290: A Liberated Education with Dr. Crystal Menzies

IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean

“Out of the mouths of babes.” A familiar saying that’s used by adults to express surprise when a child articulates something wise and sensible. Kids have a remarkable intuition that sometimes gets dulled as they age by society and grownups who encourage them to push it down.

“Always be nice and polite.”

“Don’t say that or talk back.”

“Listen to your history teacher/gymnastics coach/Boy Scout leader.”

“It’s rude to ask so many questions.”

Yet more and more child experts indicate that difficult topics should never be off-limits. Of course, there’s a need to adjust the delivery to make a subject age-appropriate. Sample questions for a little one could look like asking: “What does this mural mean to you? How does this image make you feel?”

Welcome to our Untold Stories Bean Pod. This week, it’s my pleasure to welcome Dr. Crystal Menzies to discuss how we can use education to foster a greater sense of togetherness. A former teacher in urban schools, Crystal drew on her personal experience, and her Guyanese and African American roots to create EmancipatED.

There, Crystal’s mission is to cultivate communities of radical dreamers, thinkers, and doers through educational resources, collaborative learning experiences, and storytelling.

An enthusiastic historian, Crystal recounts events of free rebel Black communities throughout her work. And today, it’s my honor to have Crystal join us to share a few gripping stories with a side of expert advice on how we can pave a better path forward.

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

• Fictive Kinship
• Maroon Communities
• Expanding how you see yourself, your community, your power
• When children & parents are on an equivalent learning plane
• Black Liberatory Pedagogy

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• Sundae’s Website
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• Sundae Bean – YouTube
• Wisdom Fusion Project
• Emancipated – WebsitedIn
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• Dr. Crystal Menzies – LinkedIn

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Full Episode Transcript:

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Hello, It is 11:00 pm in New York, 5:00 pm in Johannesburg, and 10:00 pm in Bangkok. Welcome to IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean. I am an intercultural strategist, transformation facilitator, and solution-oriented coach, and I am on a mission to help you adapt & succeed through ANY life transition.

I’ve been saying this for about a year now, that we need old solutions to new problems. Yes, you heard that right, our existing strategies are not working and we need to do things differently and often times the answer is not in inventing something new but returning to something old, something tested, something that is deeply embedded in cultural wisdom.

And our guest today is doing such innovative work where she takes on a massive topic: How to navigate as liberated beings within oppressive systems. Our guest today is Dr. Crystal Menzies. And she is a former educator in urban schools, who drew on her personal experience, African diaspora and history, and her Guyanese and African-American roots to fund an organization called; emancipatED. Today, she develops research-based educational experiences that center Black communities. I’ve seen her flagship product, it is amazing, and she draws on the stories of Maroon communities. Maybe you’ve never heard of them, Africans who freed themselves from slavery and created hidden societies to offer Black and Brown families a model for how to navigate as liberated beings within oppressive systems.

What I’ve learned about Dr. Menzies is she is an educator and academic at heart but also has a spirit of openness and playfulness. She lives in the Bay Area in California, enjoys reading, Marvel movies, and daydreaming of Black futures. It is my heartfelt pleasure to welcome you to IN TRANSIT Dr. Menzies.

Crystal: Thank you. I’m honored to be here and excited for this conversation.

Sundae: Yeah. Me too. Thank you. So let’s dive right In. You have this background in education, you were doing it for years and urban schools, and I’m guessing that you loved it. But something happened when you decide to make a big move of your own, and your life and your work also went in transit. From what I’ve learned about your background, you branched out and went to find solutions to systemic racism elsewhere. Can you tell us a little bit more about that journey? And what inspired you to make the move?

Crystal: Yeah, so, when I was a teacher, I was what was considered a, “culturally responsive teacher,” but I didn’t know the term. I just knew I cared about my kids, and I had high expectations for them and two things happened.

1. I remember teaching about enslavement in like the Black stories that we often learn centered in the United States. And one of my students said, “Why do we talk about Black folks all the time?” And this was a Black student and I’m like, “What do you mean?” But after doing some digging, I realized he was tired of hearing about the traumatic narratives. He knew nothing else about Black history. And I realized that’s all I’m teaching them and that’s all they’re getting exposed to outside of here. So I taught a lesson on rebellions of enslaved peoples in the United States and outside of the United States, and my kids loved it.

