Imhotep Adisa

Scarpino:       As I said when the recorders were off, I’m going to read a short statement, get it in the record, and if I make any mistakes you can correct it. Then I’m going to ask your permission to do this orally, and then I’m going to ask you questions. Today is July 21, 2022. My name is Philip Scarpino, Professor of History, at Indiana University/Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI). I also serve as Director of Oral History for the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence at IUPUI. Today I have the privilege of interviewing Mr. Adisa Imhotep at the headquarters of the Kheprw Institute on Boulevard Place in Indianapolis. I will add that Mr. Imhotep calls himself “M,” and I will do that during this interview to keep things simple. This interview is sponsored by the Randall L. Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence.

I would like to begin with a bit of background information on “M.”   He was born and raised in Indianapolis, having attended Indianapolis Public School 44 for elementary school, followed by Cathedral High School.  He attended Purdue University for two years and IUPUI for three years, where he studied engineering.

“M” is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of the Kheprw Institute, along with Paulette Fair and Pambana Uishi. The Kheprw Institute, or KI, is an Indianapolis-based, grass-roots, non-profit organization founded in the summer of 2003 as a way to provide tutoring for Paulette Fair’s son and a few other high-school-aged, African-American young men. KI became a non-profit organization in 2004. It has grown from a small mentoring program to an organization that incudes KI New Media; Community Controlled Food Initiative; and Scaraby’s Consulting. In general terms, KI focuses on youth and seeks solutions for community problems and challenges in the areas of education, environment, economy, and empowerment.

“M” was also the founder in 1989 of a business known as Basement Enterprises, which specialized in T-shirts and custom apparel.  Basement Enterprises was a kind of prequel to the Kheprw Institute. We will talk about Basement Enterprises and other aspects of “M’s” fascinating life as we move through this interview.

Before we begin, I am going to ask your permission to do the same things you just agreed to do in writing, just in case the paperwork ever gets lost. So I am asking your permission to record the interview, prepare a verbatim transcript of this interview, deposit the interview and the verbatim transcript with the IUPUI Special Collections and Archives, and with the Tobias Center for Leadership Excellence, with the understanding that the directors of those organizations may make the interview and the transcript available to their patrons, which might include posting all or part of the audio recording and transcripts into their respective websites. Are you okay with that?

Adisa:             I’m good with that and provide my permission. A couple of clarifying pieces I’d like to provide.

WOMAN’S VOICE

Adisa:             Hold on, hold on, this is my interview.

(Laughs)

Scarpino:       Well, let’s make the clarifying statements.

Adisa:             It wasn’t Paulette Fair’s grandson, and it was my son, Diop, who were the inspiration of the founding of the Kheprw Institute. And Imhotep is my first name, and Adisa is my last name.

WOMAN’S VOICE  

Adisa:             P-A-M-B-A-N-A

Scarpino:       Okay... did I mispronounce that?

Adisa:             I don’t know.

Scarpino:       Okay. Because this interview is sponsored by the Tobias Center, and their focus is on leadership, I’m going to start by asking you a few questions about leadership. First question is, do you consider yourself to be a leader?

Adisa:             Yes.

Scarpino:       How would you characterize your style of leadership?

Adisa:             Wow... in a skinny I would say a servant leader. You know, the role of the leader is, not so much leading, but providing opportunities to serve the community and others in community, and the collective interests of your community that you’re serving.

Scarpino:       Leaders are only successful if people are willing to follow them. Given all the years you’ve led in the general areas of racial/economic/social justice, how do you persuade people to follow you?

Adisa:             I guess, well now, you know, there’s a body of work. There’s a history of sticking and staying, you know, you say you’re going to do something, you go out, you look up, you’ve done it. So, at this stage, if Kheprw “M” said we’re getting ready to go over and do this, it’s no longer a question of whether we’re getting ready to go over and do it or not. So, I would say that’s one; trying to model the behavior, not always successfully, but model what it is that we talk about. I would say that’s how often folks support my leadership style. I would probably add a high-level empathy for community and people. Relationship building is primary. Being a good deep listener. Trying not to be overly judgmental, to be critical without passing judgement. I mean, those are all the characteristics, I think, over the years that have had people say, “yes.” And then, of course, courage. You know, just the strength to – no means no, no don’t mean yes. And being able, at least as it relates to the black community, to speak truth to power on your own terms. So, I think I’ll stop there.

Scarpino:       Can you give an example of when you’ve spoken truth to power on your own terms? I know there are a lot, but just pick one.

Adisa:             Well, you know, I’ll pick a personal example. I’m not sure if that example, gosh, there’s so many of them. Most of the ones that come to mind immediately are interactions with the police. Back during my T-shirt days, I was going to the bank once, the credit union, and it was Friday and the bank line was packed, I’m in the drive-thru. It was already a challenging, stressful day. And I wanted to make a deposit through the window. And, the bank manager told the clerk, “No, he’s got to come in the bank.” Now, I was behind on my credit card, which I was, and I said, “Well, I can’t come in today, because I’ve got to go and do something else. Just make the deposit and I’ll come in Monday.” And they said, “No. You have to come in the bank.” I said, “Well, no, just send my deposit out.” They said, “No.” So, I parked, I left my vehicle running in the drive-thru and shut the whole drive-thru down. And went in the bank and raised hell at the door... with the manager… and accused him of committing a crime. That led to five or six police officers, that then, all of a sudden my rational mind stepped forward from the rage and said ‘this is Friday, you’re going to spend the weekend in jail.’ So I said “okay.” So, the officers asked me to leave, I left, and the bank manager realized at that point that he had made a mistake, because his actions were illegal. And he followed me out trying to convince me to come back inside, and where I said, “No, I’m not coming inside. You’ve made your choice. You called the police on me. You’re going to either give me my money back, or you’re going to deposit it in my account.” I left. And when I got in on Monday, where was the money? It had been deposited in my account. That’s an example of truth to power, just my own actions. But I’m sure those clerks, who happened to all be black women, realized that was not probably the first time that that particular behavior had been used by the management team, and that then led to... but I would probably guess the first time they had somebody come in and told that manager, “No, we’re not doing it your way. This is an illegal act, and we’re going to do it my way.” So, the money ended up in my account, but at the end of the day they won. Because a month later, my credit card was cancelled, just out of nowhere, hey, we ran a credit report and your credit score doesn’t warrant we can’t continue to have this credit card with the bank. So, that’s a very personal example. Now, there are organizational examples, tons of those. I would probably say the ones that speak most loudly to me in the present would be when we first decided to engage in community work outside of our own community on the truth to power piece. And, we were asked by a variety of stakeholders in our community to join at that time it was called Quality of Life Initiative ...

Scarpino:       Quality of Life Initiative?

Adisa:             Yes. Of course, that was brand new for us. And we only got involved because community folks, both businesses and actually some community folks, said, “Hey, we need y’all to come and be involved in this space.” Now, we had no idea why we needed to be involved, but it became clear it was really about representing the voice that tended not to have voice in those spaces. And, so, whew, we had a lot of experiences in that space... We had a lot of interaction over the course of a year and a half in that space that led to – I just told this story actually earlier today, one of these stories -- that led to having to negotiate for a community interest, above and beyond the interest of traditional voices of power in non-profit organizations, Kheprw being one of those. I think I’ll stop there.

Scarpino:       As your career was developing, did you have anybody who mentored you who kind of put you under their wing?

Adisa:             I would say my mother was my primary mentor; single parent, from the South. To this day she’s still, at 90, giving me directions; and if I don’t follow them, she wants to talk to the elder ...

Scarpino:       That’s what mothers do. (laughs)

Adisa:             Yeah... So, I would definitely that she was and is one of the strongest voices, the good and the bad, of my leadership style and my resilience. As a youngster, I grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood, Riverside area, and there was a Boy Scout troop I was involved in. I would say a lot of leadership came from being involved in that particular initiative, Boy Scout all the way to Eagle Scout, and all the things that come out of that...

Scarpino:       You were an Eagle Scout?

Adisa:             Yeah.

Scarpino:       That’s quite an accomplishment.

Adisa:             Yeah. You know, it ruins my street cred so I don’t go around sharing that too often, you know, oh, yeah, I’m an Eagle Scout. But that was really tied to the leadership. Mr. Humbles (spelling?), who ran the Boy Scout troop, he had quite a few children. It actually took place, a lot of it, at School 44. So, Boy Scouts, you know, and actually, also, and part of being a Boy Scout, I mentored a Cub Scout group, which was right there on the corner where we lived, one block on the corner, there was a Cub Scout group and I would go over there and mentor the Cub Scouts, which was, I would probably say the first real beginning journey into leadership tied to the relationship with Mr. Humbles (spelling?) who had the Boy Scouts. Other leaders in that would be a school teacher I had. When I was at 44 in the seventh grade, I believe it was, Mr. Shoemaker, young, white guy, one of the few white teachers at the facility and he ran shop, and took a real interest in being a teacher in the community. So, not only did he teach us in the classroom, he would come hang out in our communities. And just a lot of mentoring tied to that particular craft and art form. In fact, I learned how to print T-shirts in his class. That’s what led later to me being an entrepreneur in T-shirts. There were a number of other mentors in the community. At that time there were quite a few black entrepreneurs, businesses in the neighborhood. Mr. Brown lived up the street who repaired cars in his garage. And I would go down and fix my own car under his leadership. A father with, gosh, six or seven children, that was maybe every other weekend in his garage with myself and one or two other young men working on their cars. Those are some of the formative, direct voices that I will call mentors. I would also say there were some intellectual mentors who did not live in this community. Haki, with Third World Press, who I had an opportunity to meet at a conference we held at the Black Student Union at IUPUI one year...

