel like a lot of different ways… My critique of the movement sometimes is that there's a sense of like, “Well, if you're undocumented or you're a woman of color or you're a Black person you should not be taking risks in terms of getting arrested, or challenging, or doing a direct action, or being in the front part of rallies. You should be more in the background and be more scared and stuff like that. And I feel like that type of philosophy has actually disempowered people from taking leadership, and moving forward and taking risks and doing stuff.

Balagun: [01:24:06] And so, whether or not Picture the Homeless showed up brilliant or they showed up messy—I always felt really inspired because they were there. You know what I’m saying? Sometimes my heroes aren’t just always people who are brilliant all the time. Hell, I'm not brilliant all the time. Sometimes I give a talk like, "Yep! I’m mailing this one in. Thank you so much." [Laughs] You know what I’m saying? I'm not always brilliant, but you know… The fact of the matter is—you're there and you're present. You're bearing witness, and you're serving as a radical witness.

Balagun: [01:24:46] And then, what I saw was that also with PTH—I saw this kind of thing around… It's so popular to talk about intersectionality these days, but PTH was the first organization that was really intersectional. Like, I never saw an organization… They were like, “We're talking about homelessness and we're talking about civil rights and we're talking about the rights of people—like on their very person—as citizens, and that was very powerful! I think it was the first organization that I had seen that had a civil rights division. [Laughs] I was like, “Ooh! That's unusual. That's unusual to have that.” But it was something that—they were like, and it would lead the basis for us to talk about citizenship now—particularly now, because I feel like there's two talks around citizenship. There's the external conversation about citizenship that's happening around immigration, and there's the internal stuff about citizenship around economic rights in this country, and who has the rights to—to survive, you know what I’m saying? Because not everyone who's born in America is a citizen, because we don't have everything to survive. You know what I'm saying? And now it feels like with the cities becoming almost nation-states, pulling away from the country—like, with the wealth expansion it's like the rural areas are falling further behind. People have to come back into the cities to even experience a little bit of citizenship, a little bit of protection—like, clean water. You know what I’m saying? I said to myself, "If there weren't so many millionaires in New York City, New York would probably be like Flint, unfortunately." True story. I mean, I'm not making that up.

Balagun: [01:26:28] So, I'm saying that to say—is that, in all those aspects of the work PTH had really became this pedagogical space, and then you guys did it out in the public, and you shared information, and you shared it across boundaries! And I feel like, seeing you guys show up at a place like the Brecht Forum—that we're just like very proudly left and being like—we were like, anti-capitalists and with all this and stuff, and you guys were like, “Cool! We’re with it—we'll show up and do our thing.” It meant a lot. I think it meant a lot in terms of that, and then seeing you guys show up in city hall and so many different places, and I feel like that kind of like—movement into different arenas, and then… Because I think that… To me that's the thing with movement.

Balagun: [01:27:17] Movement's not just around a left-right position. It's about embodying a  spirit in different places—you know what I’m saying? And then challenging and transforming—by your presence—those institutions, and I feel like that's what PTH did, and I think that's how they transformed them, and I think that in the long term, you know—we see a lot of the stuff that would happen—we see a lot of the conversations happening around housing and homelessness being shifted—because of the work of PTH, you know… And I think that's just a fact. It's still being shifted to this day. To this day it's still being shifted… So….

Balagun: [01:27:57] You know—and militancy! I mean, I think they're so militant. Like, I was just like, “Yo…” You know, like—imagine how crazy capitalism is, that you can't even talk about counting the houses that are empty. Like, they didn't even want y’all to even count the houses. [Laughs] They were like, “No! We can't let anyone know!”

Lewis: That's their business.

Balagun: Exactly—that's their business! You know?

Lewis: [01:28:27] One of the things that Picture the Homeless started to publicly talk about, was community land trusts

Balagun: right.

Lewis: back in 2006, 2007—when we counted vacant property in Manhattan.

Balagun: right.

Lewis: And other groups were talking about… You know—New Economy [Project], so—you know, different groups and different people can have the same idea—good idea, at the same time, and hopefully they converge and build a movement. But Picture the Homeless, when we started talking about community land trusts, people were looking at us like, “Oh…” You know, “What?” And we had connections with Cooper Square.

Balagun: That's right! Yeah… Fran…

Lewis: And—yeah, Frances and so one of the—

Balagun: Totally forgot about Frances, yeah. Yeah…

Lewis: She's still around.