And I was also observed that day. So I got written up because it was not a high-priority standard, meaning it was unlikely to show up on a standardized test. So I was teaching, one, to illuminate the full stories of Black history but also I noticed my students were carrying the weight of that trauma and I didn’t want that to be what they took away from that experience. So that was one thing.

1. And then another, I lost one student in particular who like gave me a lot of challenges at the beginning of the year. But by the middle of the first semester, she was like my main go-to in the classroom for getting her peers on track. And she was murdered in a drive-by shooting two weeks after their eighth-grade graduation.

So those two stories, there’s more but like that is what propelled me out of the classroom. Because initially, I thought, “Nobody studying these, larger, systemic factors that impact students lives. I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing,” right?

Sundae: Yeah. Right.

Crystal: And went to a doctoral program. And then through there, I was kind of like a ship without a rudder, like, “Where do I go now?” And not just, where do I go physically but like, “What am I doing?”

Because there has to be another way and it was through those experiences that I’ve always been obsessed with Maroon communities but I kept them separate.

Sundae: Hmm.

Crystal: And it was through kind of my own self-exploration I need something I can grasp, so let me tap back into what has already happened and existed, and that’s what brought me to studying Maroon communities and how they could provide a framework for our liberation.

Sundae: Wow. So for those who are not familiar with Maroon communities, can you give just a brief introduction to who they are?

Crystal: Yes, so Maroon communities, I’m going to use the present tense because some still exist are communities of self-emancipated Africans, so folks who ran away from enslavement and created free hidden societies throughout the Americas. So any place enslavement existed there were Maroon communities often nearby of various sizes. Some still exist today, Jamaica has several, Columbia, Suriname, and they created their own cultures because they were a melting pot of different African societies and cultures, and some folks who had been born in what we consider the America’s today and so they have their own free communities.

Sundae: Fascinating. And so what was it that made you say – I’m curious about the day and I’m expecting it was like an epiphany or something. Where you’re like, “Oh wait a minute. These are these stories. These are those powerful cultural communities that exist. What if we brought that story and those strategies into new contexts.”

Crystal: It was, you know, it was a day, it was always percolating in the back of my mind and I started to seek out knowledge and there’s these frameworks called Black Liberatory Pedagogy, and again being an educator, I love frameworks, and I realized a lot of the ways we talk about, liberation can make it feel unattainable. And I was like, “How can I merge?” Because I did a DEI work in organizations and I focus on practical like pragmatic, “This is what we can actually change today to lead to this bigger thing.” But I was like; How can we do that for these bigger systems and in our day-to-day lives?

And as I was like, researching Black Liberatory Pedagogy like, wait, is there is a way I can merge Maroon communities as a framework and a as a series of active steps with Black Liberatory Pedagogy, and so I created this framework. And this was right. This was a year before everything shut down. So created this framework, shared it with a friend, she was like I love it but nobody knows who Maroon communities are. And I was like, “You’re right,” I’m creating this whole fancy thing and folks don’t even know why?

But then I tabled it for a little bit. I was in a crazy job, then ended up in the hospital and was still kind of that was like sitting off to the side again, felt like rudderless again like, “What, what do I do? Who am I?” And when everything shut down, I moved from Dallas to the Bay Area, I realized a lot of things because I moved closer to family, but the gist is how separated we had been becoming prior to the pandemic.

Sundae: Yes, yes.

Crystal: I used to grow up in a large neighborhood. We’re all playing around together. Lots of play cousins, who I thought were my real family until I learned in middle school, “Oh, we’re not actually blood-related?” We were losing that even prior to the pandemic, but the pandemic exacerbated that and made us little tiny family units. I saw what my friends with children were going through trying to work remotely and educate young children remotely. And we have the uprisings with George Floyd and it was very much, how can I embody these practices? And I can’t embody these practices by myself. It needs to be done within a community. And that’s where the product came from is bringing us back together. Getting back to, like you said, the old solutions to new problems. The solutions are founded in community. So how can we build intentional community? And that’s what undergirds this exploration guide I’ve created.

Sundae: I just have chills because there’s so much to unpack there, right? I remember being in corporate back in 2000, I think 8, something around there and we were talking about Mega Trends and one of the Mega Trends is individualization. And that is the opposite of collectivism or of community. And I’m thinking about in the US specifically, it’s already an individualistic culture, and then it’s going even more individualized. And even in the research I’ve seen, also in collectivistic countries, there is that move to individualization which is then tearing at the fabric of intergenerational communities or communities of just by geography, right? Like, the neighborhood. If there’s that kid riding their bike too fast, one of the other people down the street will say slow down. Because you watch over each other.

