Gregory Hodge is a social change activist and organizational development consultant. He works around the country as a strategist, racial equity trainer, facilitator, and coach with groups ranging from small non-profits to public agencies, particularly school districts and foundations. Greg is a coordinating partner in designing the Healing Generations Institute with the National Compadres Network. He served as the Director for the Executives’ Alliance for Boys and Men of Color, and is currently CEO of the Oakland-based Brotherhood of Elders. The Brotherhood is an intergenerational network of men of African descent whose mission is to foster environments where Black males of all ages – from children to elders – are empowered to thrive.
Greg was president of the Oakland school board during the first decade of the 2000’s, and in 2022 ran for the office of mayor in a campaign centering hope and healing. Known in the community as “Baba Greg,” he is also a spiritual leader, African drummer, father, and grandfather. And he is my friend.
Greg is often called on to support community gatherings in times of both tragedy and celebration: facilitating healing circles when a young person is killed, officiating weddings and baby blessings, or pouring libation to honor the Ancestors at events and protest rallies.
He was among the first people I interviewed for this blog. When I shared the title, “Healing Conversations from the Front Lines of Activism,” and asked for his reaction, Greg said it was a long overdue conversation that not enough of us had when we were younger. “For a lot of our comrades – people who are doing the work, who are out here burning out, who are trying their best to be engaged in healing work – you know, it's almost cliche at this point to say that healers got to be healed. You have to be able to take care of your own wellness in order to work with and for other people. So, I think that activists, advocates, organizers, educators, ministers, like a lot of people who are in the field of helping other people, need to take care of themselves in a much better way. And I think that healing and activism have to be considered together.”
As we talk, he reflects on how the police and vigilante murders of Black men – Oscar Grant in Oakland, Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and so many others that launched the contemporary Movement for Black Lives – became part of his work. He recalls how often he would be at a meeting, but they couldn't get to whatever the agenda was because people were in so much pain and rage. They needed to talk about whatever violent assault had just happened, needed to process the trauma and find support in one another.
I invite Greg to share about a time when he experienced healing in the context of his activism. I expect him to speak about his work with young people, or the many community healing circles he has been part of. Instead, he talks about his run for mayor, and going door to door to talk with folks in the neighborhoods. His campaign staff told him to keep those encounters brief – like three minutes – but he would often spend 30-40 minutes, sitting on the stoop engaged in meaningful conversations where people shared their concerns and hopes for the city. He says, “as basic as it sounds, I think that engagement is a huge part of healing. How we learn to listen deeply – spirit to spirit, head to head, body to body – is really important. And so, when we think about activism, people who are trying to make some transformation, or some transformative change in the world, bringing people's humanity to that, being able to understand and hear what others are really saying – and not the soundbite answer – is critical. It's critical. It's the basis for healing circles. It’s the basis for restorative justice. It’s the basis for almost any pastoral work. It’s the basis for psychotherapy. It’s the basis for so much that we refer to as healing.”
When I ask how he sees the relationship between healing and justice, he responds, “I've heard it said that justice is love demonstrated in public. So that idea of the Beloved Community, of how we play out a certain kind of love for humanity, a love for people, love for others. It requires healing the hurt. I don't think you can get to justice if you've got no peace. And you don't get to peace without some healing. I think that as Dr. King and others have said, peace is not just the absence of violence, it is the presence of love. It's the presence of joy. It’s the presence of you being able to bring your full humanity to bear on every sort of situation you're in.”
He continues, “So, I don't think you can have juvenile justice in terms of bringing kids home out of the youth prisons, unless you can also provide them with the love and the care and nurturing associated with what it means to be back in your community. You know, in a healthy community. I don't think you can have economic justice without moving away from racialized capitalism to a more democratic socialist way of being, and unless you've got the basic notion of being able to share, because so much of capitalism is driven by just raw greed. I think healing and justice are all bound up together; I don't think you can really have one without the other.”
Knowing how often we can see things in hindsight that we may wish we’d known earlier in life, I ask Greg what he might share with his younger self, or with folks newer to activism. His immediate reply is “self-care is not selfish.” He points out how “a lot of times, we get into this sort of martyrdom syndrome of having to work day and night to make things right for our folks. You can't take a vacation, you can't take a break, you can't take a day off. Like, that would mean that somehow you're a slacker, you know, that you're not down for the cause. But that incessant frenzy doesn't bode well for running a long time. People use the metaphor ‘it's not a sprint, it's a marathon.’ Well, I have run a few marathons, and a couple of the dynamics I’ve noticed is that in a marathon, you stop every now and then to rehydrate, and then you get back on to the race. You have to pace yourself. You have to slow down at times, and you have to speed up at times, right? You even have to change the mechanics of how you're running. Sometimes if you're running a long race like that, a slight change in the angle of how your foot is hitting the ground makes a difference.