Balagun: Yeah—no… She's still around, exactly.

Lewis: [01:29:20] And so, one of the things—I know you've gotten involved with community land trust movement

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: for some time—because again, it's an alternative model to capitalism. And what—what were your experiences in spaces where people were talking about land trusts, where Picture the Homeless was present, and what do you think—what did that mean?

Balagun: Yeah, I mean… I feel like—you just reminded me that Picture the Homeless has been in the land trust game for so long, for such a long time, and people are just now catching up… Again, like that vanguard kind of mentality, and I mean that in a very good way. You know, I think that—I think it was last year we had a conversation with…  In a community garden—actually with Brooke Park with the U.N. Special Rapporteur, and DeBoRah was there, and she was representing PTH, and DeBoRah also repped… And I love DeBoRah, you know—and she also came to Berlin to represent PTH.  
 
Balagun: [01:30:38] And, you know—I think that—it's a few things. I think one thing for me was that—both in terms of DeBoRah's presentation but also in terms just generally, I think that there was also this level of coalition building from the bottom up that allowed people to create a network. And that to me is an interesting thing. I was at city hall the other day, right? And there were all these different groups that were kind of, shouting out community land trusts, and Cooper Square was there. Then I realized that, this is something we're all agreeing on, and it's because folks were willing to show the math, that people were able to grab onto these tools and grab onto this language. Does that make sense?

Lewis: Mm-hmm.

Balagun: [01:31:38] So there was this thing around non-ownership of the idea and non-ownership and the popularization of the idea, that allowed people to… That allowed that to flourish. And so, it's not like “community land trust, Inc.”, “community land trust, TM”, but it's like community land trust—here's a tool that you can also use, and implement and kind of create, and people wanting to like, kind of grow that out. And I say this to say—whenever I'm in different spaces, like it's now become the most popular thing people are talking about! You know what I’m saying? And now it's like a shorthand… And it's like, “Of course. We're going to do a community land trust.” And then on top of that, is also just like, people who actually—people who now are embedding that within a very specific framework around social reproduction and production.

Balagun: [01:32:42] So like, I'm also part of Friends of Cooperation Jackson, and in Jackson, they're buying land right now, and they're trying to transform that into a community land trust around food production, and creating a supermarket—you know? And then later on, connecting that to a 3D printing plant to create housing, on those community land trust's tracks. And then—so then, your whole relationship around employment then shifts, right? And then, one thing—because I think a lot of times, we have to also be able to think about how we get our people back into work. You know what I’m saying? But like, think about how we get our people back into work and at the same time abolish wage slavery. [Smiles] You know what I’m saying? And so it's like—can we get folks to build this housing and get training… And 3D architecture to—to, like decommodify the land and have that as part of a time bank?  
 
Balagun: [01:33:47] You know, and so like—so, it's wild to think about like, this one seed of an idea has now all these different ramifications—that people are just like, all over the place. And now, I can see it too. I've seen like now—what I'm thinking a lot about, and this actually comes from Cooper Square and some of the PTH work too—is like community land trusts for cultural—cultural hubs. So then like—so one thing I noticed around Cooper Square is that some of the longest lasting cultural institutions in the East Village are community land trusts—like La Mama [Theater].

Lewis: Alex Harsley's gallery.

Balagun: Alex Harsley's gallery.

Lewis: Rod Rodgers.

Balagun: Rod Rodgers, all those spaces—very Black spaces too—like, embedded in the village as CLTs [community land trusts]. Could we use that model to do the same work in terms of building a cultural infrastructure for the Bronx or for Brooklyn?

Balagun: [01:34:00] Because here's the thing about it too… Because here's the thing about community land trusts that I think is really important… It's also the fact of the matter—in culture just in general, is that we need spaces to gather to gauge our own citizenship. You know like, when you think about the Civil Rights Movement and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, it was out in these big fields of people, and people were able to kind of hang out, and eat and talk and then vote and talk about stuff—because there was land that they could use to exercise their freedom.

Balagun: [01:35:21] When you think about Seneca Village, right? And you think about what Seneca Village meant in New York at that time, which is now Central Park. Why Seneca Village was such a threat was not only because it was middle class Black folks who helped fund the underground railroad and also fund the abolitionist movement, but as Black land owners—they could vote! You know what I’m saying? Because you had to have titled property in order to vote at the time. So like, the Copperhead mayor was like, “You got to get rid of this!” You know, and this is what happened.
 
