- Many people are fighting against racism and white supremacy in the Lehigh Valley.

The embers of equality and justice need to be fanned because injustice is still a part of our society.

Statistics show that the wealth gap is still a real reality.

According to the Lehigh Valley Planning Commission, approximately 44% of Black and Latino families live below the poverty level in the Lehigh Valley.

White individuals are more than twice as likely than nonwhites to own a home.

And educationally, minority children are significantly behind, and broad representation continues to be lackluster in corporations and nonprofits.

Hello, I'm Phillip Davis.

Welcome to Courageous Conversations.

We are broadcasting from the PPL Public Media and Education Center in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Joining us to talk about justice, equity, and diversity, as well as their endeavors to empower people in a growing industry, are Tyrone Russell, CEO of Faces International, and Kevin Greene, the COO of Faces International.

Thank you both for joining me.

I want to jump in, Tyrone, with you.

You know, I've had the opportunity to watch you guys and the work that you're doing in the community.

It's just overwhelming and significantly impacting the lives of individuals.

Tell me a little bit about what Faces is, how long have you guys been in business, and what exactly do you do?

- Yeah, so Faces...

Appreciate you having us, first and foremost, but Faces is a marketing and development firm.

And we really create... Let me back.

We create campaigns.

We do design work, we create websites.

We help businesses build and reach their target demographics.

So, that's like one of the main things that we do, or some of the main things that we do.

But the critical part to our organization, which we started in 2012, is the development side, which is understanding that nowadays, businesses know that people shop with their hearts and their value.

So, they're looking for places that welcome them in, in their authentic and genuine selves.

So, our businesses always say that if companies are beginning to put together these mission statements and try to access the community with products and services, they need to do some internal work to understand really, really what it means to access and work with community members and target demographic.

So, our development end is what we base our cultural competence work, is where we base our diversity work, our inclusion and equity work, because we understand if, internally, you're struggling with those issues, then no matter what you put out on the outside in terms of a beautiful mission statement, saying "we care about our community," you're never fully going to understand the work you're getting yourself into.

So, regardless of the product, what you say to the community matters to your business, you need to make sure you're doing that internal work.

And that's what Faces comes in to do, in addition to building out your campaigns, websites, logos, videos, and so on and so forth.

- Wonderful.

And I've got a chance to see both of you guys at work, specifically in the space of diversity and equity, and really challenging some of the societal norms, right, that specifically are working in business.

Kevin, you guys are engaged in equity work, in partnership with some local nonprofits.

Tell me about that work and how it actually came about.

- So Project Equity Lehigh Valley is all about redesigning the nonprofit sector through a lens of equity and sustainability, right?

And truthfully, this has been something that's been growing for some time in the nonprofit sector, I think nationally, but definitely in our microcosm of the Lehigh Valley itself.

And as you said in your opening statement, right, we are still having these issues, especially when it comes to decision-makers within organizations and how they're making decisions.

So, and what happened in 2020, which is obviously things that have been going on in our country for quite some time, I think we finally hit a breaking point where everyone in America had to sit home and watch, and be engaged in what was going on in our society.

And it sparked something that is, now is the time that we need to take action and really go ahead and make something happen.

So, the Lehigh Valley Community Foundation and United Way of the Greater Lehigh Valley reached out to us to talk about, how do we go ahead and create programing for us to create a new framework to be able to move us forward?

So, Tyrone and myself have been leading these efforts working with these two organizations by developing a BIPOC leadership group, because we know our BIPOC leaders are the strongest people in our community, because not only do they have the talent and the skill set, but they also had the lived experience that's going to bring and enhance the value that our nonprofits have to be able to serve our community, especially when a lot of our nonprofits in the Lehigh Valley are serving communities of color at a higher level.

- Right.

- And then, also bringing together stakeholders that are drivers within the nonprofit system right now, to get them through a process to a co-design process, to work together to create what equity will mean and what it will look like in practicality for the Lehigh Valley.

- That's great.

You used a word there that I think people need to understand, BIPOC.

Can you talk a little bit about what BIPOC is, and why it's important that BIPOC... Let me jump over to Tyrone real quick, Tyrone, talk a little bit about BIPOC and why that's important in the work that you all are doing?

- Yeah, so BIPOC is relatively, I don't want to call it a new term, but Black, Indigenous people of color.

And really, what that term seeks to do, before we were just using "people of color," and what Black Indigenous seeks to do is bring all those folks together.

So bring the pan in, when you think about pan-Africanism and the spread of blackness across the world, it brings that into the fold so that we just aren't measuring people in terms of this idea of people of color.

So, the Black and Indigenous part, Indigenous folks who are oftentimes left off of the radar are now brought into the fold to recognize race, as well as ethnicity.

And it's critical to the work because we understand that for all the time that we live and everywhere that we work, we cannot take our skin off.

We aren't granted the power of objectivity in our decision-making or in our relationships, right?

This is a part of who we are.

And for far too long, people in white skin identity, if we're breaking it off into the other end of BIPOC, haven't necessarily had to do that.

Right?

So, there's this idea that you can separate your identity and your demographic from how you think and how you approach the world.

And that's not the case.

We understand that fully.

So in this work, we're trying to get other folks to understand that when you're operating as a president of an institution, you're not just operating as a president.

You're operating as a white man, as the president, the same way I'm operating as a black man in my skin and in my space.

