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Editors’ note: This article is from the Spring 2022 issue of the Nonprofit Quarterly, “Going Pro-Black: What Would a Pro-Black Sector Sound, Look, Taste, and Feel Like?”

This conversation with Cyndi Suarez, the Nonprofit Quarterly’s president and editor in chief, and CompassPoint’s Liz Derias and Kad Smith delves into the details of the organization’s journey from white leadership to its current codirectorship model that centers pro-Blackness.

Liz Derias: We thank you and NPQ for asking us to write an article about building for pro-Blackness. That’s been one of our labors of love for the last two years at CompassPoint. And getting the opportunity to write the article after we had completed one of our cohorts focusing on this very issue—and Kad and I getting to rock and roll together—felt right on time. It feels good to have gone through the process of bringing our thoughts and additional research together to this point.

Kad Smith: It’s definitely been a labor of love. Liz was the architect and the genius behind this writing. One of the things I’ve appreciated about Liz’s leadership at CompassPoint—and I think it’s so important that this shine through—is that it’s informed by a political analysis that doesn’t just track with somebody’s professional résumé. So, what do I mean by that? I’m talking about when somebody has a politic that informs the way they navigate the world and that emerges naturally in how they show up in terms of their professional accountabilities and responsibilities. I think that gives an organization an opportunity to understand the authenticity of why you, and why you leading at this moment. And if CompassPoint is talking about celebrating Black leadership, I think Liz has been as well-positioned as anybody could be to speak to what it looks like to come into an organizational environment and be pro-Black in one’s orientation and have a politic that’s informed by a radical Black tradition.

So, I think the piece that we wrote is a taste of that, and I’m excited to have this conversation to build on it. We are in community with leaders every day who are coming up with questions and answers around: What would it look like to truly honor the experiences of Black folks, with no asterisk? That’s the multibillion-dollar—perhaps invaluable—question. As in, no conditions attached to the question of what kind of Blackness is palatable and what kind isn’t.

Cyndi Suarez: How did CompassPoint start doing this work? Was it a question from the field that prompted it? When did the switch from critiquing white supremacist culture to a pro-Black stance happen? And how did it happen?

LD: I think Kad can speak to this in terms of the work that CompassPoint staff engaged with in 2015, 2016—before I came in as a staff member. But some of it was precipitated by what was going on contextually in the world, right? One of our principles at CompassPoint is to live in symbiosis with our community. So, as things are moving in the field—as things are being challenged and changed among movement organizations—we take that in and respond to that through training, curricula, content, internal development. We really try to live into one of our core strategies, which is to live liberation from the inside out and the outside in.

Our staff at that time were really moved by all the work that had been happening with Black liberation forces on the ground and all the continued responses to police violence and subsequent organizing. And they saw that as an opportunity to organize CompassPoint and not just be a center for nonprofits. We got to this place from the labor of folks who came before us over our forty-seven-year history, but it was time for a pivot—it was time to respond to our community and build alongside our community as a movement-building institution.

CS: So, I hear you saying it was both: it was coming from the community and it was coming internally, from staff.

LD: Yep.

KS: Yeah. I would add a little piece of honoring. Liz has already articulated what happened in response to the zeitgeist of the last few years and to what’s going on in the larger community and movement work in general. But I also think it’s important to acknowledge that there has been strong Black leadership at CompassPoint, even if it wasn’t formally recognized. So, Spring Opara, Jasmine Hall—these are some folks who are still full-time staff members who’ve been truth tellers for the longest time, before it was chic, and before it was like, Oh, can you tell the truth about what’s really going on? Can you really tell people about how folks are showing up, and be honest, and show up in integrity? Spring and Jasmine were folks who exuded that naturally, not as a means of, I think I’m going to be received well by my colleagues, but, This is what’s important for me to feel like I belong here.

And so I don’t think that can be overstated. I also don’t think that we can gloss over the fact that CompassPoint went through a shared leadership transformation, and Black folks were extremely empowered by that. Like, Oh, my gosh, we can question hierarchies, we can question the way in which decision making is happening from a traditionally white-led organization? The organization eventually pivoted away from that, and Black folks weren’t happy about it. I’m just gonna speak plainly: There was a sense of a commitment to holacracy and shared leadership, and the Black folks on staff were doing some of the implementation and evaluation of that work, and it increased their responsibility and created visibility around their leadership—my own included. And when the organization committed to moving away from that, that was one of the few instances that I would say CompassPoint unintentionally perpetuated anti-Blackness.

CS: Can you say more about that? What did you pivot to from this transitional codirectorship?

KS: We pivoted to a governing system with a codirectorship that’s a little more loosely defined. And I’ll let Liz speak to that. But essentially, we made a decision whose key momentum was coming from everybody but Black folks. We didn’t pause and notice that Black folks were saying, “No, this is really important for us,” or consider the impact on the Black folks on staff when we made that decision. It took several years for us to even say that out loud. So, I say that because, now, when we’re talking about centering Black leadership, it’s also teaching us how not to replicate the mistakes of the past. And, you know, sometimes folks hear this, and they say, “Well, what about such and such groups, such and such racial identity, such and such place?” But let’s start with what has happened to the Black folks on staff at this particular moment, and honor that if we had been more diligent and more principled in the way that we moved forward, we might have prevented a significant organizational change from having negative consequences. And let’s honor our collective desire to practice shared leadership and to have leadership understood as something that’s kind of fluid across the organization.

I say all that because it’s not lost on me that the leaders who’ve been at CompassPoint before Liz came in were leading in ways that I was not—particularly regarding the ways in which Black men and women are often asked to show up in terms of emotional labor. I’m acutely aware that that’s not a leadership style that I provided. Those leaders paved the way for us to see now what it means to talk about building a pro-Black organization. We can’t lose sight of that. I think that Spring and Jasmine, in particular, as well as Byron Johnson, who is now at East Bay Community Foundation, and Fela Thomas, who’s at the San Francisco Foundation—a lot of these folks came in and, at a critical moment, helped piece together what pro-Black leadership and a pro-Black organization could look like, right when CompassPoint needed to have this more tangible form.

CS: Okay, let’s get into this—because I want to get into what these things mean in more detail. I want to back up a bit and ask: What does being pro-Black mean to you? Before we get to organizations, or what a sector would look like, what does pro-Black—as a concept in and of itself—mean to you, as an individual?

LD: What pro-Black means to me, individually, and then also organizationally, and then more broadly in terms of the sector and the movement, is: striving to consistently build power for Black people. That is the crux for me: To be pro- Black is to build pro-Black power. And when we talk about building power at CompassPoint, we define it as building our capacity to influence or shape the outcome of our circumstances. And for us—and for me in particular—building pro- Black power is part of a longer spectrum and continuum of Black liberation movement work that preceded me and even preceded slavery and genocide and white settler colonialism.

Building pro-Black power, I think, is taking a look at the ways in which power—formally and informally recognized positional power—existed, unrecognized, in our communities before systems of oppression. Looking at this not with the intent that everything needs to be carried over, not with an essentialist eye, but with an eye to ways that we have moved in the past—our traditions, our norms, our mores, or ways of being—that can inform the ways that we move now. And had it not been necessarily “interrupted,” for lack of a better word, by white settler colonialism, then our communities and our nations may have looked very different.

Building Black power, building pro-Black organizations, and building a pro-Black movement requires us to take a look back at the ways that power has existed for us in our communities before systems of oppression, in an effort to bring it into the current context—not only to challenge the systems of oppression but also to carry forward what has been intrinsic to our communities.

CS: I’m almost hearing you saying, “What does power mean to Black people?”

LD: What does power mean to Black people? If we are not fundamentally talking about power, Cyndi, we’re not building pro-Blackness. And that’s a crux for us at CompassPoint. We’ve been spending the last few months really interrogating— and using your book, as a matter of fact, as one of our tools—what building power means for us. Because we’re not interested in a cosmetic approach to building pro-Blackness. We’re interested in building up the capacity for all staff—with Black people at the center—to shape and influence the outcome of what happens at CompassPoint.

CS: Thank you. What about you, Kad?