“By analogy, how you do your work matters. How you pace yourself. How you change what you do just a little bit. So maybe instead of the first thing you do in the morning is pick up your phone, maybe you don't pick up your phone. Maybe you have the meditation period that you know you need to have. The prayer period you need to have. The walk around the block, or ride your bike, and then jump into your emails and texts, and all that other stuff that’s waiting for you. Right? So, I think that the wisdom of running applies: How do you run differently so that you can run far, so that you can run the race to its conclusion. And I think we've lost some of that wisdom. The wisdom of being able to do one or two things well, every day, as opposed to doing a whole bunch of things not so well. Those are the kinds of things that I hope that my younger colleagues can hear. And that I hope that I and my colleagues who are who are older and mature can hear, too, so that we can extend our time on the planet, and be healthy while we're extending it.”
I ask Greg what sustains him and he talks about gardening. We are both gardeners, and often commiserate about dealing with the rats and raccoons who treat our gardens like their personal buffet table or latrine. (Oakland rats and raccoons are BOLD, let me tell you.) Greg is also a drummer, and finds nourishment in the joy of making music with friends. Indeed, friendships are a major part of what sustains him. Talking with folks, laughing, maybe dancing a little bit.
For decades, Greg was the lead minister of an African-centered spiritual community based in the teachings of ancient Kemet, so I ask him about spiritual practice. All of what he’s named, he says, is actually part of his spiritual practice. “Putting my hands in the dirt is part of my spiritual practice. Playing music is part of my spiritual practice. Right? There's also, you know, I engage in some meditation and prayer. I think that for the years that I was part of an organized body [of communal worship], just the ritual of that. And the rituals of the things I still do – pouring libation, being able to be in community spaces. Those are the things that actually sustain me. Being around people and feeling that feeling you get in your body when you know you're doing the right thing. Like for me, sometimes I get this sort of tingling right in my top of my head, or somewhere around my third eye. It's like this sensation of feeling that was the right thing to do, the right thing to say, the right way to be. And I think that that's part of the practice.”
Greg finds inspiration in seeing the impact he’s been able to have on people’s lives, especially young people. He says, “when I see younger people taking the things that they've learned from their elders, from me, or from anybody else in the community who is bringing some wisdom to bear on the situation – the young people who take that, and then innovate on it, who do something to move it forward.” He is also inspired by his elders, “people who are older than me, who haven't given up. Who at 80 and 85 and almost 90 years old, are still doing the work. People who I got a chance to interact with for a long period of time, who have been consistent, who have consistently shown up and tried to do what they thought was right for the community. And so I think it's a combination of younger people along with older people, who are my elders, and a lot of us in between, you know. And I think we’ve still got a lot of work to do, a lot that we can add to the overall healing of the planet and the world.”
As we move toward the close of our conversation, I ask if there is anything he’d like to add. He thinks for a moment, then says, “the only thing I would add is a sense of patient urgency, if that makes sense. A certain urgency that is defined by patience. And for me, patience is the power of endurance in the absence of desired circumstances or conditions. So, patience has a certain power to it. And I think that if we combine the urgent needs of humanity, the urgent needs of our communities, with a certain kind of patience, then we find a balance in that. A balanced approach to activism, a balanced approach to healing, a balanced approach to life itself. I think that that's what almost every tradition tries to teach – that notion of balance, and harmony, and order, and reciprocity, and truth. In other words, [the ancient Egyptian, or Kemetic, principle of] Ma’at. And I think that inclination, that way of thinking about things, that way of being in the world, can only make us better.”
To learn more about Greg’s work visit:
Brotherhood of Elders Network: https://brotherhoodofelders.net
Rise East: https://www.riseeast.org/about
“Create Justice: A National Discussion on Arts and Justice” – hosted by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute and the Los Angeles-based Arts for Incarcerated Youth Network (2017)
I love the lifting up of intergenerational collaboration - learning from elders, teaching youngers, and watching them innovate and create new things we never could have imagined. May we all find the precise way to be in patient urgency together.