And that all of that is going away. The other thing that I’m thinking about is I always talk about resilience and we say, resilience is not who can take on the most on their shoulders. It’s who can be in community in the way that is the smartest so they can take care of themselves and still take care of others. We have so many twisted ideas because of that we’ve gotten so far away. So now you have this organization called emancipatED with a capital E D and you talk about you, the aim is to support transformation of how we see ourselves as people, I’m guessing the Black and Brown communities is where the we is coming from, and the way that you engage with each other as kin. So tell me more about emancipatED and why that’s important to you?

Crystal: Well, something I mentioned when I was teaching about the consistent trauma narratives around the Black experience. And this doesn’t mean we ignore that history. I mean, it is a part of how we’ve been shaped and I’m speaking, we specifically, as a Black American and Guyanese American. But there’s more to that story and how can we use these stories:

1. To bring us back together as larger communities.
2. But also to provide a guide for how do we liberate ourselves within these systems.

And it sounds like very lofty goals. But the core of what this curriculum does is get us back to communal storytelling and learning our family history, learning our local history of resistance and community building and rebellion. So each part, there’s eight activities and each activity has like a self-reflection component, then there’s a family connection component, but then there’s also a component of like, get out there in your neighborhood and meet people and do things. And also to invite people into your space when you’re doing these activities. Folks you haven’t talked to in a while. And it’s adapted for different age levels. So you have children, correct.

Sundae: Yeah. 10 and 14.

Crystal: 10 and 14. So this is perfect for them as far as being able to understand the words in the curriculum but we do have adaptations for folks who have younger kids. So instead of asking, “what does this mural mean to you?” You might ask, again for a child, “how does this feel? How do you feel when you look at this image. Or what colors do you see?” To kind of get them to reflect and talk about what they’re experiencing?

Sundae: Hmm. It’s beautiful. So I’m curious, it sounds like it’s really expanding the lens at how you see yourself, how you see community, how you find your power. And how you find connection with your family with your community, that’s POWERFUL. But through a quite, I want to say simple, but simple isn’t easy. Simple, in terms of like, digesting. Can you tell me, I want to know about impact, how is this impacted you? How has this impacted the people that have gone through this process?

Crystal: Personally, I saw someone say, I wish I could cite them but because I don’t know who the originator was that, “Entrepreneurship is a spiritual journey,” and that has very much been my experience like of pushing through fear. I didn’t realize in many ways, I consider myself pretty unconventional and fearless, but when it came to this, all these things started bubbling to the surface. And so the transformation for me has been one of helping me, like reigniting hope, to see that these communities, not only existed, but still exist.

And they fought wars against colonial plantation society and have systems where gender dynamics are different and women are nurtured and cared for in a way that we don’t often see in our society. It just was a reminder that the way things are aren’t the way things have to be. And I need that.

So when I was eight I learned that word what pessimism was because my dad told me I was a pessimist. And I was like, “What does that mean?”, he gave me the half glass, half glass half-full half-empty analogy and I was like, “Huh, interesting? He’s right.” So someone like me, how can I keep reigniting that hope? And that for me, it is through community and through when I hear these stories of not just Maroons but my own family history, I feel empowered and like want to keep pushing forward.

Sundae: Right? I think it is important. When I think about family history, my family origin is around there like the classical pioneers. Left Norway, went on the boat, got in the covered. wagons went across the land. And if I think about some of my work that I’ve had to do on perfectionism and just so committed to my work, I’m like, of course, because the women who came before me basically lived in the tundra and were trying to survive. So there’s this hardness that got translated through that I inherited. And it helped me be more gentle to myself to realize, “Oh that’s why that is there,“ right?

And be able to be grateful for that but also say it’s safe now you can drop – you can relax a little, there’s no more tundra, you don’t have to survive in the winters. You can be more gentle and loving when you have more context for things. So do you have stories from people who have gone through your process and what impact it had on them?

Crystal: Yes, I do and I’ve it’s exceeded my expectations. Like I said, there’s a lot of fear in this. It felt divinely inspired and I was energized as I created and then once it’s out there, I’m like, “Oh my God, everybody’s gonna hate it.” But it is the opposite experience.