KS: I think in terms of what comes to mind with pro-Blackness, Liz said all the important things. The thing that I would continue to lift up is celebrating Black traditions and celebrating Black folks across the diaspora. Anywhere you go in the world, there are Black folks. And they all have such rich histories and ancestors whose shoulders they stand on, and descendants whose circumstances they’re trying to change. There’s such an abundance, and it’s such a large umbrella of an identity, and there’s so much to celebrate there.

One of the things we’ve talked about is why not just focus on anti-Blackness? But when you focus on anti-Blackness, you tend to wind up with an in-group, out-group thing that perpetuates anti-Blackness. And there are ways in which we internalize our own racism as Black folks. What I love about the pro-Black approach is that it encourages and motivates us to look at what’s already so clear to many of us who have been entrenched in this work: that there is more than enough inspiration to let you know that Black folks and Black peoples across the diaspora have a unique offering for this particular moment in time as we come to understanding what racial reckoning and atonement for a racialized caste system in the United States looks like. But perhaps more broadly, when we start to talk about how imperialism and capitalism have wreaked havoc across the world, what Black folks across the world can teach us about no longer continuing to sit idly by and accept that as the status quo.

So, it really is about celebrating the rich tradition of Black folks across the diaspora, and doing so with pride—whereby you feel it in your belly and you feel it in your heart and you even start to get a little shaken, because you know that there’s something greater than you. It’s something similar to what I get from a faith-based practice. When you understand that there are people who are connected to you because of a struggle, but also because of a rich history of how you want to be in community, how you want to celebrate one another—it can be really magnetic.

LD: I have to say, it’s so nice to hear you talk about this, Kad. And this is an example of the work we’ve been doing the last few years to build pro-Blackness at the organization. Kad is exemplifying being able to say things like capitalism, imperialism, building pro-Blackness, building on our traditions and our norms. I don’t know that that was the yesteryear of CompassPoint. This is an example of your leadership and your ability to articulate all this and create space, not just for the Black staff but all staff, to bring that analysis and those experiences in.

KS: One interesting point is that when we asked our twenty-seven cohort participants, “What does a pro-Black organization look like to you?,” we got twenty-seven different responses.

CS: So, let’s get into it—because that’s the second question. What did you hear?

KS: Each one of those responses was, I would say, uniquely deserving of celebration, of recognition, and of acknowledgment regarding where it was coming from. Although we asked, “What does a pro-Black organization look like to you?,” not, “What is pro-Blackness?,” we heard: “Pro-Blackness just looks like being comfortable in my skin”; “Pro-Blackness looks like fighting for power, for justice.” But I think for me, knowing that there were twenty-seven folks who all said something different—that there wasn’t some prescriptive definition that we all landed on that made it sound neat—was powerful. It felt like a space to be creative and say, “This is what it feels like for me,” and receive affirmation and resonance from folks who might not have framed it that way—to hear or be able to say, “I totally get what you’re saying, what you’re getting at, by lifting that up.” That was so powerful for me.

CS: Were there themes?

KS: A theme that jumped out is that Black leaders would feel supported. Another one that came up was people being able to speak truth to power. So, an honesty aspect. Oftentimes, we’re met with a certain level of resistance when we speak about Black-specific issues. So, that is anti-Blackness rearing its head in a very petulant and kind of gross way when Black folks talk about things that are particular to Black people and are met with resistance. A lot of what was coming up in articulating the pro-Black organization is the eradication of that dynamic. So, I can speak to what it means to be a Black person even if I’m the only one. Or even if I’m one of four. I’m not going to be met with, “Wait, wait, wait. We’re not anti- Black. We’re not racist.” We’re going to say, “Oh, let’s go further there. Let’s understand what’s coming up for you.” I feel like that would be in lockstep with other movements toward progress.

LD: Something that comes back a little to your question, Cyndi, about how we got to pro-Blackness at CompassPoint, is what we discovered from engaging with and launching our pro-Black cohort. We tried on a governance model called holacracy that Kad was offering, and then we moved into a vote on whether we were going to keep holacracy or not. And the Black staff voted for it, because it gave them the opportunity to step into their power without punishment. But that got voted down, resulting in a bit of a vacuum of “What do we do next?” And at that time we were hiring, so we had a plurality of Black staff for the first time in CompassPoint’s forty-seven years. Kad has already mentioned some of our staff—I’ll add that we also had Maisha Quint, Simone Thelemaque. So many came in and provided a plurality.

This is important to note, because what we found as we engaged with the cohort is that it’s really hard to build pro- Blackness when you are the sole Black person at the organization. I mean, it’s like moving a mountain. And so that plurality provided an opportunity for the Black staff to get together and really interrogate pro-Blackness internally. And as we did that, we really built unity—we built across our values. And that’s when we decided that it was really important for us to resource our Black programmatic work.

So, we already had Self-Care for Black Women in Leadership, which ran four cohorts at the time, and which is primarily a program for Black women in leadership to discuss these kinds of issues. What did pro-Blackness mean to them? How do they heal? How do they build their leadership? And then we pivoted to resourcing our B.L.A.C.K. Equity Intensive, which is the program we’re talking about. So, when we asked folks, “What does it mean to build a pro-Black organization?,” we had lots of different responses. Responses that varied depending on if folks were feeling like they actually have support in their organization to build pro-Blackness versus if they didn’t feel like they had support, if they were the sole Black person.

And a theme that came up that helped feed our own understanding of pro-Blackness was how to build an organization where punitive action was not at the crux of everything you do as a Black person. That value—being punitive, being dominant, having power over—is a relic, a continued relic of white supremacy, of white settler colonial culture. And so we are telling ourselves that we are undoing and challenging white settler colonial culture. That means that we are intrinsically challenging punitive action. And Black folks’ reality is punitive action in this world, right? We talk a lot at CompassPoint about power and policy, and how important it is for us to understand the rules that govern our lives. It is very important as Black people building a pro-Black organization to know the policies and the rules that govern our lives. Because historically, if we didn’t know the rules, we could be incarcerated, we could be hanged for that. And so for us, knowing the policies that govern our lives enables us to make a choice: We can decide to follow these rules, to break these rules, to create new rules—which is all that organizing really is, right?

So, as we were talking with our participants, it was really important for us to challenge the punitive value that’s embedded in our society and in our organizations. When people are afraid, when they don’t feel psychological safety, when they aren’t able to speak truth to power—what undergirds that is a fear of punishment. And to build a pro-Black organization, you have to understand power, and you have to really be committed to removing punishment as a consequence of action.

CS: What I’m hearing you say in essence is that you have to have more than one Black person.

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KS: Most certainly.

LD: Yeah. But something that I really love about the B.L.A.C.K. Equity Intensive program is that it pulled in and recognized positional power. So, you can have a Black person who’s on staff with you but who’s still moving in ways that endorse or promote white supremacy habits. What’s more important is the commitment, the willingness, the politic that person holds and that the other people in the organization hold. So, as we were building this intensive program, it was important for us to draw in the commitment from those who have positional power, administrative power, executive power to support the staff. That itself is a shift, as well. It’s not just having a Black person advocate pro-Blackness or challenge anti-Blackness—it’s shifting your whole governance, your whole structure, to make space for that person. And so we require executives and administrators who are supporting their staff members to be part of this intensive to really be supporting their staff members to be part of this intensive. CS: How did you know?

KS: Degrees of success. I think that’s 2.0 learning. With some organizations, that principle just shone through clearly, and they were kind of a North Star in terms of how they were rocking with one another. And there were other organizations that had more of a challenge coming to terms with that.

CS: The people who came into the program came from organizations where they may or may not be one of the very few Black people?

KS: Yeah, one of very few. Everyone had at least some positional leader. Liz brought up the Self-Care for Black Women program. I don’t think we can overstate how important that was for CompassPoint’s programming purposes in terms of centering Black people. I was in my mid-twenties when for the first time I saw CompassPoint’s training room filled with only Black folks. And that was one of the most telling moments for me—because I thought, Oh, I’m gonna stay at this organization. Now, I’m a millennial. Most of my peers jump from organization to organization every eighteen months or so. Sometimes, even if the organization is doing right by them, they’re like, “I just want something different.”