Scarpino:       And his name was what?

Adisa:             Haki Madhubuti, Third World Press, Institute of Positive Education. And he gave a speech one day; it was so ironic because my friend...

END PART 1

Scarpino:       I don’t know what happened, but, all right... Did you have any brothers or sisters?

Adisa:             Yep. I have two brothers, three brothers actually, two younger than me, and one older than me.

Scarpino:       Do they still live locally?

Adisa:             Yes, they’re local. I think Ronnie, who never lived with us, I think he’s still in town. And Michael and Stan are my two younger brothers.

Scarpino:       And you told me you were married?

Adisa:             Yep, married.

Scarpino:       And your children are, their names?

Adisa:             Neondi (spelling?), who lives near San Francisco and happens to be here this week, so I’ll be visiting with her today. And Diop, who’s also local, he’s 33.

Scarpino:       You grew up in Indianapolis, and you told me where your house was. What do you remember about the neighborhood you grew up in?

Adisa:             Well, you know, I thought it was a good neighborhood. We, the boys, myself and my brothers were often at the heart of things that were taking place that some of our neighbors felt, who did that? Go over there and contact Miss Taylor and see what her boys were up to. We were generally part of that neighborhood group of boys that were into mischief. But it was a good experience. The same neighbors, gosh, stable neighborhood, same group of kids from kindergarten through eighth grade. You know, we did what children do. Riverside neighborhood, the Riverside Center also at that time had a lot of activities, so I learned how to swim there.

Scarpino:       That Riverside Center is located where?

Adisa:             Riverside and, 23^rd and Riverside, roughly, right there where the golf course is at. So, we had activities like that. We would go to, and just do the kind of thing boys did in neighborhoods. Of course, that was pre... there were gangs in the neighborhood, but it was pre all the gun violence. So, there was, gosh, I can’t think of the name of the particular gang that was prevalent in the neighborhood that we always had to be cautious, or be aware of whenever we went over to the Center. Yeah, so, that’s pretty much all I’ll say about the neighborhood. There were some friends, some were real close friends, and others weren’t as close. I’d probably say most of my colleagues were a little bit more on the nerdy side, that’s how they would label them these days.

Scarpino:       Meaning they liked to read and...

Adisa:             Read, yeah, play chess, we did a lot of chess playing. We ran a dice game on the front porch when my mother was at work, stuff like that.

Scarpino:       I’m going to talk a little about your pre-collegiate education. You attended Indianapolis Public Schools, School 44, which is located at 2033 Sugar Grove Avenue, on the near West Side. It’s now the Global Prep Academy if somebody looks it up. Do you remember what year you started at School 44? I assume it was first grade...

Adisa:             Yeah, so, ’57 I was born, I was 5 years old, probably would have been ’62. And so, add nine years to that, so I come out in ’71.

Scarpino:       School 44 was a mostly black school, is that right?

Adisa:             Predominantly black school, there were very few white kids there, and very few white teachers there.

Scarpino:       One of the teachers was Mr. Mark Shoemaker, and he was white.

Adisa:             Yeah.

Scarpino:       He taught you in the seventh and eighth grade, if I looked this up right. You sort of mentioned this before, but can you talk about the impact that Mr. Shoemaker had on you?

Adisa:             Oh, yeah, it was major. One, his passion for his craft. Now we had... in the shop class, he was not what I would call a disciplinarian. So there were some members of our class that didn’t want to learn anything. And, so, he just said, y’all can bullshit over here, and these other young folks I’ll work with and develop. So, we learned how to do printing press. We learned screen printing. Photography was one of my favorites. That led me to actually purchase my own dark room. And then I actually got into photography in a heavy way from that experience. But it was the screen printing and the ability to make money, I was always looking for a hustle. And it was the ability to make money that had the screen printing stay with me from the eighth grade on. And he also would kind of hang out in the neighborhood, and he spent time on the block, just (Inaudible) it up.

Scarpino:       Was that unusual for a white teacher to be hanging out in the neighborhood?

Adisa:             I had no teachers ever hang out in the neighborhood.

Scarpino:       Except him.

Adisa:             Yeah, black or white. And he was young. He was just fresh out of college. So, yeah, that was a significant impact on my development.

Scarpino:       In the seventh grade, that’s when you started your first screening T-shirt company, right?

Adisa:             I think I started in the seventh or eighth, might have been the eighth grade. And I don’t quite remember what the shirt was I had printed, clearly we didn’t make any money. But I do remember and I kept tinkering with it, and it really... I sold T-shirts when I was in high school. Different events would take place in high school, so I always was dancing with the T-shirt piece there. And I think it really took off for me, I think I was a freshman at Purdue, and I tied a deal down with a record store that was downtown near Murphy’s. And it was right there on the corner. And I decided I was going to print these zodiac T-shirts that were real popular back during that period. And I printed some samples, and I walked around the block where Murphy’s and this record store was at, like three or four times, to get the courage to go in and try to sell these shirts to the owner. And so I finally went in, and he said, “We don’t buy stolen property here.” I said, “This is not stolen, I printed them in the basement.” So, he listened. And then, I mean, those shirts sold like crazy. And that was when I was convinced that I had something that could work in business. My mother got sick of me printing T-shirts, because she thought I was in the way. I would print it out of her basement actually. She’d say, “M, you need to put these damn T-shirts down, get back into your education...” because she felt it was having a negative impact on me graduating, and it probably slowed down my graduation period because I was always selling T-shirts.

Scarpino:       When you were at School 44, that was grades one through eight.

Adisa:             Yeah.

Scarpino:       Were there any other teachers there, other than Mr. Shoemaker, who you look back and think, they made a difference in my life?

Adisa:             Yeah, the one that comes to mind is Mr. Sebree, he was the dean. I’m not really sure exactly what it was about… well, actually, too, Mr. Sebree, who… we did printing work for the office, out of the shop. And, so, we were always engaging with him, and maybe also because he was the school disciplinarian that you were always having to interface with. Now, I will also say, back in that period, they had decided to categorize the students based on their perceived academic excellence. And, so, our group was called The Pacesetters, so we were supposed to be the smart kids. And actually it backfired on them, because it actually created an atmosphere where we were always doing things that were rebellious. Of course, we never got blamed for them. It was the other team, another team we called the “F Troop.” So whenever we were doing something scandalous, they would always go look for these other kids to do that. And also, another teacher who comes to mind is the math teacher, our homeroom teacher who was a math teacher, and I cannot remember his name right now, but he had a lot ... we would sing in his classroom. And he had these songs he wanted us to sing. Gosh, and one of the songs, we had to stomp on the floor, the principal would come and say, “You can’t sing that song no more” because it was causing too much distraction. So, those would be the ones that stand out. And I had an English teacher whose name I can’t remember now, but she also was impactful based on her… I remember this like it was yesterday, when she talked about... it was a history class, and that the reason the United States dropped the nuclear weapons on Japan was because these people were people of color. And it was just so, it was such an impactful statement. But her name escapes me.

Scarpino:       Of course, she was talking about Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Adisa:             Correct, yeah.

Scarpino:       Do you feel like you got a good education at School 44?

Adisa:             Yeah. But you know I always was, I had a passion for learning. I just came to the space, inquisitive and wanting to learn, so I didn’t have to be motivated to learn. Yeah, that was... I would’ve gotten a good education probably anyplace I was at where education was available.

Scarpino:       When did you finish eighth grade?

Adisa:             Probably ’62, I would think... no, probably ’70, ’71, somewhere in there.

Scarpino:       You were there at School 44 after the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown vs. Board of Education.

Adisa:             Yeah, that’s how I ended up at Cathedral.

Scarpino:       I wanted to talk about Cathedral. How did you end up at Cathedral because of the Brown decision?

Adisa:             Well, you know, they wanted, I spent the summer prior to going to freshman year at George Washington High School. And I took, I felt like I got played, let me start with that. My mother played me, and her boyfriend, I mean, it was a beautiful play, what parents do when they’re trying to make sure their children don’t go astray. But, I went to George Washington High School for the summer, took World History I and World History II. And it was a rough class. It was hot, it was summer, it was boring. The teacher taught the first session and had promised us something, I’m not sure what it was. And then the second teacher came in and said, “Oh, I don’t have any record of that promise.” And that just, I slept through the whole rest of the summer after that experience. They were going to send us to Manual High School, and my mother and her boyfriend said, “Hey, do you want to go to Cathedral?” I said, “Sure.” And at that time Cathedral was an all boys’ school.

Scarpino:       And private and Catholic.

Adisa:             Private and Catholic, it was on Meridian Street. And I suspect that some of that was an effort to... their own form of birth control. Because, you know, I’m interested in all the young girls in the neighborhood, began some first-level exploration with the opposite sex. So she went to enroll me in the school, I was looking at the pictures on the wall, I said, “Mama, where are the girls at?” “Well, son, no girls go to school here.” But, you know, I’m the oldest child, and one of the things, I think, often with the oldest child, whatever you start you finish. So, I went to school there, I did four years there, and that was that.

Scarpino:       Your mom had to pay tuition.

Adisa:             Yes, she did.

Scarpino:       That was a sacrifice on her part, to put you there.

Adisa:             Yes, she had to pay for it, and we had some experiences there through a racial lens where she had to call over there a couple times and say, “Look, my son’s not on a scholarship. If he wants to take this class, he needs to be able to take that class.” That happened a couple of times. And, you know, it was ran by the brothers, the first two years was truly a Catholic school run by the brothers in the building for two years. And the last two years it was turned over to a group of, I think, parents and other supporters to keep it from closing. And the last two years were very interesting also.