Balagun: [01:35:56] So, I think that—that seed that I think PTH has created has also been able to expand itself into this kind of network of ideas and network of sensibility that can really build out from underneath it, you know? And also just like—again transversal. So. that's why I see it, and I think that building these networks are going to be crucial… Because that's the dreams that I think people are having right now. They're like, “Oh, this is really possible. These are real tools. We can do this.” You know?

Balagun: [01:36:37] I went out to, the other day… Made some phone calls, I'm part of the Community and Clergy Coalition. I got brought in… But one of the things that I was really realizing is that they were calling me because they were just like, “We have to go out to Fordham Road and activate the community around community land trusts.” You know what I’m saying? So, it's not just about, “Here's the community land trust, go at it.” [Smiles] But it's like, how do we exercise this as a fundamental demand amongst the people? That takes a lot of political education. That takes a lot of work. You know, it takes a lot of folks to be getting familiar with the language and being willing to do that stuff.

Balagun: [01:37:21] You know… But PTH, I mean—but, first of all—I mean, PTH's ability to win at the vacancy count also opened up the space for people to talk about community land trusts because then people were like, “You know what? There's a lot of land in New York City.” [Laughs]

Lewis: What should we—what should we do with it?

Balagun: Exactly! And I think that if you didn’t do that—and people thought… I mean, I'm assuming that people thought that that was a bullshit struggle.

Lewis: They did.

Balagun: [Laughs]

Lewis: [01:37:47] People told us that, “There isn’t—that’s not an issue anymore, that that was in the '70s.” And we—we said, “No! It's an issue, but the difference was that in the '70s the… People abandoned property, and the city took it over. And so, we're in the '90s and the 2000s, and there's lots of vacant buildings and lots of vacant land, but most of it is privately owned. So, yeah, we had all these people telling us that that wasn't an issue anymore. Well, first they would say, “There isn't any vacant property.” And PTH members were like, what are you talking about? There are vacant buildings everywhere. So, then we started doing sleep outs.

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: [01:38:35] But then, we were told… So then we did this Manhattan count, and we were all proud of ourselves, and we get these housing activists—big people in a room, and then they're kind of like, “Okay, but so what? Because they're privately owned, and they pay their taxes.” And our members were like, “Unjust laws are made to be broken, [laughs] and slavery used to be legal!”

Balagun: Right, exactly.

Lewis: “A lot of shit used to be legal!”

Balagun: Right, right, right, right…

Lewis: [01:39:05] So then somebody—actually it was Chino [Garcia] had the idea and Valerio from Cooper Square, they said, “Well, you could tag the buildings and claim them.” And so, then that's when we did the wheat pasting.

Balagun: Mmmmmm.

Lewis: And so we kept engaging with vacant buildings and vacant lots in all these different ways, and members sometimes also were squatting… And so it was at the center of Picture the Homeless discourse from the very beginning

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: [01:39:07] as people were like, "I ain't got nowhere to live, and there's empty apartments.” And if they're in the street, they’re getting arrested. If they're in a shelter the shelter is getting thousands of dollars a month for them—to have, to live in like a jail environment. And so it was very much at the center of… Like—the discourse… Where do we go from here?

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: Kind of thing—but it took years to move

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: other folks to that. And so then it was—counting the buildings, but not just to count them but to actually tell everybody, “Look! There are a lot.” [Laughs] You know… And then it did wake a lot of people up. ­­­

Balagun: Yeah.

Lewis: [01:40:23] And then the next move was, “Well, let's decommodify the land.” And people actually use that language. So, you know—you don't walk up to people on the street and be like, "Hey, you want to decommodify some land?" But you had people like Jean using that language.

Balagun: Yeah.

Lewis: And so, that was also the internal political education. And I interviewed Ryan Hickey, the housing organizer

Balagun: Mmmmmmm.

Lewis: and they—they started a study group, the housing campaign, and so members would meet every Thursday for like two and a half years and study community land trusts and cooperatives and things like that. It was like a housing think tank.

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: It was really amazing, and it was their idea to make up the game Trustville,

Balagun: Mmmmmmmm.

Lewis: because it broke it down for people. So, a lot came out of that

Balagun: Right.