At CompassPoint, I could have very easily fallen into that predicament as a millennial, but when I saw the Self-Care for Black Women programming going on, I thought, Wow, there’s a there there. I don’t mean to sound corny, but there is potential here for us to use this vehicle, or vessel, for transformation in a really profound way. That Self-Care for Black Women program that Spring, Jas, Simone, and Liz have led and helped to steward was the cutting edge—the edge leadership part of CompassPoint, so to speak. It gave us the legitimacy to say we can hold space for Black folks by Black folks, and nobody that’s not Black is going to be able to call into question why we’re doing it. They don’t have the right.

CS: Say that again?

KS: They don’t have the right! As non-Black folks, you cannot say, “Why would you make this space for Black folks?” One, we see the vital need for it across the world. But in particular, we see via testimony, via experiential reflections, how valuable that space is. I won’t go into the details of that, because it’s not a program I worked on, but if there is some potential opportunity for NPQ to harvest lessons from other folks—there’s a lot to learn there. And we wouldn’t be where we are now if we hadn’t done Self-Care for Black Women. It’s important to acknowledge that as the tradition that we’re building on directly at CompassPoint.

CS: Before we move on, can you give a quick example of what is a punitive system—and what that would look like for an individual in an organization—and what would be the opposite of that?

LD: I’ll give you an example at CompassPoint. At the core for us as we were building a pro-Black organization was experimenting with a new governance model. Holacracy was useful, but it didn’t meet our needs—so, we’re developing a new kind of governance model. There’s nothing really new under the sun—but what it does is push us to center our values, which is something that comes beautifully from bell hooks’s center–margin framework. When we think about those most marginalized and what they value, and we make changes to bring them into the center or to expand the center, then we can have more of a liberatory organization. So, not doing that can be punitive. It can be really punitive by default, right? So, when I came into the organization, I observed that the majority of people who worked at the organization were women, and all the Black women at the organization were mothers.

CS: What role did you come in as?

LD: I came in as what we used to call a program or project director. Now I serve as a codirector. And so when I came in, we took a look at what it is that Black mothers value. They value the health of their children. They value time with their children. They value psychological safety for themselves, and not to have to be here and worry about their children. These are intrinsic values that are at the center for Black women. And the organization didn’t offer 100 percent dependent coverage. So we had mothers, and sometimes single Black mothers, working at CompassPoint and then working at other jobs just to provide healthcare for their children.

So, in an attempt to build a pro-Black organization, we decided to flip that policy on its head. We wanted to figure out how to prioritize putting money into supporting our staff, which at the core would mean supporting Black mothers. And this year we passed a policy of 100 percent dependent coverage for all our parents. Centering Black women wound up expanding the center, because now all of our staff—our white staff, our IPOC staff—can get care for their children. That policy is now institutionalized. It was a really beautiful practice.

This is targeted universalism, right? You take a look at who is at the center and who is the most marginalized, and you bring the most marginalized into the center, and you do that through policy change. I’m really proud of us for doing that. Because, again, consequentially, whether it was purposefully punitive or not, we were smacking mothers on the hand—it was causing punitive action for them. They couldn’t navigate through their lives as freely because they were worrying about caring for their children.

So, this is why we reject the concept of anti-Blackness, and reject diversity, equity, and inclusion. These aren’t frames that we use. We love all the DEI officers and practitioners and theory that have come through CompassPoint’s doors, but we reject DEI, because pro-Blackness is not about trainings or tolerance or building people’s understanding of pro-Blackness—which is the crux, I think, of DEI. It actually is going beyond just challenging structures, and embedding the core values of Black people and making them central.

Building pro-Blackness and building power require much more than just defending ourselves against anti-Blackness, and much more than just asking white folks in the organization to take a training. It’s really about moving the needle with respect to looking at Black people as the folks who develop our governance, as the folks who, by virtue of our values, lead the development of the systems, policies, practices, and procedures at the organization. And that challenges the punitive nature—when we center Black people, we challenge the punitive nature of organizations.

KS: In terms of themes that came up, a couple of folks from the cohort mentioned safety. Safety from discrimination, from undeserved consequences, from systems of oppression. There’s also the self-determination piece. If we talk about self-determination in terms of, for example, that flavor of the day, shared leadership, we’re hearing conversations around this in many pockets of folks across all different identities. What does it look like to have autonomy and agency in an organization that intrinsically depends on collaboration? What does it look like to find that balance? And there’s something about Black folks consistently pushing the needle on self-determination for a group of people and for individuals, and trying to find what balance looks like there.

Also, in terms of the punitive piece, I want to speak quite frankly about that. What we’re seeing right now is a mass wave of organizations—either woefully underprepared, or who think they’re prepared but aren’t, or who are prepared but haven’t quite thought through the ways in which they’re going to brace for what seismic shift does to a system—who are inviting Black folks into conversations around racial justice and racial equity and then are not happy when they’re met with answers they hadn’t expected. So, when I think about the punitive aspect, the question for me is: How do we invite authentic engagement around change and transition within our organizations, around the ways in which we develop leaders, that will not be met with retribution or some recourse that is basically backdooring folks who thought that they were participating in good faith toward the advancement of an organization?

So, if a bunch of Black folks get together and say, “Well, it is kind of racist that we’ve never had a Black executive director here.” And then it’s, “We’re not racist. Oh, no, we do racial justice work in community.” No. It can be racist and you can be good people; you can be anti-Black and you can still be great individuals. Or, “We don’t listen to our recipients of services. And I’ve noticed an overwhelming trend that the Black folks who walk through our door in XYZ housing agency or XYZ gender-based violence organization are met with contempt and frustration.” If people are upset by the fact that folks are naming that fact, then that’s a form of punitive action that either encourages people to be a little less vocal, or conditions them to think that they’re not calling out what needs to be tended to—they’re not focusing on the “right” thing.

And that endures, right? I’ve experienced it, and I’m sure that many if not all of us who are Black folks have experienced it in some way. And I think it’s crucial to be able to create the space for folks to say, “No, that can’t continue.” If we’re actually going to do transformative work with a politic around justice, it’s not fair, nor is it impartial, to say that one set of things that we focus on is okay but another set is not. And there’s a unique pattern around what it means to be Black folks calling out the ways in which Black folks are silenced, are ridiculed, are delegitimized that, if it continues, won’t enable us to step into this work wholeheartedly and toward full effect. And that’s what I think getting away from the punitive impact looks like—it’s being able to say, “Nah, we will meet that in its authenticity—and we will act on it.”

CS: Well, thank you so much for explaining. That really puts a fine point on it. My last question is, What would a pro- Black sector sound, look, taste, and feel like?

LD: That’s a great question, and there are so many folks experimenting around this—I feel really thankful to be in the field, in the sector, right now, when we’re seeing organizations flip the dynamic of white people in power on its head. Part of what I’m seeing in the sector that’s growing this collective vision of building pro-Black organizations is white people who are executive directors, administrators, who hold senior positions, leaving their organizations and making space for Black leadership.

And I really love what you were saying, Kad. There’s this nuance of collective action when Black folks say, “We need this level of safety. We’re going to challenge the ways that we haven’t experienced pro-Blackness. We’re not going to yield our power, we’re going to organize our power.” And part of that is also Black people taking the power themselves—as executive directors, as senior managers—assuming that your organization is hierarchical and/or that you have positional titles, which we do at CompassPoint.

And there are organizations that are experimenting with more distributed leadership, with flat structures, and all of that is also part of building pro-Blackness—because I think an intrinsic value for us as Black people across the diaspora and the continent is this idea of communalism, that we’re constantly working together. It’s not just the individual, it’s working for the whole. But there are many organizations that come through our doors at CompassPoint, and that we see in the sector, that are still hierarchical, right? That’s not a bad thing in and of itself. But building a pro-Black organization means that some white folks got to go. That’s important for the sector.