One person messaged me and said they wish, because I called the curriculum an exploration guide. So it comes with all these different activities and then there’s the hidden history cards that are the stories of The Maroons. And someone replied back to me, “I wish we had these type of guides for our whole lives.” On like how to navigate life in general because it was so impactful for their family and how enthusiastic their kids were. Because I didn’t position this as a parent teaching a child, something. It’s, we’re learning together. And so children are on an equal plane as their parents. And just depending on the age, the parent is more of a facilitator of, breaking stuff out.

And so seeing their kids in a different light because there’s a lot of like value-centered activities of reflections and how do you see yourself? How do you see yourself within this family? So, I’m getting a lot of feedback about parents learning a lot about their kids, and in many ways, raising their expectations for their kids. Assuming because they’re at a certain age that the depth of feeling and reflection isn’t there and that’s being revealed through these activities.

Sundae: Wow. What a gift.

Crystal: So that’s been wonderful for me.

Sundae: What a gift, right? It’s not cognitive, not just cognitive, and knowing it’s about the connection what’s being created. And I’m guessing, it’s also embodied for the children who are like, “Hey, this is cool. This is our family history. This is what I’m proud of this is what has worked in the past,” like being able to hold that in their body. And that’s I see that now, when you tell the first story of that wise student in your class who said, “Hey this is heavy, you’re going to make me carry all of this? Isn’t there something to balance this?” That is as true. And as important to know. That’s beautiful. Feels like it’s come full circle for you.

Crystal: It has a very much as and it’s in many ways. I was creating what I hope to experience, and what I do experience in my communities. And I don’t have children. So I don’t use parents in the text, I use the term caregiver because we don’t we getting back to the communalness, it’s not just going to be parents or people who birth children who are raising kids. And it shouldn’t just be, my mom friends go through a lot.

Sundae: Yeah. That’s right. So tell me more about this idea of Fictive Kinship, I know that something that is an important concept, will you share more about that and how that is connected to this bigger conversation about community and families.

Crystal: Yeah. So Fictive Kinship, my learning of the term comes from like African research, Africology. We identify kin as blood relations, Fictive Kinship is people who are like family but aren’t our blood. So Fictive Kinship networks, the way I operationalize it, is people who are our blood and also those folks who are family by choice or family by locality. Those networks. And so in the guides, I prompt folks to bring those folks into the space and do these activities together. Because ultimately, when we look at Maroon societies, there also organized into fictive kinship clans and depending on the different Maroon cultures, they’re organized in different ways.

So in Palenque, for example, they have these things called Quad Radha’s, I hope I’m pronouncing that correctly, it’s like age-based, little clans of people who aren’t related but they’re the same age group and have the same interests. So there’s people who are musicians. There’s people as they get older, who handle the funeral rites of the community. They don’t have police. They do have a group of people who moderate conflict and that’s their role. Their fictive kinship clan’s role within the community. So using that foundation to – and we do this, right? We just don’t think about it intentionally and just being more intentional about these communities that were cultivating and curating.

Sundae: Well, and that word intention is kind of a theme that I’m seeing throughout all of what you do, is how do we intentionally expand the conversation? “How do we intentionally connect with our family?” Intentionally explore our culture. There’s so much intentionality in what you do, and it just feels so urgent right now when we’re literally on autopilot scrolling through social media, the mindlessness, the mindlessness. It’s so interesting. I don’t know, there’s something inside me I want to share and I’m not sure how it will come out. I was just reading a newsletter from someone I respect and their work I respect. And they talked about the practice of mindfulness and meditation. And I think this is another way of being mindful. It’s not this quiet silence. It’s another way of being mindful. It’s an embodied way, it’s a connected way. And that’s what it seems like the bigger picture your work is doing.

Crystal: I’m writing this down, “Yes.”

Sundae: I mean that’s what it looks like you’re doing from the outside. I love that. This topic is wide and it’s deep. And I also want to save time to talk about you and your life. Is there something important that you think your listeners need to understand about your work? Either as an educator as a parent or as an Individual that we haven’t yet touched on?