Scarpino:       What made the last two years interesting?

Adisa:             The continuity of the school had changed because it didn’t have the... you know, the brothers were passionate about education, and their philosophy of education. And then the next two years, I think it was more around: how can this be run like a college campus? And, so, there was very little supervision my junior year, and my senior year. So, hell, if we didn’t want to go to class, we didn’t go. I remember, we had our own… the seniors had our own lounge. Of course, you could smoke in the lounge. Some folks had pipes, and word got out that they were not just smoking tobacco. So just a lot of disarray I think relative to the first two years, the second two years. But at any rate, at the end of the day, the education was clear enough from a college prep’s perspective that I was able to go to Purdue based on the education I got at...

Scarpino:       You must’ve been a good student.

Adisa:             Yeah.

Scarpino:       What were the relations like between black and white students at Cathedral?

Adisa:             I think the bigger challenge… well, the race question is pretty much the same everywhere. I think, for me, my challenge had more to do with not coming out of those traditional grade schools. So, I got there, I did not come out of those spaces so I didn’t have any relationships coming from those spaces. I did play sports. Most of the black students who went to Cathedral were on some kind of sports scholarship, not all of them, so they had their own relationships either related to sports or those school relationships from prior to coming to Cathedral, that had these relationships in that space. I didn’t come with that. I did have a small group of friends that was a mixed group of black kids and white kids, and so I didn’t have any racial-related challenges in the space, other than the typical ones that you have with race, which often are:  can you be and act more like us? That’s just typical.

Scarpino:       You went to Purdue, why did you pick Purdue?

Adisa:             Purdue... my counselor came to me, I think I was a junior, might’ve been a senior, she said, “Do you want to go to college?” And at that time it was clear that I had three choices: One, college; fast-food; military.

Scarpino:       You graduated from high school in what year?

Adisa:             I want to say ’75, ’76 maybe. And of course, the Vietnam era was...

Scarpino:       Winding down.

Adisa:             Yeah, but it was still loud in our space, loud in our community. You know, we had a lot of conversations in the community level with other young black men about… and Muhammad Ali was a prominent figure in our community, were we going to go to the war? Were we not going to war? Were we going to go to Canada? So, we got a really strong anti-war voice in our community, so the idea of going to the military was way low on the list. The idea of going to work at a Burger King or Hardee’s, that didn’t feel really like something that I wanted to do. And, so, when the counselor came and said, “Hey, Purdue is recruiting engineering students...” -- I had no idea what engineering was – “and they’re going to pay for it with some scholarship money.” And then they asked me if... the question I remember asking was, “How much do they make?” And whatever it was, it sounded like a lot of money at the time, and I said, “Yeah, sign me up.” And that’s pretty much how I ended up studying engineering, and how I ended up going to Purdue.

Scarpino:       What type of engineering?

Adisa:             Electrical engineering.

Scarpino:       You were there for two years?

Adisa:             Did two years there, maybe two-and-a-half. Took it and it was an ass-kicking for sure. One, culturally... I’ll start with the culture component, which is, you’re black urban youth in a predominantly white community twenty-four hours a day. My first experience with working in predominantly white spaces was Cathedral, but it was only part of the day. You returned back to your block at the end of the day. So, that was one. And then I would probably also say, clearly, the education was easy for me, so I really didn’t have to study. And I got to Purdue and got, shit, it was a whole ‘nother ballgame. My freshman year was a total disaster. And then I stayed my sophomore year just to… I actually spent the summer up there, alone, my peers had gone home for the summer. I just was checking to see, can I do this? Do I have it in me to actually do engineering? And I think I took physics in the summer, and I did great in it. And that was okay, it restored my sense of confidence about it. Then I moved off-campus, another mistake, sophomore year. So, we were big guys off campus. And second year was hell. So, finished the second year, and then came home, sat out for a semester, trying to get my head back on my shoulders. Again, it was my mother there that provided the kind of loving and nurturing for my recovery. And then I went back and I think I did a year, did my junior year part-time…

Scarpino:       At IUPUI?

Adisa:             Yeah. Now mind you, that was back during the Apartheid era, and I went to school with a bunch of students at that time from overseas. So, that’s how I became, actually, more cognizant of what was going on in the world outside of the U.S.

Scarpino:       By Apartheid, are you talking about South Africa or the United States?

Adisa:             South Africa, in particular, Zimbabwe. There were students who were studying engineering from Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Iran, and we had a whole table in our study room, these young men and women, mostly males, from around the world that just provided a broadening education for me around what was going on in the world.

Scarpino:       You attended IUPUI for three years, approximately.

Adisa:             Three, I quit one year.

Scarpino:       Were you aware of IUPUI’s history, that they basically came into existence by buying up the homes of African-Americans and relocating them out of there and tearing the homes down?

Adisa:             Not till maybe my senior year. I think that was the year, I don’t know if you know John Lands, but he was over the YMCA...

Scarpino:       I do, actually. I mean, I’ve met him.

Adisa:             Yeah. He was head of the YMCA back when I was, I want to say, maybe a senior. I went to a lecture that began to expose some of that history, so I came to know it late in my academic career.

Scarpino:       Did that have any influence on the way you thought about the community and your own role in the community when you look at the example of how IUPUI came into existence?

Adisa:             Yeah, of course. I’m older now, I’d probably say, you take the local experience, you tie it with the exposure to international global issues, and then you just have a world view that don’t separate these. Of course, we all know IUPUI has a history that hopefully they are ashamed of and hopefully they are making some efforts to do some form of reparations for those behaviors. The jury is out. So, yeah, very much informed by it but not shocked by it, does that make sense? My neighbor when I was a kid, speaking of that area, another person that I failed to mention that had a lot of impact on me as a kid was my next door neighbor. She’s the mother of, I think his name was Sonny, who owned The Sunset and also was a major player in the P-shaped space. So that history of land-grab was talked about actually on our block as all that was taking place.

Scarpino:       P-shaped space?

Adisa:             P-shapes... pre Hoosier Lottery, you know, the gambling, the financing mechanism that was illegal in our community that took place.

Scarpino:       So it’s basically an illegal lottery.

Adisa:             Depending on who’s running the law, but, yeah, illegal.

Scarpino:       As far as the State of Indiana goes...

Adisa:             The State of Indiana said it was illegal, so...

Scarpino:       You mentioned John Lands, did you know him very well?

Adisa:             Well is a strong word, but I would say well enough to say I would call him one of the mentors, too, for his strength. He just had a courage about him, a strength about him that you had to, at least as a black man, admire. Didn’t work directly with him, but I do remember once I was giving a lecture myself as a student on campus and he was in the audience. There was a kid, not a kid, a young person there, writing down what I was saying. And John came over just to say, “Look man, when people come in and they’re taking notes like that, just quit talking. Just wait till they leave.” And I hadn’t even considered that as an option. So, that was one of the pieces I would say as relates to that. He also, he was a hell of a reader, so some of the books he mentioned, Dr. Ben... it might even be in here somewhere… Black Man of the Nile was also very impactful. But the most impactful piece was the courage of his leadership. And probably also... I know more about John now through others, but... and all of us are human. I think his impact was mostly by not knowing him, or not knowing him well. Know both of his wives. His children.

Scarpino:       And of course the Tenth Street Y was really intended to serve the black community, so it was a bit under-resourced compared to some of the other facilities in town. Okay, you met, I know I’m going to flub this, you met Haki Madhubuti, who was the founder of the Third World Press, which you did mention, when you were a junior in college. I assume that’s when you were at IUPUI.

Adisa:             Correct. We were having a conference, the Black Student Union and the National Society of Black Engineers held a conference and we brought Haki and others in to that conference. At that time, I was the president of the local chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers at IUPUI. And they invited us in to partner with the Black Student Union to hold this conference.

Scarpino:       You were already emerging as a leader when you were a student at IUPUI.

Adisa:             Oh, yeah, I was on the engineering side of it mostly. And what came with that, and at that time a lot of that was not so much about history as it was providing spaces for engineering students, black engineering students to access traditional corporate spaces. They asked us to participate with the Black Student Union. That’s where I met some other close friends of mine during college that expanded my historical understanding, and that’s how I came to meet Haki, through that workshop. And then, at that time, you know, it was the only publishing... you know, black books weren’t in Barnes & Noble.

Scarpino:       Third World Press publishing books that were really aimed at the African-American reader, and by African-American authors?

Adisa:             Yes. The other thing is they were not… you know, pre-Amazon, pre-Internet, black books were not available in bookstores, and so a friend of ours would go to Chicago and bring back books and sell them out of his house. And, so, that’s how we ended up having access to some of those materials because we just had a person going to pick those up. And then when they had events there, we would go to Third World Press, visit and have those events, and just build more of those particular relationships. We had actually invited Haki back ourselves two or three times over the course of maybe a six or seven year period, to come and participate in more programs.

Scarpino:       Do you remember what years you were at IUPUI, approximately?

Adisa:             Let’s see, you’re asking these hard questions, man, let’s see... went to grade school ’62, had eight years, ’70, four more years to ’74, went to Purdue for a couple years in ’76-’77, so, I would say from ’77 to ’82, somewhere in there, yeah… because I quit in 1980, so I would probably say ’77...

Scarpino:       Late ‘70s, early ‘80s...

Adisa:             Yeah, thank you.

Scarpino:       So, when it was an evolving campus and lots of parking lots and...

Adisa:             Right. There was still an active liquor store on campus before they built the fancy buildings.