What’s also really important, though, is that our philanthropic partners are resourcing our work to do this. It’s really important that we not be beholden to projects or initiatives that have concrete, predetermined outcomes driven by our foundation folks—that this building of pro-Blackness is actually endeavors of building capacity. So, what would it look like if our philanthropic partners resourced our sector through unrestricted funding, through general operating support, which would allow us to do the work like we’ve been doing at CompassPoint? Allow us to do the work of building the capacity of staff to play with this vision of pro-Blackness, to experiment with it internally, to experiment with it externally. That’s really important for our sector. And we think about our philanthropic partners as part of the sector.

I think what’s really important for the sector is more space for organizations to learn from one another. Over the last couple of years, we’ve started to see large organizations placing Black women at the helm. Greenpeace just hired their first Black codirector. Change Elemental moved into greater shared leadership, and has a four-person “hub” structure that includes two Black women. Tides Advocacy hired a Black woman CEO. So, we’re starting to see there’s a shift, and I would attribute that to the work of the last few years—the work of people being out in the street, of Black Lives Matter, of folks who are really trying to support the resourcing of the field.

And now that we have Black people who are taking up positional power, it’s really important to support them. I think what would strengthen the sector is giving time and space for Black people in positional power to learn skills, to network, to vent, to pool resources. And that’s something that’s been really important for us at CompassPoint. We’re starting to explore hosting one of our next iterations of Black programming, which is our Black Women Executive Directorship 101, and creating space for us to really build pro-Blackness among those who are brought in and who can promote the change—and not just have our staff, who are coordinators, associate directors, directors with no positional power, trying to move the needle around pro-Blackness. We need that buy-in from those who hold positional power.

So, we’ve been playing and experimenting with Black female executive directorships to really account for what’s happening in the field, as there appears to be money coming into the field to support pro-Black organizations, and we need to be set up to succeed. I say appears to be—it’s early days. But there’s a beautiful report that was released a few months ago about the level of philanthropic support that’s been committed, and what actually is being funded.1

KS: Something that comes up for me—and I always sit with this when we’re gearing up for some programming—is that Black folks are not a monolithic people. There’s such a range and diversity of thought among Black folks. And I don’t mean to be simplistic in terms of thinking about a future where our sector has the capacity to really leverage being pro-Black or putting Black folks in positions to succeed. What I mean by that is, even if we think about the rich tradition of what it means to be a Black person navigating this country throughout the Civil Rights era, there were different schools of thought. We think about it as early as W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington—there are different approaches. We think about folks who are integrationist versus Pan-Africanist. There’s such a beauty to what it means to be Black folks, which needs to be understood to best position us for a way forward. None of it is less-than or better-than, in my opinion. But that’s just where I sit.

All that is to say, regarding pro-Blackness for the sector at this particular moment in time, that in the next decade or two I would love to see nonprofit organizations that don’t just provide Band-Aid solutions but actually have a root-cause analysis and a radical approach. Angela Davis says it so poignantly: “Radical simply means ‘grasping things at the root.’” Our organizations, by design, have not been created to get at the root of problems. In fact, we’re beholden to government funding and philanthropic funding, by which they oftentimes steer us away from root causes and root-problem solutions.

So, if pro-Blackness is really going to take root in this particular sector, it means we’ll see more nonprofit organizations that are actually positioned to solve the problems we set our sights on. And I see some powerful grassroots organizers and some folks doing mutual aid efforts who are starting to show that it’s doable. How do we bring that to scale and get them the same resources that folks who have been at 501(c)3s and (c)4s for twenty, thirty, forty years have access to? That’s the real, powerful question for me. And I think that at the end of the day, someone’s got to take the risk and say, “This is a bunch of bullshit, y’all. We got folks that are positioned to do this work at a high level who are already doing it very meaningfully, who are changing people’s material conditions and giving them better chances of survival and for thriving. And they’re not 501(c)3s, they’re not 501(c)4s, they don’t fit the traditional nonprofit model.”

So, when we think about a pro-Black sector, for me it means those organizations are going to be able to address those root causes. And as somebody who’s light-skinned and has the undergraduate degree background, I shouldn’t be taken more seriously than somebody who lives in the streets of Oakland and who says, “Yo, this is what I go through being a houseless person.” That’s a bunch of fuckery. (I’m gonna use this sharp language, here.) I don’t know anything about housing. I don’t know what it’s like to be houseless. I can go get a degree tomorrow in public benefits or nonprofit governance or public administration, and then I would be positioned as some expert to solve these problems. But we position folks who are going through it in real time as if they’re less-than or their ideas aren’t as legitimate. And I just don’t think that that is a radical way forward.

So, pro-Black, to me, means that the Black folks who are in the streets, the Black folks who are in prisons, the Black folks who have directly experienced some of the most brutal forces of oppression—that those folks’ leadership will also be celebrated by everyone. And not just Black folks—white folks, IPOC folks. That we’ll start to understand the value of that. I think that’s the ambitious goal we’ve set our sights on. And if it happens in our lifetime, we’ll be lucky. If it doesn’t, then our descendants get to keep on picking up the torch.

That, to me is a pro-Black sector. I want to see more houseless organizations run by people who’ve been houseless. I want to see more organizations doing transformative justice by people who’ve been in prisons, by folks who’ve been impacted directly by incarceration. That’s what I want to see. When we start to see that stuff, then I’ll say, “Okay, yeah, we’re really getting it. We’re really starting to put our money where our mouth is.”

LD: Kad pushed us to really think about and embed this in our program: Challenging our dependence on expertise. We are not experts because we have all these things, right? And we challenge that internally at CompassPoint. We’re teachers and learners, and we’re colearners among our participants and our staff. And I feel really proud that we’re embodying that and to hear you share it, Kad—extending more broadly vis-à-vis the sector this principle of not being so dependent on expertise but centering those folks who are most impacted, for lack of better words, and who can design and facilitate their own liberation alongside us.

CS: Well, thank you. I really appreciate this.

LD: We’re really thankful to have this space. I think it gives us more opportunity to work with our participants and our partners when we’re able to be in dialogue with NPQ to shift the paradigm.

Note

1. Malkia Devich Cyril et al., Mismatched: Philanthropy’s Response to the Call for Racial Justice (San Francisco: Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity, 2021); and Anastasia Reesa Tomkin, “Philanthropic Pledges for Racial Justice Found to Be Superficial,” Nonprofit Quarterly, October 7, 2021, nonprofitquarterly.org/philanthropic-pledges-for-racial-justice-found- to-be-superficial/.

The post Transferring the Mountain: A Dialog about Professional-Blackness with Cyndi Suarez, Liz Derias, and Kad Smith – Non Revenue Information appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

RJ Dabovich was a strikeout machine in his first season as a pro. The 23-year-old right-hander overwhelmed opponents with a two-pitch mix, fanning out 62 and allowing only 15 hits in 32 and a third innings between High-A Eugene and Double-A Richmond. Arizona State University’s fourth-round 2020 selection put those numbers up in 31 relief missions, a workload cut by five weeks on the shelf due to a slight back strain. Currently, Dabovich is number 26 in the San Francisco Giants system and represented the Scottsdale Scorpions in Saturday’s Fall Stars Game.

———

David Laurila: They had the highest strikeout rate (48.8%) among minors that year. Are you even surprised at how dominant you were?

RJ Dabovich: “I am a little. I mean, I had never really been a ‘rummage through’. At Arizona State, I was a sophomore starter and had eight or nine Ks for every nine. Nothing too crazy. The move to the Bullpen has taken it a bit to the extreme [13.1 per nine]but it wasn’t like that this year.

“After I got drafted by the Giants, I got this pitch plan for what they wanted me to do. They said my K Rate was going to go up, but I had no idea she was going to jump like this. So I definitely surprised myself how well I implemented my plan, the plan they made for me. “

Laurel: How did it come about that you moved to the ASU bullpen?

Dabowitsch: “[Then-pitching coach] Jason Kelly felt my path would get me in the bullpen. I was a little annoyed at first because everyone wants to be the starter and pitch on Friday night. But when he said that I could influence the team over three games instead of just on Fridays – and it helped my development as he saw me as a replacement in the professional ball – I was fully for it. And my things ticked a little, so it turned out to be the best. “

Laurel: Did you see yourself as a power pitcher back then?

Dabowitsch: “More or less. I had a power fastball back then … for college anyway. I was 94 to 97-98 [mph]. “

Laurel: That was with a four sewing machine, right?