Crystal: Yes, I would say the core. You hit the nail on the head when I was like, that’s why I’m writing, “Let me write this down. Okay.” This embodied mindfulness and the core of who I am as a human is integrity. And what I’ve attempted to do with this product and with my businesses is operate with integrity. Integrity first. People first. And that has it’s – in this world – it has its pluses and minuses. For those who watch Game of Thrones and I hate how it ended but I’m like Ned Stark. I’m going to operate with candor and care this product was created with candor and care and community, and that’s the core of what I want folks to take away from this experience. What I hope folks can build with their communities. And the bigger picture, this is just one thing, my big picture is I would love to see local communities do these activities together and how do we create physical sites of joy and resistance where we are.

Sundae: Yes. Yes.

Crystal: That’s the big picture.

Sundae: That’s beautiful. That’s beautiful. Well, I’ll make sure that when the listeners are catching up with this, they’ll be able to have links to find out where they can learn more. I’ll make sure we put that in the show notes because I think that’s the next step, right? Now that this is out there, how do they take it into their lives, into their communities and have it be not abstract. But as we were saying embodied, so do you mind if we turn a little attention to you right now? I think there’s so much you’ve already been through. I’m imagining, this is a full cycle of transformation for you, and there’s, as you said, entrepreneurship is a great way to begin another layer of transformation. I’d love to hear more from you, ATT: Ambitious, Transformation in Transition. I always talk about transition first. What is the soup you’re swimming in? A global transition. Family transition. What is your soup of transition right now that you’re feeling?

Crystal: There’s quite a bit, I like everything. My grandmother is 95, my paternal grandmother, and she’s in the process of transitioning, and I use that word, when I brought it up to someone else, they were like, “Wait, she’s transitioning at 95?” I’m like, “No, no, no. This is not a gender affirming transition.” She’s passing away and I went to visit her and spend some time with her. And its really helping, “help” is the wrong word. I’m really reframing what my relationship to family and my relationship to mortality. When you operate like life is short and long at the same time. So what are you going to do with it? I’ve heard those things all my life, but I’m feeling it for the first time of; What am I going to do with this life I’ve been given? And who do I want to be in relation to other people? Because I traveled a lot. I’ve lived – I left California for a decade and I’m not the best at keeping in contact with people.

Sundae: Hmm.

Crystal: And I can’t keep in contact with it 1500 folks you befriend over time but how can I be intentional with sustaining deep relationships is definitely a transit I’m experiencing right now.

And then also, with this entrepreneurship journey, expanding what I think is possible. I think just learning about going through this process of studying Maroons. And the entrepreneur piece underneath it. It’s like, I really can create the life that I want in community, and then what do I want? I am a Critical Race Theorist, as an educator, it was easy for me to identify what I don’t want to exist. I’m now in a space where I’m identifying, Well then, if I don’t want this what is it that I do want? What’s it look like? And then who do I need to be for that to actually happen. So it’s lots of this talk came right at the right time because I’m been thinking a lot about these things.

Sundae: Yeah and it’s so – this is where it’s hard to tease that way. I talk about Transformation, its internal lead, external lead or performance led, or maybe all three at the same time, right? An external lead would be like, “Oh, the pandemic happened and I lost my job.” And internal would be, “I woke up one day and I felt vastly different.” or performance led, you have this ambitious goal and sometimes it is murky to decide what is this from, the outside or is this coming from the inside. When you were talking I actually had my– I had tears well up in my eyes because I feel like we’re at such a pivot point right now of, at least where I stand with my views, we’re getting a lot clearer and what we don’t want, even though it’s a long time, on many layers of identity and power in history. And then the question is, like you said, what’s on the other side? And what is it going to ask of me so that I can create that? Because there’s also security in known systems. And there’s insecurity when you don’t know what you’re going toward.

And maybe it’s different for me because I hold so many dominant identities. I’m actually letting go of power and you know what I mean? So there’s that and thing. And so it’s this question of, what are we going toward? And I have this image of my hands where I’m not doing it on my own. I’m holding hands because I’m not doing it alone. And that is what I think is so beautiful about where we’re at right now because collectively we have– not a choice. We have enough momentum now to make those leaps and I think they are a million individual leaps. It’s you with your business and those conversations, right? It’s me with my business in my conversation. It’s that person with their son. And that conversation. It’s all of those millions of small steps is what I think we’ll take that leap.

I actually kind of hope it’s that way. And not like this massive explosion of who knows what which will force it. I hope we have the opportunity to exercise agency and take our steps to make that movement rather than it being some catastrophic shift that makes it undeniable, you know what I mean? So that’s just what I’m processing while I heard you. There’s so much hope in there. There is so much hope.