Scarpino:       And you continued to screen T-shirts?

Adisa:             Yep, all, yep, I was screening T-shirts all through college.

Scarpino:       I want to talk about employment and community activities. I believe that you taught high school, or you taught school in the Indianapolis Public Schools system for about eight years.

Adisa:             Yeah, before that I actually… right after graduating from college, I went and taught at a Christian school for a year.

Scarpino:       Which one was that?

Adisa:             Gosh, I wish I could think of the name of it, but Claudette Lands was one of the administrators at the school. It’s no longer open. It was over off of Washington Street. I did that for a year. Ooh that was, you talk about getting your boots put on, it was an experience. And then from there I had an opportunity, IPS was then expanding its technology piece. The IBM PC had just began to take root in communities...

Scarpino:       Well, that was a strange new world, wasn’t it?

Adisa:             Yes, it was.

Scarpino:       I remember them.

Adisa:             They were in need of hiring technical experts to implement their school programming.

Scarpino:       You were hired to implement computerization?

Adisa:             Correct.

Scarpino:       And were you also teaching?

Adisa:             Yeah, well, kind of, not in a formal sense. I didn’t have any classes that I had to actually give grades in, but we had two computer labs we put in at George Washington High School, and that’s where I was stationed, at George Washington High School.

Scarpino:       Which is, southeast of IUPUI.

Adisa:             Yes. And, I was there for four years, and actually ran computer clubs after school. I actually helped teach the classes since I was a technical expert, teach students and teachers in utilizing these new tools in this space. So, the fifth year, I was pretty much ready to go because I was bored. My little brother went to school there. He was getting to graduate in year four. And I knew enough about what was happening downtown that I knew there was an opportunity to go and work out of the Ed Center.

Scarpino:       The Education Center.

Adisa:             Yes sir.

Scarpino:       But, again, in a technical capacity.

Adisa:             Yes. At that time, a colleague had written this program to do attendance at the... who, I forget... the principal at Tech at the time who then became the superintendent, and he had implemented this software at Tech that would capture attendance and call parents and let them know if their kids were in school, etcetera, etcetera. And Ed was the gentleman who worked at Tech as an assistant to whoever taught piano in the building, and he did computers on the side. He came to the Ed Center. And, so, he decided that he was being treated unfairly, so he sued the school system. And, so, my boss was in a state of panic, and wanted to see if I would come and work with Ed and try to document and make sure that if he decided to quit, that they weren’t ass-out. And so that’s how I ended up at the Ed Center working with Ed. We then implemented the use of this tool, this software package, across all high schools and all grade schools in the city of Indianapolis.

Scarpino:       You, obviously, left that particular line of work, but part of what you were doing was teaching, right? You were teaching administrators, teaching teachers...

Adisa:             Teachers, administrators, students. And when I got to the Ed Center, I actually always brought a student along and mentored. They would do half-days working with me going around the school buildings, stuff like that. In fact, at one point, one of the young men who I had taught at Washington High School, the security department wanted me to leave the Ed Center and come and work out of the security department for some project they had. Luther had spent a year at Purdue and quit, and was in need of work. I said, “No, I’m not interested, but this kid here would be good for you.” And they hired him.

Scarpino:       As you went on with your life and your career and so on, do you think that the ability to teach is an important quality of an effective leader?

Adisa:             Well, I have no doubt. You know, I would say the best leaders are teachers, because you’re really trying to do skill transference. And the best leaders are looking to build capacity. So, the cultural… institution building requires building cultural capacities, and that’s about transferring cultural ideas. And you can’t do that if you can’t teach and share that in a way that allows folks to capture the idea, but also still do it within their own flavor and model. So yes, teaching has always just been something that I’ve done.

Scarpino:       I did the math on this, and I hope I did it right, but you began something called Basement Enterprises in about 1980?

Adisa:             Let’s see, I did seven years, when did we close Basement? We closed Basement… I think we closed Basement in 19... no, it couldn’t have been 1980, because in 1980 I was working at the Census. I had quit going to school, went to work at the Census, and then returned after a year of working at the Census...oh hell no, I had a year left of school, and I had decided I didn’t want to be an engineer, so I quit school, got into the workforce, “this is stupid...” You’ve got three years of engineering behind you, you’d better take your ass back to school and complete your degree.

Scarpino:       Did you do that?

Adisa:             Yes, I think I did that in ’81. I think it took me two years part-time to finish. So I would probably say ’83. And then I spent seven years at IPS, so that would be 1990, so I started Basement in probably ’89... after my seven years at IPS.

Scarpino:       Basically, what did Basement Enterprises do?

Adisa:             From a business perspective, we printed T-shirts. But actually, you know, it was really, if you look back, it was a prequel to taking some of these ideas that had been formulating around in my head, either through my experience as a leader in these other spaces, and trying to have a space that I had more direct control over to implement some of the models that now we call Kheprw, that came out of that experience. So, a lot of young people, through an entrepreneurial lens, so that’s what makes it a prequel. We actually did some readings in there. We had books involved. I think that was when we first read The Alchemist, which is a book that to this day is required reading. So, we did that for ten years. And then it crashed and burned the tenth year. There’s a whole lot of other stories I could tell about that experience that to this day I still look at and lean on in the current work.

Scarpino:       What you learned and experienced at Basement Enterprises?

Adisa:             Yes.

Scarpino:       I read something about you and Basement Enterprises that, October 24, 1999...

Adisa:             Where at? In the Recorder?

Scarpino:       You know, I didn’t put the source in here, but I read a lot of stuff, and I pulled this out... You held the tenth anniversary gala for Basement Enterprises at Ashanti Ballroom?

Adisa:             Yes.

Scarpino:       I got a copy of the program, it’s pretty cool. And, it looks like it was distributed at the event...

(“M” BREAKS TO ANSWER A CELL CALL)

Scarpino:       Your corporate logo was the dung beetle, or the scarab, why?

Adisa:             That’s a great question. Okay, so, before it was the scarab, it was the cockroach. And we started Basement in this basement...

Scarpino:       In this particular basement of the building we’re in?

Adisa:             Yes.

Scarpino:       Okay.

Adisa:             We were sitting around talking about, what should our logo be? I think someone said, might have been my brother, “Well, you know, cockroaches live in the basement, and they also can outlive nuclear war.”

Scarpino:       That’s true, isn’t it.

Adisa:             So, that was the first logo. And then as we were doing our own studies of African history, etcetera, and my wife is what I will call the ultimate academic in that space, Kheprw, the name itself comes out of her research, our studies, and the dung beetle is the representation that came out of that evolvement. So, when we were running the T-shirt company, we were in the Stutz Business Center for about four years...

Scarpino:       Downtown...

Adisa:             Yeah. And in that place there was a marketing company in the building, and they wanted to do a trade. This company … I can’t think of their name now. So, he came over, he interviewed us, talked to all the members on the team, and came and said, “Did you know? Did you know?” It was funny to watch, right? And, so, they created the logo that we use to this day, it came out of that relationship, so, it was an evolution from the cockroach to the dung beetle, and the dung beetle comes out of, I will call, the historians in our space, Pambana. And then of course we were (inaudible) with of some of the ideas. Now, of course, Kheprw itself means renewal, rebirth, regeneration. And we felt that a lot of the work we were doing in the community was with humans, but it was still around what often folks were looking at as waste material and how we can take this waste, if you will, and renew ourselves through our own development.

Scarpino:       That gives me a segue-way to talk about the creation of the Kheprw Institute. Can you explain how that came about?

Adisa:             The T-shirt company, after the gala, now actually I’m thinking about this gala... the gala… my dad transitioned in ’98, I think, so, you know, of course I was dealing with the loss of my dad, the grief. And we wanted to do a ten-year anniversary, and I had some money that came from his transition. And I took that money and threw that gala. In fact, if you look at that booklet, you’ll see him in there …

Scarpino:       …this piece here.

Adisa:             That’s my dad. And Paulette and her sister actually were the coordinators and facilitators of that gala. So, after we closed the business a year later, which was a whole other story... We couldn’t close it right away. You know, by that I mean you could tell there were some things you had to do to bring this plane to the ground. That was a hell of a year, man. So, we closed it, and then I took a year, and actually just dropped my wife off at work and would go over to the Starbucks over off of Tenth Street, read the New York Times, drink some coffee, and just kind of figure out what was next. So, in all of that, I said, “I’m going to start a consulting company.” It was Scarabys Consulting. And I was going to be a turn-around business consultant. You’ve got problems? Call me and I’ll come over. So, at that time, a friend of mine was running Rehab Resource and he was having some challenges in his business. And he said, “Hey, can you come over and help me put some computers in?” So, I went over and talked to him, and I said, “Man, this problem you’re having, if you want to pay me to do computer work, I can, but this is not a computer problem. This is a management challenge. You just need stronger management in your space.” At that time, Paulette was in-between work, put that in quotes, and I said, “You need a Paulette Fair over here.” And he said, “Well, okay.” And she was friends with him, too. He said, “Can you talk to her?” So, I went over and talked to her. And, she basically said, “No, I’m not interested.” So, I think it was six months to a year later, she called me back and said she would do it. And, so, she went over and started cleaning up the problem. I don’t know if you know Paulette. You know, she’s whooo... So, he called me back, “Hey, man, I need you to come over and help calm this crew down.” So, I came over to try to quiet down a hornet’s nest that had stirred up because Miss Fair was going to get this place straight. I get there and was doing my Scarabys work there and blah blah. And then my son, Diop... now, by that point her grandson would come in town every summer from Florida, and we would do summer curriculum work with our children, her grandson, my son, and it was really just about providing a safe space, a culturally enriching space for young black men in urban settings. And Diop always was too smart for school. I mean, whooo, I was always serving as his lead attorney in any building he found himself in with school, and also, my wife, his mother, whose dad is an English teacher, and Pambana has a discipline that’s just scary. So, you’re going to do good in school. And, so, it was always negotiation. But this particular year he was too smart. He got an E in math, which at that time mean you’ve got to go to summer school. He came home, he beat the mail home. And we didn’t find out about it until it was too late to enroll. My wife hit the roof. “You need to do something with this child.” So, at that time, working at the warehouse, I said, “Okay, son, no summer privileges for you, come into the warehouse.” In fact, it was a boardroom table, this is where it happened, right here.