Dabowitsch: “Yes, and that’s when I really started to continue the four-seams. That fall, we started talking about it for the first time, “Hey, if you twist your hand just a little bit more in the direction of the 12 o’clock axis, you’ll be carrying a little more. That will help your breaking balls play a little better. ‘

“I forget his exact title – pitching analytics or quality control – but this guy helped me realize that when I was at the Cape last summer I got more swing and miss when I wore the fastball than I did did I had a little more sink. So we hammered this all of fall and all of spring leading into the COVID-shortened year. That was the starting point for my fastball.

“I didn’t have a power break ball in college. I had a kind of wacky curveball and a short, tight slider. When I was drafted, the Giants wanted to morph the two and do a hard downer-slider. It’s technically a curveball, but it’s a firmer curveball in the 84 to 86-87 range. It goes really well with my fastball to screw up the swing decision for the batsman. This is what I do most of all: messing up the swing decision-making process. That leads to the strikeouts. “

Laurel: You were introduced to pitching analytics in college and have evolved from there …

Dabowitsch: “Yes, that’s when we started touching it. After the COVID draft, I went to this gym – Push Performance in Guadalupe [Arizona] – and the pitching guy there had a really good understanding of analytics. He somehow refined my little understanding to a somewhat deeper one. And again the Giants helped me plan the pitch. Here we really went into the analytics page. “

Laurel: How have you improved the hand luggage on your four-sewing machine?

Dabowitsch: “Finger placement changed a bit, and then trunk position was a big deal for me. I was really upright. It always came out at 1:15 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. on the axis. It was really as easy as thinking of a side crunch, almost – like crunching my left side and getting the trunk tilt so that 1:10 turns into 12: 30-12: 45. “

Laurel: Do you have a lot to carry

Dabowitsch: “I have an average of 19 to 21” [inches], and if it’s really good, it’s in the 22-23 range. So I would say that I drive pretty decent on my fastball. I come over barrels. “

Laurel: What about the speed?

Dabowitsch: “It’s somewhere between five and seven, up to eight, nine. I think I had a 99.8 this summer. here [in the AFL] it was exactly in the range of 96-98. There were some fives, but I like to tick it off a little when I can. It’s always cool to throw a little harder. “

Laurel: Back to your breaking ball, how did you fix it?

Dabowitsch: “The thought process is that the harder I throw it, the less time a hitter has to make a decision. For me … my hand is very square so it stays right behind the ball. That’s why I get that four-seam ride. That was always my problem with the curveball: I couldn’t get up to get that spin up.

“In the Giants, I basically had to twist my hand – spear my finger and put my middle finger in the direction of the left-handed batter’s box. We call it a Palm Forward Spike Curveball. That’s the official name they used to describe it. Basically it holds the palm forward and just tears the seam down and tosses it as hard as I can.

“At first it was like a gyroscope – it spun like a ball and fell down – and then finally I just started to feel it in my hand. I got a little bit on top to get that downward twist and a bit of bite at the end. “

Laurel: The Giants didn’t want a top …

Dabowitsch: “It’s not so much that they didn’t want it, but that it’s better if there is a bit of topspin. With topspin I can throw it both at the top of the zone and at the bottom and get the same effect. If it’s a top, it just spins up and hangs there. Downstairs it still works so if it turns into a top at times, it’s not the end of the world as long as I throw it away. But if I want to land it for a shot, it has to have this topspin. “

Laurel: Is it a high spin breakball?

Dabowitsch: “Nothing crazy. It’s probably around 24-26. It’s nothing like 3,000 [rpm] or something special. And somehow it doesn’t look that good on Rapsodo. It’s negative – 4 break and 30% spin efficiency – or whatever it is – but the way it plays with my fastball and the way it tunnels with my fastball gets the swings and misses. “

Laurel: Do you have a third key in your repertoire?

Dabowitsch: “Until now no. I want to perfect this two-step mix and see where this takes me and then make adjustments from there. If I need to add a third pitch, I’ll speak to it [Coordinator of Pitching Sciences, Matt] Daniels and [Director of Pitching, Brian] Bannister and see what they think. But right now it is perfecting the two-pitch mix, being confident, and using the fastball at the top of the zone and the curveball at both the top and bottom of the zone. It’s about having a 50/50 mix as much as possible and only attacking hitters. “

The post A Dialog With San Francisco Giants Pitching Prospect R.J. Dabovich appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

LOS ANGELES – (BUSINESS WIRE) – Dec. October 2021–

Prometheus Alternative Investments is excited to attend the SohnX San Francisco Investment Conference 2021 on October 27th from 12:00 PM to 3:00 PM PDT. The virtual event concludes with a fireside chat with Prometheus correspondent Amelia Martyn-Hemphill and keynote speaker Lee S. Ainslie III, founder and manager partner of Maverick Capital.

“Our media team is excited to share insights and stories from investment professionals with everyone on Prometheus. Thanks to the Sohn Conference Foundation for the opportunity to have an in-depth conversation with hedge fund legend Lee Ainslie, ”said Martyn-Hemphill, a journalist and filmmaker whose résumé includes BBC News, Bloomberg TV and Jim Cramers TheStreet.com.

Prometheus Founder and CEO Michael Wang added, “Prometheus is all about access, access to expert ideas, access to industry insider conversations, access to financial literacy and direct access to alternative fund investments through a streamlined platform. We are honored to work with the Excellence in Investing Foundation and the Son San Francisco Investment Conference to improve access and support the critical community and educational work of Community Education Partners, Bridge the Gap College Prep and 826 Valencia. “

ABOUT THE EXCELLENCE IN INVESTING FOUNDATION

The 12th annual Son San Francisco Investment Conference is hosted by the Excellence in Investing Foundation. The conference is the Bay Area’s premier investor event bringing together highly successful portfolio managers, private investors and asset allocators of all levels to learn from the insights and expertise of highly successful portfolio managers and has raised more than $ 2 million. Conference proceeds will support organizations in the Bay Area that are focused on improving educational opportunities and life outcomes for underserved youth. For more details and conference updates, please visit excellencesf.org.

ABOUT THE SON CONFERENCE FOUNDATION

Since 1995, the Sohn Conference has brought together the industry’s brightest finance professionals, where investors donate their time and present their “best investment ideas”. The Sohn Conference Foundation honors the memory of Ira Sohn, a talented Wall Street professional whose life came to an end when he died of cancer at the age of 29. Ira’s friends and family founded the Sohn Conference Foundation in New York City. Since then, investment managers from around the world have been inspired to create partner-son conferences and unite the financial community to support multiple charitable causes. The Sohn San Francisco Investment Conference is hosted by the Excellence in Investing in Children’s Causes Foundation (EICC), an independent 501C3 based in San Francisco.

About Prometheus Alts

Prometheus was founded by hedge fund experts looking to modernize their archaic industry and share their insights from years of analyzing and managing alternative funds. Understanding that this type of long-term investment relies on relationship building, CEO Michael Wang combined the idea of ​​a social network with a marketplace for alternative funds. Although old laws limit the ability to invest in these funds to accredited investors, the social network is opening the knowledge base to everyone … until the time comes when we modernize the laws and have free access to some of the best assets in the world can create for everyone.

Disclosure: https://prometheusalts.com/disclosures.html

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211021005933/en/

CONTACT: Michael Wang

CEO Prometheus Alternative Investments

michael@prometheusalts.com

(917) 446-5313 Adam Straus

SonX San Francisco

adam@strausevents.com

(415) 377-2327

KEYWORD: UNITED STATES NORTH AMERICA CALIFORNIA

INDUSTRY KEYWORD: PROFESSIONAL SERVICES PHILANTHROPY COMMUNICATION SOCIAL MEDIA FINANCE FOUNDATION

SOURCE: Prometheus Alternative Investments

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

PUB: 10/21/2021 1:37 PM / DISC: 10/21/2021 1:37 PM

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20211021005933/en

Copyright Business Wire 2021.