Lewis: group of folks who kind of designated themselves, like—teachers and ambassadors and learners, and that they had to carry this message. It was really powerful. And now you hear, like you said, a lot of people talking about it, and Picture the Homeless has relationships with Cooperation Jackson and other land trusts around the country. I don't think as deep as folks would like them to be but they're there, and that—if it exists it'll grow.

Balagun: Exactly.

Lewis: It can grow.

Balagun: Exactly, exactly, exactly.

Lewis: [01:41:57] So, we'll wrap up soon, but are there—is there a favorite Picture the Homeless story [laughter] or something that you think is important about Picture the Homeless that you want to make sure you flag?

Balagun: [01:42:11] You know, just as you were talking it just reminded me, that one of the things I really appreciate about Picture the Homeless was the intellectual rigor, you know—and  the fact that you all would publish reports, and did a lot of that work. And I think that's something that was really interesting to me. It seemed to work so seamlessly and endlessly and so effortlessly with the broader left, intellectual community and it really not just held its own but actually created that space for intellectual work to be happening in the city.
 
Balagun: [01:42:48] You know, I feel like right now we're just a lot of popularization around Right to the City, like cooperativism, inviting different schema, and you know, PTH’s intellectual interventions in a lot of ways, like kind of pushed those doors open. And it was done in a way that was in co-leadership with folks like Harvey, and some other of the think tanks or whatever around the city. And so, that was something I recognized as something that was really important.

Balagun: [01:43:27] And then just generally, I just remember this there being this unbelievable like—joy around the people I hung out with at Picture the Homeless. Like, you know what I’m saying? Like, I hung out with DeBoRah in Berlin. Like you know, in Hamburg when we had that Right to the City conference and it was like a blessing, you know—hanging out, getting to know people on a one to one level, around the city. I ran into Kendall the other day, Kendall Jackman. She always asks about my son, she’s like, "How's Miles doing?" Something like that, and the fact that people remember my kid's name, you know what I’m saying—and just stuff like that.

Balagun: [01:44:04] There was something always around that type of light, that I feel like was always very attractive about PTH. And, I feel honored to have been part of that history... To have seen the folks to do it… And I feel honored that PTH made the decision to kind of share themselves out—because I feel like that's something where a lot of groups don't always do—are good at. A lot of times groups are very good at, kind of like… You know, you see them, but sometimes you don't know how to participate. You don't know how to talk to them. [Smiles] “Yo, can I talk to them? [Laughs] They're like, “No! Come, come. We'll come to talk to you.” You know, that's something where I feel like, it goes back to intellectual bearing of witness that was so informative for me. So yeah! Thank you.

Lewis: [01:44:59] Thank you for the time and all the—the love and solidarity you always showed Picture the Homeless because you were also important to folks at Picture the Homeless because you were—you were in a space where intellectual and cultural work happened, and you were also inviting.

Balagun: Ahhh. Thank you.

Lewis: You know, you were very inviting. You organized an event with Jean and Willie—remember

Balagun: Oh Yeah! That right…

Lewis: like a dialogue?

Balagun: Yeah, I totally remember that.

Lewis: And, you know—in a lot of other ways. So, I think you were—you’re somebody that we wanted to interview

Balagun: Wow.

Lewis: because of those things.

Balagun: [01:45:36] Aw! I'm honored! I mean, it's interesting because I feel like we were both kind of like radical outsiders in a lot of ways, you know what I’m saying? But we were also very much trying to transform the spaces that we were in. And I think that's part of the radicalism that happened. And, you know—it bothers me a little bit. I don't want to end on a sad note, but it just like… I'm always concerned because it's like, I'm getting older, [smiles] and I'm seeing there's a lot of new people… You know what I’m saying? And I worry about what happened to the old institutions? Where’s some of them? Where’s some of that? You know, can we weather the storm, so to speak. You know what I’m saying?

Balagun: [01:46:24] And I hope we are able to do that because I feel like… That's the thing, it's about soul, right? You can't really put your finger on it. You can't really describe it, but it’s something about that type of energy that's so vital to the survival of our people that you don't want to lose that in the midst of all the madness, but I won't get started there because it's late. [Laughs]

Lewis: [Smiles] All right, well, we can do another interview.

Balagun: Exactly, exactly—we’ll be like—part two! Exactly.

Lewis: There we go.

Balagun: Wrap.

Lewis: Right.

[END OF INTERVIEW]