Scarpino:       And that was Rehab Resource.

Adisa:             Rehab Resource, yeah.  Right. This is one-half of the birthing table for Kheprw Institute.

Scarpino:       Well, this is a quite a large table, just in half of it.

Adisa:             Yeah, the other half is across the street. So, he had to come in with his math, every morning, and it was long hours, 7 a.m. to who knows when, study, and then work in the warehouse. And, so, her grandson, it was the first summer when she wasn’t free, so he had to come. And so, the two of them came, and then at that time one of her neighbors that grew up with Diop lived over here up the street. He wanted to know if he could come and work. And then two others wanted to know. So we said, “Well this makes sense. Let’s bring all of their colleagues so we can have the maximum impact on development.” So, that’s pretty how much how it was born. So, that summer, out of a consequence, Kheprw Institute was birthed. And at the end of the summer, the piece that was shocking was, they said, “Hey, can we do this in the fall?”

Scarpino:       The young men asked you that...

Adisa:             Yeah, the young ones, they said, “Hey, can we come back and keep doing this in the fall?” And that was pretty much the beginning of Kheprw Institute. And, after a year, I think, someone said… and, oh, by that time, I’m now looking at the nonprofit model, which I had never looked at before, right? I said, man, this is sweet. You know, this particular business structure allows you to solicit donations, get grant money... of course, I had no idea that wasn’t going to be that simple.

Scarpino:       Probably a good thing you didn’t.

Adisa:             Oh, yeah, they say ignorance is bliss, right? So, I think we went and hired a lawyer, I think we spent $500 for a lawyer. Filed the paperwork. Put a board together. Kheprw Institute was born formally in 2003. So, that was the birth of Kheprw.

Scarpino:       The Good Stuff Thrift Store was a part of Kheprw Institute, some of the programming...

Adisa:             Good Stuff Thrift Store, right. That was the very first formal enterprise that we ran out of the basement of Rehab Resource. And, basically, the young guys worked in the store, quote unquote, and learned about entrepreneurship, quote unquote, and generated their own revenue streams from sales. Of course, the supply was free because they would solicit their family and friends to donate, and that was the beginning of that particular project. That grew quickly because we were at that time also working with SCSEP Goodwill program with seniors, and they wanted to know if things they did not want to pick up we would go get. So, we then had a supply line that was bigger because Goodwill was routing, oh go pick up such and such. So, we then had basically relationship between Rehab Resource, the Good Stuff Thrift Store, and Kheprw, and just grew that particular enterprise to actually not only employ those young men in the summer, but actually add additional staff of young people. One young lady who was working as our cashier, she’s the sister of another longtime member of our work, she was home-schooling herself. And, we didn’t even know. She was just the cashier, and we stopped and said… and home-schooling out of Chicago. And, so, we kept her on. And another young lady who was working with Rehab then also began to work in the store, she was fresh out of jail. No high school diploma. And, the (inaudible) to work was the employment agency where Miss Wong insisted that we should give this young lady an opportunity, and I was struggling with the idea, to run our accounting work. No high school diploma. We hired her. And she came in every day, put her nose to the grind, and eventually got her GED, went back and got her bachelor’s degree in accounting, and then went back and got her master’s. And so there are many of those kinds of stories that come out of that kind of work. The thrift store was the first formal enterprise that we launched under the Kheprw brand, and what we like to call the “bootstrap” model, which is start where you are with what you have. And you just create and build as you go.

Scarpino:       You’re not only creating and building Kheprw, you’re also encouraging others to create and build to strengthen the community.

Adisa:             Of course. The entrepreneurial lane for us is less about making a lot of money, but more, how do you take those particular gifts and talents that entrepreneurs have of creating and finding opportunities in what often looks like deserts, and then turn those into economic opportunities but also leadership development opportunities. That’s the way we’ve always used that particular model of building community. And most of these enterprises have always had, what we like to call a social community-wealth building aspect to the work. And there’s a ton of those we could talk about.

Scarpino:       How about one? Just give me a good example.

Adisa:             I’ll give you two.

Scarpino:       That’s even better.

Adisa:             When we realized that Rehab Resource was going to be closing, we weren’t sure how long, but we predicted it would be a year. The building was, it was an old building, coming apart, the resources weren’t there to update it. The health department came out: The roof had asbestos. We already knew it was... the clock was ticking. So, we went and opened up our youth program over on MLK. We opened up a fair trade coffee shop – 3-1-7 Media Cafe. 

Scarpino:       On Martin Luther King Boulevard?

Adisa:             Yeah, over in that, the mall that, right there on the corner owned by the church, Christ Missionary Church owned that mall.

Scarpino:       Yes.

Adisa:             On the very corner we put the 3-1-7 Media Cafe. We were really just running our youth program out of that space. But we also opened a paint store right up the street. The paint store was in the old Kentucky Fried Chicken facility that had been closed for years. I’ll tell a story about both of those, kind of combined. One of the young men in our program, our first program, went off to school, came home from school, and said, “Hey, I need a summer job.” I said, “Well, I ain’t got no jobs, man, but what we can do is you can take this paint – we had free paint donated to us – and at that time, Khalil, one of our long-term members, was working at the flower house, and we negotiated to sell our paint off their lot. So, I said, “Jerome, you want to work. Here, take this paint, we’re going to inventory the paint for you, credit the paint to you, go over and sell it, sell it and you make money. So, that first week, I think we made about $500 off that lot, just selling free paint. And then the Board of Health rolled in on us. They said, “Oh no, you can’t sell paint off this lot. It’s not zoned properly for this activity.” So, we ignored them for a week, probably made another $500. And they said, “Look, if you’re here next week, I’m fining you $2,000.” So, we shut the business down, but at that point, then we said, “Okay, guys, what do we need to do?” We need to find a place that’s zoned properly. So, Paulette took them downtown – this is pre-Internet stuff -- identified a few places on the block that had the proper zoning. And at that time, the Kentucky Fried Chicken, I think that space was owned by the owner of the filling station, and of course the Board of Health was in their behinds about weeds and what have you. We said, “Look, let us sell paint out of the facility, I mean, off the lot, and we will get you out of trouble with the city.” So, it was an exchange.

Scarpino:       You’re basically going to clean it up and...

Adisa:             Clean it up. So, we started selling paint off the lot up there. The city rolled back on us, “You can’t sell paint off this lot unless you have access to the building.” So, we went back to the owner, got access to the building. And by the end of that summer, we had made so much money, man, it didn’t make sense to shut it down. We then opened a paint store there, and then had our young men who were local work with some of the SCSEF-ers, and they had to run the business.

Scarpino:       The business was called what?

Adisa:             KI Paint.

Scarpino:       Okay.

Adisa:             That’s when they really got their boots on, because most of the time Paulette and I were down at the café, and that’s where we were running 3-1-7 Media Café, which mainly was internet access for free, but they were also selling coffee, and the coffee they were selling was from Ethiopia. They learned about this coffee from a program we had done with Independent Lens back in the day, which was Channel 20. And, at that time, the local affiliate did not want to do this community cinema. We called up PBS and said, “Can we do a …” and they said, “Sure.” So, out of the that relationship we discovered from one of the documentaries, “Black Gold,” this coffee, fair trade coffee from Ethiopia. We reached out to the supplier, I think down in Florida, and then began to sell just that one coffee.

Scarpino:       You got free-trade coffee through this...

Adisa:             Not free, we bought it.

Scarpino:       No, but it’s called free trade coffee...

Adisa:             Fair trade...

Scarpino:       Fair trade, I’m sorry, fair trade, yes.

Adisa:             We, then, used the coffee as a way to help build these youth skills in not only entrepreneurship, but also connecting them to a global economy through their relationship with having to know about this particular enterprise. It was not very economically successful, but it was clearly a part of that ongoing development. So, those two are examples of how we’ve used the entrepreneurship model to... we really refer to it as boost (spelling?) job. We’re a little hesitant about using that language only because of some of the conservative philosophical ideas that are often put on top of that model. That’s pretty much how we’ve used entrepreneurship over the years.

Scarpino:       It sounds to me like you were trying to make capitalism more humane and socially conscious.

Adisa:             Yeah, when I think of capitalism, capitalism in the formal sense is often exploitation of labor. When I think of entrepreneurship, you know, it’s still a business model but it does not have to be capitalistic in how it utilizes resources to support community.

Scarpino:       I read a piece on the KI website, and I don’t if it’s still up there or not because I read it last year, but it was called Seven Steps to Community Social Innovation. It was on your website. And one of the seven steps said, and I’m quoting: “Be courageous and support courageous leadership.” So, to your mind, what does courageous leadership look like?

Adisa:             Man, you ask some hard questions. The characteristics of creative leadership...

Scarpino:       Courageous...

Adisa:             Creative or courageous?

Scarpino:       Courageous.