The post SohnX San Francisco Hearth Chat Options Prometheus Different Investments in Dialog with Lee S. Ainslie III of Maverick Capital | Information appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

From Lovepreet Dhinsa

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin and USF School of Law Professor Bill Ong Hing had a live discussion on Facebook this week about the long history of anti-Asian racism in the United States.

USF Professor Hing currently teaches at the USF School of Law, has served on the city’s police commission committee, and has successfully published several books on racism and immigration.

Both Boudin and Hing expressed condolences to Daunte Wright’s family.

DA Boudin stated: “We are still watching the trial of George Floyd and now, not far from there, we have another young black person who died by the police. We share your pain. Something has to change. “

Prof. Hing also expressed his sadness and anger over the shooting and wanted to point out the Taser’s apology. Hing, a former committee member of the city police commission, led the opposition efforts against the opposition to the adoption of a taser.

In large part, he attributed the tool’s inefficiency to half the time it didn’t work, and found law enforcement to use this as an excuse far too often.

The conversation then shifted to the cause of renewed attention and increased hate crimes against the AAPI community. Boudin asked Hing to address the increase in these incidents.

Hing firmly believes that the cause of this boom lies in racism and hatred. He pointed to the APPI hate violence program which has followed these actions in which the The program has measured 3,000 incidents over the past six months.

He attributes this boom in large part, but not entirely, to President Trump’s rhetoric at the start of the pandemic when he began to refer to the pandemic as the “China virus.”

Hing believes that some people use this rhetoric as a license to act, while others, who may be unfamiliar with what is happening, might see a country leader saying these words and be forced to respond to them in a similar manner .

Presenter Rachel Marshall spoke briefly about the implications of these incidents for fueling division and undermining public safety. With this in mind, the Public Prosecutor’s Office, co-sponsored by the Public Prosecutor’s Office, recently passed Law SB 299 to ensure that victims of police violence are compensated and well protected.

District Attorney Boudin also stressed that these incidents are being taken extremely seriously with a policy of zero tolerance for racist crimes.

Boudin acknowledged that “the attention we pay to these incidents is necessary but not new. This racism, violence and bigotry is a long-standing problem and more effective tools are needed to address these problems. “

Prof. Hing was asked by the moderator to elaborate on this longstanding issue of racism, and he admits that while this awareness of change is new, racism and hatred towards these communities is not.

In 1982, Hing cited the Chinese Exclusion Law, which stopped the influx of Chinese workers into the United States. However, many people forget the violence that led to this law. In the bay, several grassroots organizations and coalitions have started an area specifically geared towards AAPI communities.

Professor Hing also referred to the 88 Chinese minors who were murdered in California that same year alone.

Similarly, in Antioch in the 1870s, many homes of Chinese immigrants had been burned down and many Chinese were driven from the city where they could be monitored.

Following these incidents, Professor Hing referred to a US spy plane that had landed in China and that the plane would return. Because of this, many began boycotting Chinese restaurants and discriminating against Chinese artists, often imitating their language and making fun of them.

Hing also noted the murder of Vincent China in Detroit at the hands of other auto workers over competition concerns and misguided beliefs about killing a man who was “Asian looking”. Hing stated that these competitive crimes were quite common as many Asians are alleged to be stealing jobs or opportunities.

Citing these references, DA Boudin mentioned that because of the “long and embarrassing history of the United States”, Chinatowns were created across the country in solidarity and as a safe haven.

Prof. Hing agreed with Boudin when he stated that “while some Chinatowns were herded into these communities, others created them out of solidarity”. Hing agrees that Asian people have asked for help here because they couldn’t trust law enforcement to protect them. He cited a law by the California Supreme Court that prevented Chinese immigrants from giving evidence in court.

The conversation then shifted when DA Boudin began asking Professor Hing about the challenges and opportunities we are currently facing in protecting our communities in San Francisco.

Professor Hing stated, “It starts with people like you. You have become much more than this event. It begins with leaders, elected officials, and other community leaders. And these leaders need it to speak out against these incidents. “Professor Hing specifically mentioned the importance of advocating for individuals, whether it be against a friend joking about racial groups or for examples of what our community is about.

The moderator then asked District Attorney Chesa Boudin about the challenges he faces in protecting these communities in San Francisco. While Boudin didn’t want to point out all of the efforts made this year, he focused on the priorities his office has right now, including voice access, trust building / developing and ongoing communication.

District Attorney Boudin emphasized the importance of helping Asian communities with language barriers, whether it be with what happens in a courtroom or getting help when needed. To further these priorities, he is hiring more Chinese-speaking staff and working to ensure that all of the services and resources provided by the office are accessible.

Boudin also stressed the need to build and develop trust.

Compared to a time when Chinese Americans could not testify in court and were not protected by law enforcement, he emphasized the importance of informing the community that his office is available to them and that Asian Americans who seek help from Chinatowns can also seek help in his office.

Boudin also stressed the importance of continuous communication to make sure people actually understand what the office is doing for them.

Boudin said he believes there is a lot of misinformation out there about what his office is doing or what cases they are pursuing; However, to advance these priorities, he participates in weekly roundtables with Chinese news outlets and community leaders.

Boudin stated that he is proactively reaching out to people in the community and working to improve communication efforts. He also stressed the need to work on crime prevention, as victims already suffer losses if a racially motivated crime is committed. Boudin also supports the pursuit of intercultural understanding and direct collaboration with the community.

Boudin also announced an upcoming summit on May 14th where he will join fellow community members and critical thinkers on these issues. Boudin mentioned the importance of community feedback in what they want to see from the office.

Hing acknowledged that repeating history is a central theme in order to be aware and to be proactive in advocating change. He looks forward to working with Boudin’s office and having future discussions.

Closing this discussion, Boudin said that these discussions will take place every two weeks with various members of the community featured on the District Attorney’s Facebook page because, although “we have failed in the past, we cannot allow this to happen together. We have to come together to fight it. “

Lovepreet Dhinsa is a student at the University of San Francisco pursuing her bachelor’s degree in politics with a minor in law. She has a passion for criminal law and aspires to enter law school to fight for clients in need. As such, she is also involved in her university’s bogus litigation program and student government.

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The post San Francisco D.A. in Dialog with USF Professor about Lengthy Historical past of AAPI Racism within the U.S. appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

‘Maybe we’re having a bust right now, but it’ll boom again’

Mat Honan

OneZero is partnering with the Big Technology Podcast from Alex Kantrowitz to bring readers exclusive access to interview transcripts — edited for length and clarity — with notable figures in and around the tech industry.

To subscribe to the podcast and hear the interview for yourself, you can check it out on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

BuzzFeed News Executive Editor Mat Honan has long covered the way society interacts with technology. He joins Big Technology Podcast this week to discuss the “Zoom Class,” the rise of NFTs, and how San Francisco may change after the pandemic.

Alex Kantrowitz: Hi Mat, Let’s talk about the “Zoom Class,” or the group of people who’ve been able to keep their jobs and work from home during the pandemic. Some have even moved to “Zoom towns” a few hours away from the cities they once lived in. What do you think the implications are of having a group of people who can do that, and a group who can’t?

Mat Honan: There’s a couple of really interesting things there. If you think about what this pandemic would have looked like 20 years ago, when it would not have been possible to have a Zoom class, or a work-from-home class, or a Zoom school, all that kind of stuff. Technology really, in a lot of ways, helped this from becoming a lot worse than it could have been. It clearly helped reduce community spread.

But it’s deeply unfair certainly that some people are basically able to ride it out at home, often all being paid very well to do that. I think it’s almost a cliché at this point — I wish I could remember who said it first because it’s a brilliant truth — about the pandemic being the black light that exposed all the problems in society.

In some ways, it was just a lot of right stuff and right time in terms of the fact that it did work. You worked on a story, when this was all starting, about video capabilities when the pandemic was getting going. So many people had gone to Amazon Web services, there was so much bandwidth, people had fiber to the house, and there’s all this stuff. But it’s just deeply unfair that so many people got to ride it out at home, and it’s deeply unfair that the kids whose families had the money to have a better computer and better internet connection got a better education, or got an education. In some families, their kids just sat alone at home all day while both their parents are essential workers.