So what does Ambitious look like for you right now? If you know, the way I define it, it has to be outside of scope or all from the external. So for me, ambitious, this summer was doing less. That’s ambitious for me. for someone else, it might be being bolder. Another, it might be quieter, right? So what about for you? What does ambitious look like for you right now?

Crystal: I listen to the podcast about what is ambition, so I was like jotting notes and then additionally, I wrote down, my goal is to write a weekly newsletter, just be consistent in building a relationship with my audience. But I was like, you know what, that’s actually not it. What is it for me is saying, what’s on my mind? In a way that adds value to the conversation. That’s ambitious to me because way before business, I had a brand and I didn’t like that term but that’s what my one of my sorority sisters used to say. She was like, “Crystal, you have a brand, people listen to what you say and they value what you say.” And over time, I’ve receded into myself, this is on social media, just seeing some of the negativity, people feeling entitled to my opinion. And is always a man in my DM’s, “What’s your opinion and thoughts on this?” You know? click.

Sundae: *laughter* You’re like, here’s my PayPal account. I will meet you on the phone for a consult.

Crystal: Exactly. And I’ve answered their question. And then they debate me. And I’m like, I told you my opinion. And so it’s seeing how other people were treated, who were like very public, I’m like, you know what, I don’t think I want this, right? But as I’m communicating these stories and what I’m doing, I can’t live in that fear of the worst case scenario. So, for me, ambitious is that putting myself out there consistently and doing it in a way – I don’t want to piggyback off of what’s hot at the time. That’s not empowering to me. That doesn’t give me energy. But I do know, I can often add nuance that isn’t there. And I will withhold that nuance. And so with ambitious to me is like putting that out there

Sundae: Yeah, that’s beautiful. I see your integrity shine through in that example. For sure. That’s beautiful. I know we could go on forever, but can you help the audience understand what is next for you if they want to learn more about you and what you’re working on? What should they know?

Crystal: Okay, so you can follow along with the business in the product at emancipatededucation.com. That’s where you can purchase, also, learn more about our mission. And I do have a blog. If you click Newsletter, that talks about what’s gone into the development of this product, sharing more of those thoughts that I’ve been afraid to share. There’s also Instagram page emancipate_ed. And as far as what’s next for me, is really thinking about, I know what kind of business owner I want to be. I know what kind of business I want to run, and like you said, who do I need to be? Well, I’m already with that person. So it’s what do I need to do to actually run a business that way? Because it’s very easy to just plug into the systems that already exist. But what I don’t want to do is to create something that continues to harm the environment.

So I’m looking at researching sustainable business practices like environmentally sustainable and then what does that look like in product creation?

Sundae: Wonderful.

Crystal: That’s next for me and then finding community of people who are already doing it.

Sundae: Yeah, it’s gorgeous. I’m also hearing the people that you’re speaking to our educators, families and individuals who are interested in sort of going to that transformation process around how they see themselves and the way they engage with each other as kin. You said. It’s beautiful. It’s beautiful.

Oh, I love, I love to see what you’re doing. I mean, there’s so much I’m taking away from our conversation today and it feels like just the beginning. Some of the things that were bubbling up for me, it feels like they’re not quite fully articulated yet. There’s something much deeper and bigger about what you’re doing that I think is going to have a beautiful ripple effect. So thank you for showing up even though you’re afraid. We know how the I know that as an entrepreneur, I’m celebrating my 9th business year, and I know that journey is hard.

Crystal: Oh, congratulations.

Sundae: It is hard and I just hold for you, I hold for you, I talked about this on my podcast, the endgame, whatever endgame you have for you as that business owner with integrity and impact, and all of that, I hold that for you because it will be possible for you. In three years, four years, five years, whatever that time frame is, but I can feel it. It’s worth the ups and down roller coaster. Wonderful. Thank you. And thank you to everyone who’s been listening today. You’re here on IN TRANSIT was Sundae Bean. It’s so wonderful to have Crystal here with us today. So thank you, Crystal, for being part of this.

Crystal: Thank you so much for having me. I really enjoyed the conversation.

Sundae: It’s wonderful. And I think it’s only appropriate that we end with the words of Audre Lorde: “Without community. There is no liberation.”

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