Adisa:             Oh, courageous is... you don’t fear failure. Courageous leadership moves to do something. And they already understand that doing something means failure, that the lessons come out of the experience. And then you learn and build and adapt based on those experiences. Courageous leaders don’t, I even hate to say it right now because I find, shit, right now it’s a hard time to be courageous. But, courageous leadership looks at it and says, “Damn, this does not look possible,” you know, like, there’s any way to do this. But you get up every day and you still step figuring out how to do it the best you can. Now, in that courageousness, you come to learn and discover that, I think (inaudible) says this, that when you act and the universe conspires with you, that even if you don’t know on the front end, when you walk in and have the courage to do, these other resources appear to support that courage. I’ll give you an example, today would be an example: When we were on the porch with these youngsters -- and is his name is Michael? -- Michael comes over and, I don’t even remember, like he’s been here once before -- and I was just telling Paulette, I think last week, I said, “You know, our work is at a place... and you’ve done it long enough to know where it’s at because you can see it…That’s also not always a good thing, like you said earlier about, you know, not knowing sometimes is better than knowing..

Scarpino:       Right.

Adisa:             In this case of looking at the work, and Jim Collins is one of the authors, Built to Last, Good to Great, that we’ve built a lot of our work around some of those ideas. In fact, that came to us when a friend of mine, close friend of mine, was in school for his MBA, and he came pre-Kheprw, it was Basement, and he said, “Man, you guys are doing Built to Last work, Jim Collins, have you read Jim Collins?” I said, “Never heard of him.” And I went and read it and it was just these characteristics about good-to-great, built-to-last companies, that was really what we were already doing in the culture of the work. So back to the idea of appearance. So, we were talking, I think three weeks back about, one of our challenges right now is that we’ve got a lot of young, inexperienced leaders who have passion for the work, committed to the work, but actually don’t have the experience for some of these things that we’ve been blessed to be engaged in. I said, “Paulette, you know, what we probably need to be looking at is, are there other seasoned members in our community that would be looking to coach and mentor real-time?” When Michael’s wife came over a few weeks back, Paulette was purchasing a Covid protection thing from one of the airlines, and she sells it. And this is a young lady, well she’s fifty-something now, that Paulette and her husband mentored, and she said, “You know...” and she was here when these young people were... and she said, “Michael would love this.” I said, “Well, invite him over on Thursday.” And he didn’t make it last week, but he made it today. And we sat down and he talked about that. He's retired, he talked about the failures of his generation and how it’s important that we figure out how to support these youth leaders that are coming up, and let them lead. And so, that for me is an example of once you step into it and have the courage to jump off that cliff, then resources often, not always, will appear to assist you in your journey.

Scarpino:       One other thing I read in that same piece, “Seven Steps to Community Social Innovation,” you said part of the seven steps to community social innovation is to read, which you referred to there as “a lost art form.”

Adisa:             I referred to just now?

Scarpino:       No.

Adisa:             In that article?

Scarpino:       In that article, which I assume you wrote. It’s on KI’s website.

Adisa:             Yeah, I must have.

Scarpino:       And, it says that, “... one of the seven steps to community social innovation is to read.” And you referred to reading as, “a lost art form.” So, I guess it’s two parts: Do you think leaders should read? And why is reading a lost art form?

Adisa:             Did you ask me, do I think leaders read?

Scarpino:       Do you think they should?

Adisa:             Yeah, well, I’ll probably say, I don’t want to be as strong about reading as the only approach to learning. And I will say I have a bias toward reading, not as much of a bias now that I’m vision impaired, but yeah, reading is something that, let me start over... Critical thinking is a lost art form. And a lot of it I think is tied to an educational system that’s more about creating job opportunities than it is critical thinkers. So, the idea of studying the liberal arts ehhh, philosophy ehhh, those things that lead to being critical thinkers is action. There’s a lot of reasons for it. Now, with that said, that’s why I called it a lost art form. Is that the only way to know? No, of course not. There are other ways of knowing, rational and nonrational. In the rational place, you can learn some of these things through visual mediums, podcasts, but pursuit of knowing is a lost art form. That’s how I would expand my comment today about that. And I do think each form touches your mental model differently. So, the written word, for example, you can’t go and do something else. You’ve got to stay in the space and connect directly with it, that has a certain kind of impact on your consciousness. Audible, which I really enjoy, allows you to, dare I say, multi-task, which then impacts, I think, how you interpret and comprehend the information also. But fundamentally it’s the action of critical thinking, however you get it, that is lost. I also say, I think another challenge in the present is that rational thought and the scientific method is now at a place where any other ways of coming to know is disregarded. You toss out other ways that the universe communicates with you, because it’s not being presented to you through the method that you’ve come to experience and know. Let’s see if I can give you an example of that. Here’s one: We’ve got some young men out on the West Coast doing some research on CLTs.

Scarpino:       CLT is?

Adisa:             Community Land Trust. And we’re involved with a project now about establishing a citywide community land trust in partnership with the city and some others. So, Alvin is the lead in that project, so, him and a couple other young members of our team are on an exploration trip to the West Coast. So, this is a long version of trying to share about other ways of knowing... There’s another project we’re working on that has involved a company out of San Francisco, and when I was out there, I had talked with our sales rep, his name is Gus... had dinner with him and his wife. It was a great conversation. Well, we had a meeting with the company, and Gus wasn’t in the meeting. And I said, “Where’s Gus?” And the answer was, “He’s not with us anymore.” Clearly it was not like they wanted to talk about it. No big deal. So, when I called and talked to Alvin and the rest of the guys, they were at dinner with a couple of leaders from the CLTs we went out to meet with. I said, “Alvin, I want you to do me a favor, I’m going to send you Gus’s phone number. I want you to connect with Gus while you’re out there, and I’ll pay for his dinner.” And one of the other members there said, “You know Gus?” I said, “Yeah, I know Gus.” “Wow, how do you know Gus?” I said, “Well, when I was out there, da da da da...” So, that was what I’d call a piece of information that would appear to be coincidental if you weren’t paying attention. But I made the call at a time when he was doing that. But now here’s the real irony: We weren’t even talking about the same Gus. They were talking about Gus, he was a former or current mayor of Berkeley, California. Now, that’s data, but it was also information that was being presented to Alvin and that group around, huh, da da da da? Now I could just disregard that as a coincidence, or I could come back and say, “Huh, Alvin, take a closer look at who Gus is in the Berkeley area?” Does that make sense?

Scarpino:       Yes.

Adisa:             So, I try real hard in this space to practice that kind of other ways of gathering information, and then also trying to coach folks to pay attention to things that often would appear to be of no value. And lastly I’ll say here in this space, the rational mind often thinks it’s in control, but it’s actually the subconscious mind that is actually in charge. And what the subconscious mind will often do is walk you down a road tied to your rational space that’s actually about waking up some other aspects of your mental models. Does that make sense?

Scarpino:       Yes.

Adisa:             I say all that to say, while reading is a lost art form, it is not the only way to come to know the world.

Scarpino:       But critical thinking is the foundation under all of that...

Adisa:             All of it’s critical, yes, however you get it.

Scarpino:       I want to get you to comment on something else that I read on KI’s website. It says “The Kheprw Institute is a community organization that works to create a more just, equitable, human-centered world by nurturing youth and young adults to be leaders.” How do you nurture youth and young adults to be leaders?

Adisa:             Patience.

Scarpino:       That’s a good start.  (laughs)

Adisa:             Lots of patience. It requires that you remember you were young once. What I do with this group, I’m blessed to be working with some smart twenty-something year olds, right? I remember when I was 25 years old. I’m embarrassed to even talk about some of the shit I was doing at 25, so, it just requires that look back. It requires, give you a quick example: One young lady on our team, she’s just as sharp as she can be, but her delivery skills often make it difficult for her to be heard. She likes to smack people around in her delivery. She did that today. She came in and said, “I’ve got to leave, but here’s what y’all are doing wrong.” And so, I started and said, “Mackenzie, before you leave, tell us, how do we improve on this?” And she said, “I don’t know.” I said, “Okay, well you have a homework assignment now, and that is to come back next week with some ideas about how we improve on what we’re not doing well.”

Scarpino:       That’s the hard part, isn’t it?

Adisa:             Yes.

Scarpino:       Once you figure out what the problem is, what next?  What do we do about it?

Adisa:             It’s easy to be a critic. But for her as a leader, the key thing is, you can’t just come in and be critical, and then get up and leave. You’re not going to be respected, and then folks aren’t going to want to talk to you when you do come. But from mentorship, that was my role today with her; to point out to her, hey, here’s what you did here, but you have an opportunity now to come back and fix that next week. And at the very end of that meeting, I also said, “Hey look, y’all, Mackenzie raised up a criticism. I think you guys all agree that it was valid. I’ve given her a homework assignment - how do we improve it? And I give you guys the same homework assignment.”

Scarpino:       I promised you we’d be done at 3:30, and it’s that time. So...

Adisa:             Hold on a second, 3:30...

(WOMAN’S VOICE)

Adisa:             Okay, I’ve got till 4:00 if you need more time.

Scarpino:       I can go for about fifteen more minutes, but I didn’t want to take advantage of your...

Adisa:             I want you to finish it, man, so, whatever you need, I’m here until 4:00. At 4:00, I’ve got to go.

Scarpino:       All right. I read a piece in The Recorder, which, for anybody listening to this or looking at the transcript, is an African-American newspaper in Indianapolis. It was dated May 15, 2014, and it’s called “Getting Tough on Bullying.” And I’m actually going to put the web address in the transcript.

Adisa:             Did I write this?