It’s really exposed the divides in society and just what kind of inequalities we have to work on as a society; I think that’s more than anything else. “Zoom Towns,” is the most obnoxious phrase I’ve heard in a long time, it’s going to have a long-term transformative effect in society, but I hope we can make a positive one.

Let’s talk about the effect. What’s that going to look like?

Frankly, I don’t want to predict the future. Like I don’t know. I don’t know what it looks like, but I certainly hope that all these conversations that we’ve had about race and class in the past year aren’t for naught, and that all the things that we’ve learned about who has the privilege to do these things, that we don’t unlearn those.

I worry that this will just add another layer of division inside an already really divided country.

I do, too. I do hope that there is some good to come out of it and we can have some sort of realignment. I saw something recently about the massive number of people who are registered as Independents now versus four years ago, eight years ago, 12 years ago.

It’s been an increase?

Yes, I think that’s a positive thing. One of the worst things that we’ve done in American society is to divide everybody up into teams. It’s been incredibly harmful. I hope there’s a chance that we can learn from it, and people become more civic-minded, and people can get more involved.

Personally, all of a sudden I care a lot more about schools, and not just my kids’ schools, but other kids’ schools. Molly Hensley-Clancy wrote a story on schools in the spring, and about all these kids who have just been completely wrecked by the pandemic and left behind. I’m certainly not the only person talking about seeing that, but I think people are really thinking about that now, and I hope that we continue to think about that.

I hope that we can do things like make sure that all families have a fast internet at home. Why is that something that only wealthy families can pay for? Why can’t we have a more equitable distribution of broadband? Why can’t there be broadband in rural areas? Why can’t we do more to have the government create infrastructure where there’s not affordable internet that people can get?

Tech development already seemed like it was happening in a bubble, and now it seems to be further ensconced in a bubble?

Some things maybe became less bubbled, like for example grocery delivery. My mother, who’s in her seventies and lives in a rural area, and is on a fixed income and doesn’t have a whole lot of resources, had never been able to get groceries delivered. Now, she can get groceries delivered, order online, and curbside pickup, and that kind of stuff, and she’s been doing it for a year. It just wasn’t available in her area, and the grocery stores that were there then scrambled to implement it. You’ll see some things like that, where places that weren’t traditionally tech, like a rural grocery store, become happy about technology that makes them more useful to people’s lives.

But what happens if the builders of technology are less exposed to folks who don’t work in the tech industry?

I think what you’re saying is because of people’s ability to ride it out at Zooms, are they going to have even less empathy than they already did have for people who they’ve not been having any contact with. It’s definitely concerning. Did you see the “giraffe money” story?

Was it about having enough money you could buy a giraffe as a test for wealth?

Right. “Are you going to get giraffe money from this IPO?” or just fancy dog money. I don’t know. And you want to have giraffe money. Even that those discussions are taking place is messed up. The U.S. is pretty messed up. I think a lot of that is due to long-term tax policy, long-term policies around race, long-term policies around who got to get a loan to buy a home, and that type of thing. I would hope that the people who are listening to this podcast, who are the builders, are thinking about the unglamorous middle class and working class and working poor who are not living in those bubbles and are not able to be on the Zoom all day.

There’s a company that has an ad where one of their drivers says, “I’m my own CEO,” and it struck me as tone-deaf. Because yeah, you’re your own CEO, you don’t have health benefits, you don’t have unemployment benefits, you don’t have any of the safety nets that come with full employment, and actually, you’re not even your own CEO because you don’t really even set your hours.

You’re managed by an algorithm.

Yeah. But that that mindset could come out now is shocking to me and appalling. We talk about these people as essential workers, yet we treat them as if they’re completely inessential, and it’s discouraging to me that you could have so little empathy that you might not see that as a problem.

When meanwhile there’s a thing going on in San Francisco right now. There’s a driver, I believe it’s an Uber driver, maybe a Lyft driver, who was assaulted by some people because he had asked them to wear a mask in the car. People are out there scrambling and working hard and putting themselves at risk so that other people are able to be at home and sit there on Zoom and Google Docs, and get your work done and check your workflow in Asana, all that kind of stuff. You know? It happens because other people have ventured out and took risks. And I just hope we think about them.

Okay, what do you think about this whole non-fungible token craze and the fact that bitcoin is going to the moon? I think you have a mountain full of bitcoin sitting in some Wired server from your Wired days.

They burned that, actually.

We should tell the story of the Wired bitcoin server, if you’re able.

This wasn’t me, but it was while I was there and it’s pretty amazing. I believe it was Bob McMillan, who’s now at the Wall Street Journal, who had a Butterfly Labs bitcoin mine, and it was in the gadget closet, and it’s just in there churning away mining bitcoin.

What year was this?

2012, maybe 2013. And at first, it’s just in there churning out stuff at whatever bitcoin was at the time. Even when it was $100 a coin, nobody really thought about this being a big problem. Then, all of a sudden bitcoin shot up, I think it was a thousand bucks or something, and I’m not going to get these numbers right, but it became a problem, and people were like, “Wait a second. It’s a thousand bucks today. It could be 50,000 bucks tomorrow,” which I don’t think anyone believed.

Here we are.

Yeah. Here we are. And there was a big debate internally over what we should do with it. I remember Adam Rogers, who’s a longtime writer and editor there, who’s on the science desk there, making the case that we should give that money to charity, “There are people sleeping on the street. We can’t keep this and sit on this bitcoin stash because it could in some ways compromise our integrity.” At this point, I want to say it was somewhere in the neighborhood of 10 to 15 bitcoin. They had mined several, but not a lot. They didn’t have like a thousand bitcoin or whatever; it wasn’t that early. Anyway, at some point after a lot of arguing over it, they made the decision basically to get rid of the key, and so they burned the key; and once they did that, I mean there’s no getting it back.

How much is this worth?

Like when they trashed it. Let’s say it was 10 bitcoin. I don’t know, it would be worth what, half a million bucks now? It’s a substantial amount of money now the way that it wasn’t when they got it.

Do you kick yourself for not buying bitcoin when you knew it was happening back in the day?

You can’t just think about what could have been. You’ve got to go back to that moment in time to really think about it. But there was a point in time when, I want to say it was John Herman, maybe someone else who was there, bought some bitcoin for a story when it was still trading for pennies a coin, and they had to send a money order to somebody who literally went by the name Morpheus. Who could have seen that it became that?

I actually did buy some bitcoin, which I wish I still was holding, for a story one time, and I got beat by Kash Hill who wrote another story about living on bitcoins, which is what I wanted to do. When you think about the million-dollar pizzas or whatever, or whatever Kash spent, she spent some fortune on a bitcoin sushi dinner, I mean it wasn’t worth anything back then, and it became worth stuff because people bought pizza and sushi dinners. That’s why it’s worth something now.

Do you think it’s going to crash?

I think it’s less likely to be valueless now than it was because there’s so many institutional people in it. I have no idea where the money is going or what’s happening with it.

Can I talk about NFTs?

Let’s define NFTs first because I’m still wrapping my head around how someone could sell a JPEG for $70 million.

I think we can define it as not a JPEG that sold, but as a unique digital object; that’s the way to think about it. I think if you define it that way, that it’s a digital object that is one of a kind, you can understand why that’s exciting.

Digital stuff is replicable on pixels anywhere. If I buy a painting, at least that painting hangs in my house. If I buy a digital object, anyone can see it on the web. I can’t display it. I guess I could buy a screen and put it up there, but anyone could buy a screen and put it up there, so what’s going on here?

I can put a replica of the Mona Lisa in my house tomorrow, right? You can replicate anything, you can already do that.

Is this Beeple’s First 5000 Days thing that sold worth $69 million? I have no idea, man. Who knows? I don’t know.

Why do you think this is cool?

I think it’s cool when you start thinking about it not just in terms of art. I think it’s cool when you start thinking about the ability to have a unique digital item that is yours and yours alone that you have ownership of. I think art is an easy place to start. But I think just in the same way that you weren’t able to really use bitcoin for anything except drugs, you will at some point be able to buy and sell other things, and there’s some weird stuff.