Scarpino:       No, it’s about you. And...

Adisa:             Interesting...

Scarpino:       I’m quoting from that article, it says: “Imhotep Adisa, Executive Director of the KI Ecocenter, a local organization that addresses social and environmental issues, also believes that criminalizing bullying is another school-to-prison pipeline tactic.” And, that just intrigued me. I mean, my kids went through IPS, I have some idea of what went on there and what goes on there. So, why is criminalizing bullying part of the school-to-prison pipeline?

Adisa:             That’s a great question. I don’t remember that quote but...

Scarpino:       Well, it was a long time ago, but...

Adisa:             Be careful what you say... When I think of bullying, you know, we had bullies in our school, but to criminalize them, what does that do? It puts them in a system that’s going to do what? That’s where they’re headed. So, there has to be other ways to deal with that behavior other than the judicial system. And I don’t know what that answer is in a direct way, but I do know it’s not locking up young people and then involve them in a system that’s going to actually lead to them continuing to be incarcerated. That’s what I meant by the statement.

Scarpino:       Is KI an alternative to the school-to-prison pipeline?

Adisa:             Most times. We’ve had a few come through here that still managed to find their way into prison. I’ll tell a quick story: Jerome Harden.. and a lot of times people think when you think about going... these kids are always kids that come out of broken homes and under-resourced, that’s one aspect of it. Jerome Harden lived two houses up from us. Mother and dad worked every day, churchgoers, and he still managed to find his way to the streets. And, in fact, we got the message from his dad through my son to let us know that he knew that his son was dealing drugs. And, so, Diop told me, so I called Jerome and I said, “Look, man, your dad had told my son that you’re dealing drugs. And he told my son because he wanted somebody to talk to you. So, I’m going to tell you right here, man, you are not a drug dealer. That ain’t who you are. That’s not what you do. That ain’t you.” Now mind you, he had no reason to be in the gang, other than the pressure for the good life of being a drug dealer in the community. So, of course, they came, SWAT rolled in, busted the door down, drugs, weapons, got a case. Got the case. Some kind of way he got probation. We actually created a program in Kheprw that allowed him to come off house arrest and come over and work with us at the Kheprw Institute. And he was our computer guy. He did great work with computers. Got a whole skill behind him. But decided for whatever reason it was too hard being on house arrest. So, what did he do? Just said to hell with it and was on the run right here in the neighborhood for a whole year. I think he got arrested on his birthday. I think he had to go and finish time, it wasn’t a lot of time. So, fast-forward ten years later, he’s got his own business, landscaping business. Turned his life around. And, so, we attempt to be an alternative, but we’re also saying, and this is painful I think often for the mothers, but we’re going to lose more than we save. That is just the nature of the work and the world we live in. We’ve got a young man now, he’s 15, he’s a sophomore in high school and he’s been bullied on the regular. So, we talked with his mother the last semester of this year, and said, “Look, let’s work a relationship out where he can do his schoolwork from our campus...

Scarpino:       Here at KI...

Adisa:             Yeah… and work virtually with the school. Worked perfectly. You could see this kid just blossoming because of the environment. Not, he’s a smartass, but he’s a good kid, but you can just see it. So, we had a conversation with her two weeks ago, what does she want to do now, now that he’s back on track? She said send him back into the building. So, we said, “Look, we don’t think that’s a good idea. And if you want, he can continue to work from our campus. And, if you guys want to try that, sure, let’s try, but let’s keep a close enough eye on it so if it’s not a good fit for him, just bring him back over here.” So, we do think we are an alternative to it. It’s not, you know, it’s not enough of an alternative. And I think, and this is when I’m talking extremely, if we're going to do good work with these young people, it cannot be bound by physical infrastructures. It’s got to be relationships and community. You’ve got to have a community of educators that are paying attention and talking to each other regularly as we look to figure how to move the needle in that development.

Scarpino:       Part of what you’re doing is developing that community. I ran across a PhD dissertation done by a man named Olon Frederick Dotson...

Adisa:             I know Olon, know his parents.

Scarpino:       Good, this will be easier then. When he wrote this thing, he was in American Studies at Purdue. I believe he finished in August of 2019 and the title is Fourth World Nation: A Critical Geography of Decline. And, so, I looked at it and I pulled this quote out of there which I’m going to run by you and then I’m going to ask you some questions, but I want to get this on the record. So, he said, “The Kheprw Institute, founded by activist and visionary Imhotep Adisa...

Adisa:             What?

Scarpino:       That’s what he says, “... is an Indianapolis-based community organization dedicated to a more just, equitable and human-centered world by nurturing youth and young adults to become critical thinkers and doers,” which is pretty much what you’ve just been talking about... “It’s also grounded on an Afrocentric foundation...

(PHONE RINGS)

Scarpino:       It goes on to say that you employ a myriad of devices, including engaging in community-based conversations about challenging topics as a means to inspire and formulate strategies toward reconciliation and solidarity.” And then he says, “... for example, Kheprw instituted a recent series “From the Ground-Up” meetings facilitated discussions on the topic of gentrification.”

Adisa:             I remember that.

Scarpino:       “The organization advocates for food justice, food security systems, and maintains an indoor aquaponics farm operated and maintained by local youth.” We’ve talked about the things you’ve been doing, but talk about the role of Afrocentrism in the work of KI.

Adisa:             Probably clearer to throw out an idea... Let me tell you about my journey to the African center perspective, and it comes out of a long history of study and research through a lens of the role people of African descent have played in world civilization. I’m more cautious about using that language because of some of the historical ideas that it may raise up related to culture. And those ideas tend to be clothing, music, all aspects of culture. When I think of African centeredness, I’m really thinking about ways of interpreting and of viewing and moving through the world. So, some of the stuff we just talked about around rational, non-rational, spiritual are part of the African-centered worldview that I’m referring to. I don’t think that the idea is one where it’s ideologically narrow to a particular racial group. So, the African-centered ideas that we utilize here, I think, can cross all cultural perspectives and really the emphasis of being human-centered I would use, but of course coming out of our own cultural experience. So, you come into Kheprw’s space, you come on the porch, you know where you are. You’re in a space run and dominated by a black presence. But an African-centered presence about human-centered relationship-building is primary, and all other of those things are secondary to that idea. I don’t know if that was clear.

Scarpino:       Yes. So, you had this forum from the ground up about gentrification...

Adisa:             I think, was that in partnership with (inaudible) Place?

Scarpino:       Probably. What I would like to ask you, though, is, I mean, gentrification obviously, you know, people come in and they buy houses in poor neighborhoods, they fix them up and sell them for more than poor people can afford to live in. We know how that process works, but what do you think is the best way to deal with gentrification?

Adisa:             When I think of gentrification, it’s not only the property acquisition, but also how gentrification leads to cultural displacement in addition to physical displacement. So, you go from having a local restaurant, maybe even owned by folks who live in your neighborhood, to a Starbucks or something else that then displaces the culture in your community. So, gentrification is both physical and cultural displacement. You look at what’s happening right now across the country, the crisis of property, of home ownership and rental, it’s scary. An article I read - I’ll send it to you – I think last week, there’s a 30% increase in the cost of rental properties. There’s a 20% drop in home ownership. In this global economy it’s the real estate that’s speculative and has the most tangible, at least short-term, value. So, properties are being grabbed up left and right. So, I think the Star -- I had an interview with a young lady who works at the Star, and she was focusing on 16 Tech as part of that potential challenge with gentrification. And the answer is yes, economic development, as we know it historically, leads to outcomes that lead to gentrification. Some argue for equitable development. I’m not confident how you do that in an economic model that’s primarily about profit first and people second. Now, the best opportunities I think we have, if we have institutions in our communities that are trying to mitigate it by property acquisition. So, for example, we own this whole corner. We’re recently negotiating the purchase of probably this really I think overpriced but tied to... this challenge of property ownership, we’re fortunate enough to be in a position to acquire it. And through the acquisition, we can then contain, control and help continue to shape of cultural fabric in our neighborhood. So, I don’t have an answer how to fix it. I do think that the more we can figure out how to, even in the local level… with speculators, if you can’t get rid of the speculators that are global in nature, I don’t see how you stop it, personally. And I’m not confident in the current economic… I listened to a news story the other day that said, you know, really, the (inaudible) challenge of folks in the U.S., regardless of color, has gotten worse and worse. So, I don’t have a good answer for it right now.

Scarpino:       Food injustice, and food insecurity, what does KI do in the areas of trying to promote food justice and food security?

Adisa:             Great question. I was asked this question some years ago about living in a food desert. And I said I don’t live in a food desert. I live in an economic desert. We eat really good here, all the time, on a budget that’s embarrassing. But it’s because of our relationships and community that gives us access to food, either directly the food that we’re growing on our own lot here across the street, which is a part of our food justice initiative, growing our own food, building relationships with each other growing food; our relationships with other folks who have access to surplus food and making that food available in our communities, that all comes out of relationships. That’s a way that we’re dealing with the food question. I’m not, and again just to be as transparent as possible right now, you know, you look at what’s going on at the global level; you look at Ukraine; you look at what’s happening with inflation; food cost, I think, is up 10% since the first of the year, so food supply is going to get worse. Add climate change in there, so the cost of food is getting ready to take an uptick. I read an article today where even folks who have good-paying jobs are now in food pantries because they can’t afford to pay the other rising costs of just staying alive. So, I don’t have any real answers to how to fix that, but I think as it relates to the work we do, we’re clearly about how do we build relations with each other, and then support food distribution, food access, and food creation in various ways. Well, Lawrence Community Gardens, was it initially signed on the eastside?