There’s that tweet that Jack Dorsey offered up as an NFT, and so the tweet is always just going to exist on Twitter anyway. It’s the person that’s setting up my Twitter tweet, but someone else is going to own the NFT of the tweet, I think is how it works.

What prevents Jack from selling an NFT of the same tweet to someone different?

Right. But could you fork the tweet? I don’t know. Maybe.

Because it’s all made up.

Yeah. It’s all made up. But I think it’s an interesting way to transfer ownership. This is going to sound crazy, but what if all ownership became some of those transferred NFTs, not just art, but like anything that you own that you don’t necessarily have in your possession, like the title to your car? I don’t know. I possess my car, but the title lives on a blockchain somewhere? It’s just an interesting way to think about ownership. I think there’s obviously all these huge problems with the energy usage that people are talking about —

Because mining bitcoin takes the carbon of an absurd amount of computing power.

The energy involved in mining and transferring bitcoin, and transferring NFTs, is apparently quite significant. But I think being able to prove unique digital ownership is a pretty cool concept.

Do you think you’ll buy any NFTs?

Not $69 million.

But if we put this podcast up and sold the rights as an NFT, would it be valuable at all?

I don’t know, Alex. Why don’t you try it? There’s a service that you can use to sell your tweets, which is I think what Dorsey used.

Oh, yeah. I put something up on there; it didn’t sell.

One of the things I’m going to think about doing is selling. I had someone hack my Twitter a long time ago, they posted to my Twitter account, and it’s always been so interesting to me that when you look at Twitter’s — I own my account, right? Twitter owns my account, but I technically own the content and their terms of service because I created it, the content is mine. Well, I didn’t create that. I didn’t create it. I didn’t display it. Someone else did all that. I’ve been wanting to sell that tweet just to see how you transfer that, how it works to transfer ownership to something that I clearly don’t own and didn’t make.

Could people tell your Twitter was hacked? Because there was one time where you were tweeting one night like, “Oh, God,” and “No, not this,” and…

I was watching Game of Thrones and I was just reacting, I think it was a season finale or something, and I tweeted like, “Oh, shit!” something like, “Oh, my God. This looks terrible.” It’s that total context collapse thing, and then I went to bed. The show was over. And I guess Marc Andreessen saw the tweets and flagged them to Ben Smith, who flagged them to our security, who was trying to call me in the middle of the night. I had my phone turned off. I woke up the next day and there’s all these messages from Ben and our security team like, “Are you okay?” And I said, “Yeah. Why wouldn’t I?”

Was this the moment when Marc Andreessen turned against journalists?

I don’t think so. This was before he went on the blocking spree. This is when he actually followed lots of reporters and was saying those things about how Twitter was his way to inject his thoughts directly into a newsroom.

You wrote a piece on Substack saying that you’re pretty optimistic about San Francisco coming back. What do you think is going to happen here and why are you optimistic?

I guess I see people doing interesting things in the city, especially around media. There are a bunch of small interesting media startups in the city now that I think are cool, but I also see people becoming more engaged, you know?

I do think that we’ve got so many problems to solve in San Francisco. It’s clearly got a horrible, absolutely just incredible, fentanyl crisis, not just an opioid crisis. It’s a fentanyl crisis. It’s got horrible issues with people’s authority to actually live there. Like if you want to rent an apartment, if you want to buy a house: good luck; it costs just a shit-ton of money to try and do that. I think they’re starting to do a little bit of building in San Francisco. Like even people are still fighting it, but you’re starting, for I think at least the first time since the 20 years that I’ve lived there, to see a lot more support for new construction and for affordable construction. And I’m seeing a lot more people involved in knowing what the Board of Supervisors is doing.

I think that, in some ways, having school board meetings, and board supervisors meetings, and all these other government meetings happening on the internet where people can tune in and see them, and not have to go to a building and be there in person, it encourages participation, and so that’s encouraging to me. I think it’s only encouraging though if people are willing to dive in and start doing things and trying to make a difference, and I certainly hope they are. But also part of the point of that piece was that San Francisco has always been a weird fucked-up place, right?

From the very beginning, and it’s been this kind of place that’s always attracted weirdos doing weird things, whether they’re looking for gold, or coming for the summer of love, or whatever. Certainly, there are the origin stories that are connected to Stanford and Xerox PARC, and Fairchild Semiconductor, and all that kind of stuff. But one of the reasons that there are a lot of tech people in San Francisco is that it was a place where people were trying interesting and different new things. There’s a great book called What the Dormouse Said about this, but there’s a direct line between people that experiment with drugs and experiment with technology.

And I think that San Francisco has been a town that’s had a lot of booms and busts, and maybe we’re having a bust right now, but it’ll boom again. It’s a beautiful place that’s on the ocean, you can ride your bike across the bridge and be in a national park. It’s got a lovely climate, even if we do have fire season now.

And people are going to want to live there. This myth that everybody’s vacating San Francisco for Miami — also a great city, but one that’s sinking underground and brutally hot in the summertime — it’s ridiculous. People are always talking about problems. But before 1990, San Francisco was pretty grim, and yet the tech boom happened after its grimness.

They tried to draft you to run for mayor at one point. Are you going to do that?

No. I tried to draft myself, honestly. But no, I’m not. Of course not. I could never do that. What a terrible job that’s got to be, right? Man, that’s a shitty job.

Maybe to be governor, but it’s also super interesting to me that San Francisco politics have become so dominant, in the sense that the politicians have become so dominant: Nancy Pelosi, Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris. All those people come out of San Francisco local politics, and it’s amazing.

If you think about the dot-com bust which happened in 2000, but it took a couple years to shake out, lots of interesting stuff happened in San Francisco in 2003-’04, ’05, ’06. Before, it was totally on its feet. If there are people who are there just for a job and they want to leave, they should be able to go.

Going back to one of your earlier questions, I do think that we’re never going to go fully back to the office, and there are going to be people who are working on Zoom, we’re going to be working from all over the place; and if they don’t want to be in San Francisco, they shouldn’t necessarily have to be. I think things will shake out, and things will change, and we’ll fix some problems, and we’ll get new ones.

I think you need to have a certain level of affordable rent to have the weird people that make a city enjoyable, so maybe this will be one of the silver linings, that San Francisco will be a place where weird can flourish again.

I hope so. And I hope it’s also a place where people who have grown up there can stay there. My wife, as you know, is a nurse, and she works with people who commute in from hours away because they can’t, especially if they’re younger, afford rent. I hope it’s a place where artists and nurses and teachers and musicians and people who are the soul of the city can live, and I think that all comes down to housing. I think when you think about the homelessness crisis, the people experiencing the homelessness crisis, that’s driven by housing. So much of what people complain about with San Francisco can be solved by starting housing, and it’s encouraging me that we’re starting to see a little bit more get built.

And it’s encouraging to see that some of the focus that’s been happening out of city hall, including today, is on livability. I think when you really start thinking about what makes a city livable, it’s people’s ability to fucking live there, right?

That sounds so stupid. But if you can’t actually live in the city because you can’t afford to, I mean it’s not going to be a lovely city. Like who cares how many slow streets you have. You’ve got to have a house.

You’ve written eloquently about the fire season here that’s become a fact of life. Are we going to have a fire season on the West Coast every year? This year was particularly brutal.

It was awful. I don’t remember how long it was. I just remember it was just absolutely awful. Especially combined on top of the pandemic, I mean it’s terrible. It destroyed some people’s homes and their lives. Peter Aldhous has written a lot about it, and everything that I’ve read that he’s written has made me discouraged that it’s going to get better anytime soon.

Yes. I mean the trend is certainly that they’re getting worse. I don’t know what the snowpack is like right now, but it was low, which is not encouraging for fire season. I think it’s a fact of life in the West. It was happening in Colorado, happening in Montana, in ways that it didn’t used to. To me, that’s the thing that’s really alarming about living in San Francisco and California and the West and the world is like, “Oh, shit. What have we done to the planet? And are we going to be able to do anything to fix it?”

My wife’s cousin was emailing us and they’re like, “Well, we wanted to come out in August, but we’re worried that it’s going to be very smoky,” and my response is, “Yeah. I don’t think you should come in August.” I wouldn’t plan a vacation in California in August right now.

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