Scarpino:       Which community garden?

Adisa:             Lawrence Community Gardens. So, Sharrona launched that, what was that, five, six years ago? She had come to us and wanted to go to the Purdue extensions. They were doing a training at the time and the training had a cost, and they weren’t doing credit. So she came to us, and we paid for it. “Sure, you want to take the training, sure, we’ll pay for it. The cost to you is you come back and make some videos that we can then share with other members in our community. She had a family situation that rose up two months ago, she calls me, “Hey look, I’ve got to move. I’ve got some family matters. Can you guys help me? Can you take over, help me manage for the rest of the year?”

(PHONE RINGS IN BACKGROUND – M BREAKS PRIVATELY

Adisa:             So we’re now involved with that very important project, helping develop their leadership in that space. In fact, we took one of our growers, Bobby, who’s been with our program for three years, “Hey man, Bobby, can you go out to show...” “Sure, I’d love to go out and do that.” He’s now the lead farmer in that space. Amber, who is one of our growers, she’s the lead trainer with the young people. And what we’re doing is providing some infrastructure to help support and get to the next level in those spaces. We talk with the city regularly around some projects they’re looking at. And, lastly, we’re actually in the process of acquiring seventeen acres of land on the south side which will probably also be part of our food access initiative.

Scarpino:       You said, seventeen acres?

Adisa:             Yes.

Scarpino:       You’re going to grow quite a bit of produce on that land.

Adisa:             Produce, we’re going to probably also use it to – there are some other facilities there - to build community, hold some retreat conferences and continue to try to create synergies to support some of the work. But I really don’t think that what we’re doing right now relative to what the needs are is just, it’s going to get worse before it gets better.

Scarpino:       One of the big demographic shifts in Indianapolis in the past fifteen or more years has been a surge in Spanish-speaking population, people from Mexico...

Adisa:             Right...

Scarpino:       ... people from Central America, and so on, some here legally, some here illegally, that’s not the point of what I want to ask you. The question is, how does this demographic shift present either an opportunity or a challenge for KI?

Adisa:             Great question. We need to do more, we need to do better, I’ll start with that. We have some relationships in some of the leadership spaces with the changing demographics. And looking to… In fact, we’ve got some folks coming over today who are part of the leadership of some of the Spanish-speaking community. We’re looking at when we go to the south side, there’s a large Burmese population in the neighborhood, so we’re already looking at how do we build relationships with communities in those spaces to build community. So, a work in progress. But I don’t, at least for me, feel that it’s going to be an issue. Because if the work is about people and relationships, then that crosses all perceived social constructs.

Scarpino:       What kind of an impact has Covid-19 had on the work with KI? I mean, I’ll say because people can’t see us, we’re both sitting here wearing masks, so, but besides that...

Adisa:             The good news is that we’ve held the line with our approach in community. So, folks that call us and say, you know, “you guys have been right about Covid.” And we’ve tried to do it through modeling our behavior. We have not opened up any of our spaces, public spaces, to do any event work, with one exception, and that’s 17^th Street and that was a request to use our space for a project we’re working on in the entrepreneurial space, and we came in with our conditions for using this space. So, trying to model the behaviors that we think are critical to where we are with Covid. It’s challenging. It’s challenging even through how we interface with each other. On this campus we treat these properties pretty much as bubbles. If somebody goes out of the bubble, they go into quarantine for five days, and then five more days with masks. We have a Covid meeting every week, and we update ourselves on what’s the data now saying? What’s the science saying? And that then actually leads to often some very spirited discussions around what aspects of this makes sense; what’s aspects of it we need to be adjusting. So, it’s exhausting, I think. But it’s critical to try to model what we think is a long road with Covid, and not a short road. But we often get feedback, hey... in fact, I got a request to come and participate in a retreat in September. I started in the email with, “Hey, look, put me down, I’ll put it on my calendar, but it will be contingent on what’s going on with Covid.” Just trying to message that out in communities. I’ve negotiated with our team, I don’t even have to leave the campus now, man, I am good. Get up, go out on the porch, have a cup of coffee. Go across the street, come back over and go next door. Folks come over to visit. I’m like, damn, how come I didn’t think about this pre-pandemic? I don’t have to go to Starbucks and pay seven dollars for a cup of coffee, right? And, in fact, back during that period, people realized, oh, they’re going to be over at Starbucks, drop in. So, I am not looking forward to the day when we return to, quote-unquote, normalcy, because I do find there’s some benefits to not having to be accessible that I’m enjoying. But it’s been really huge. We’ve had, lately, a lot more folks who’ve been Covid-impacted, even on our own team. And I’m not sure if that’s because the virus has become even more contagious, because the weather conditions have made us more lax in how we navigate.

Scarpino:       As I’m sure you know, people outside of here have pretty much stopped wearing masks... grocery store, whatever. If I remember correctly, KI was officially founded in 2003. As you look back on that history now of what, nineteen years, what are you proudest of?

Adisa:             Ahh... shit, the stick and stay. You know, we’ve stayed in the road, you know, we could’ve quit, we didn’t. There have been a lot of times over these twenty years, like, what are we doing and why? But every day we just got up and stayed at it. I would say, you know, on a personal level my own children, my daughter, my son, their resilience in their own personal journeys, I think, come out of that. And the youth group here on the porch that we’ve got right now, Khalil’s oldest child, Chin (spelling?), who comes to the program, and I was talking with his dad about him right now and I said, “Hey, you know, this boy loves to talk.” And some of his conversation is very ‘I’-based, but we had a project that some of our other young leaders came and asked this group would they support, and he stepped right into it. He said, “Yeah...” and they got to laying out how to get it done. And then he called and said, “You know, the next two weeks I’m busy.” Then he said, “Well, that’s okay, I’ll make time for it.” It’s those pieces that let you know that this model works. And you know that wherever these young people are in the world, wherever they are, it’s with them forever. So yeah, I would probably say the resilience, and then also just seeing the impact we’ve had on young people. Now I will say, I’m not sure if without Kheprw that I would... Kheprw actually helped save my life, by taking all this crazy energy of mine and provide a space for it to be a contributor to community in a more positive way.

Scarpino:       Again, as you look back on the history of KI, what do you think remains to be done?

Adisa:             Oh, well...

Scarpino:       What do you hope can be accomplished in the next nineteen years?

Adisa:             That we have young people who are now young adults who find that this work has enough value that they’re going to sustain it and keep it going... whatever it looks like to them.

Scarpino:       If we lived in a world where it was possible to have do-overs, is there anything you’d change about KI in the last nineteen years?

Adisa:             I’d have been smarter earlier.

Scarpino:       Okay, I’ll bite on this one, define smarter.

Adisa:             Ah, you know, well, you don’t know what you don’t know. Even now, the things that we are involved in now, I can look and say, damn, we could’ve been better prepared for this moment if we had known on the front end. We didn’t. And maybe that’s the beauty of not knowing. I don’t think anybody could’ve predicted that this particular moment in human history would be now. I mean we’re talking about a moment like no other. I don’t know how you can prepare for that.

Scarpino:       You can’t.

Adisa:             No.

Scarpino:       In fifty or a hundred years, people are going to be reading in their history textbooks about what we’re living through now.

Adisa:             Exactly. And, so, no, I would say that what we did and are doing, staying on the road, modeling resilience and finding a way out of no way.

Scarpino:       I’m going to bring up one other thing, and this is impossible to do, but based upon a lifetime of experience, if you could go back in time and talk to your younger self, what advice would you give your younger self about how to face the future?

Adisa:             If there was a way not to be so arrogant as a younger person and think you had all the answers, especially for males. You know, we’ve just got this thing about knowing everything. If I could have acquired more humility earlier, knowing that not only am I not the smartest one in the room, often in addition to that, not even having experience to have that kind of wisdom earlier I think would’ve been helpful. Looking back, I probably in a formal way would not have studied engineering. I would probably study philosophy or some other kind of area that’s more in alignment with the specifics of the work that we’re doing.

Scarpino:       Again, based upon a lifetime of work, and thinking in reflection and action, how do you want to be remembered?

Adisa:             How do I what?

Scarpino:       How do you want to be remembered? What do you hope your legacy will be?

Adisa:             Well, I’m good with not being remembered. That’s really overrated as a part of the lived experience. So, I’d like to start with, I’m appreciative that I had the strength and actually come out of a culture that embraced ‘do it your way.’ And so, if that never gets highlighted anywhere, it ain’t no big thing to me. I do think that the legacy is the legacy of the work, my children, and what I know they’re going to continue to do regardless of what (inaudible)...

Scarpino:       Final question I ask everybody: Is there anything I should’ve asked you that I didn’t? Or anything you wanted to say that I haven’t given you a chance to say?

Adisa:             No, I think you’ve done a great job. Made me think, man. Gosh, you made me do a whole lot of thinking today.

Scarpino:       I’ve certainly enjoyed talking to you.

Adisa:             It’s been great, I’ve enjoyed it. I don’t get to do this often. I think if you weren’t here, you saw what that phone’s been doing. So, I would not have had this opportunity to share and be reflective.

Scarpino:       Well, while the recorders are still on, I want to thank you on behalf of myself and the Tobias Center for being kind enough to share your afternoon and your life with me and these recorders. I appreciate it very much.

Adisa:             Thank you. I hope it has value to others.

Scarpino:       These will be posted on the website. If you want copies, I’ll be happy to give them to you at some point in the future. Just let me know.

Adisa:             All right, man, appreciate it, thank you.

Scarpino:       Let me turn these things off so we’re not live anymore.

(END RECORDING)