So, it's important to make that distinction when having these conversations.

- Yeah, the common response many times when you begin to talk about diversity, when you begin to talk about equity from our non-African-American folks is "I don't see color".

Right?

So that, you know, that gives an easy pass.

But that's offensive to me if you don't see my color, because it means you don't see me as a human being.

You don't know my experience, right, and you're diminishing the impacts or the struggles that our folks have had to come through even to arrive at the place we are.

So, Kevin, how are you all digging into that space when you're talking about diversity, and really trying to enlighten folks who may not be in brown skin?

- You know, and I love that use the word "diversity", right, because I think that's where we've been working at.

This is creating too many diversity plans.

Right?

And trying to put structure on top of already-broken structure.

So when we looked at this initiative, we said the first thing that we need to do is we need to think about how do we actually redesign it?

And the first thing that we did with our BIPOC leadership was that we put them at the forefront of it, because we feel that the BIPOC leaders are the ones with the lived experience that's going to bring so much insight to this nonprofit space.

And then, we created a space of feeling and camaraderie for them to do work before we actually got into the actual co-design phase.

In most cases, what happens is we jump right into the work, right, and we just started developing plans, initiatives, and things of that sort.

But we don't work on the interpersonal level.

The statement that we hear all the time is, systems are the problem, systems is the issue.

But we have to realize that systems are made up of individuals making decisions to uphold the system or change the system.

- Right.

- So our focus is working on the people.

- Yeah.

- So we can actually get them to move forward, to actually be able to start to make the decisions in real time to combat white supremacy and the issues that we have systematically, that had been driven by the people in those positions.

So that's how we're doing the work, so we do our pre-work, we're switching and flipping it out and making sure our BIPOC leaders are leading the charge.

And, you know, we're really working on the interpersonal development of the individuals and our stakeholders, and our BIPOC leadership to come together to create this new framework for the nonprofit sector of Lehigh Valley.

- That good.

And you're approaching it from a very systemic perspective, but keeping humanity in mind, right, and historicity in mind.

So, thinking about working with African-American leaders, Tyrone, are there... Because the boards, majority boards are made up of non-African-Americans in the community.

So many times, they're doling out money or giving resources to non-profits maybe that are run by African-Americans or that is serving the African-American community.

Are you working with non-African-Americans in this process?

And how's that all working out?

- When you're talking about folks sitting in terms of the project equity space?

- Yes, yes.

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So, cohort one was our BIPOC leaders, right?

In the Valley...

In the Valley, we can't separate, you know, like in a larger city in Philadelphia, where you're like, yeah, Black folks over there, Latinos over there.

In the Valley, we're much more intermingled.

So, our BIPOC group was cohort one.

Cohort two consisted of majority of white folks who went through a similar process where they were learning the history of what it means to be white in the United States of America, they were learning about how whiteness has, white-centeredness, I want to say, has infiltrated and has controlled this idea of the nonprofit sector, right?

So, they've had some opportunity to engage in conversation and relationship in that space before coming together with the BIPOC leaders to talk about how they redesigned the plan.

Because what we have to do, as I mentioned a second ago, is make sure white folks understand that their skin is always at play, just as ours is.

So they have to recognize that.

And putting them in a group with one another began that process.

Unfortunately, time is always a factor, right?

I've been in this skin for 39 years.

Some white folks haven't recognized they've been in their skin longer than the past year, because they've been asked, "What does that mean to you"?

So they haven't been forced to think about that.

So now they're realizing, "Oh, shoot.

"My skin actually really, really does mean something.

"And I bring something that I thought "was the norm for everyone.

"I'm actually bringing my culture and myself into "the space, so now I have to unpack that."

And that's really what we were hoping that those folks do.

But we did have some time for them to be together.

And now, they're actually in conversation now, a relationship now hopefully building out some thoughts and ideas to how we redesign.

- Yeah, that's really powerful because, you know, we started Courageous Conversations because one of the things was the area of education, right, and not having an opportunity to know and learn from one another and, you know, walk out those lived experiences.

I think that's critically, critically important.

Tyrone, I want to come back to you before we jump over to the Cleveland school.

Faces has worked in many areas in the Valley and beyond with the youth.

Why do you think it's important, sir, to serve our youth population?

And can you give us a couple of examples of what you all have done in the youth community?

- Oh, man.

First of all, we, as a for-profit, one of our primary roles was to make sure we were bringing the youth up in a way that continued to live out sustainability of our efforts and also change the landscape of the Valley.

The Valley is a place that forces you, if you want to work, to open up nonprofits.

They're like, "Yeah, you're not going to work with the youth "if you're a for-profit, because we're not going to "write to that cause or assist that cause as fast as "we will a nonprofit."

So we started a nonprofit called R2C2 where we were doing youth work.

And the purpose of R2C2 was really to get youth in the space of understanding that they're dynamic beings.

So you're not just youth being served.

You are people with a voice, you are folks with vision.

You have experiences that we can all learn from and actually move you in spaces to where you can change the landscape of the community.

So, one of our major programs that we had was called LACE UP, which is Life Academics and Commitment to Excellence Youth Program, which was based in Allentown.

And we were working with athletes, young men in particular, helping them understand how they've developed so many skills playing basketball that can apply to life.

So, we always tell them if you get punched in the mouth on a basketball court, you get up and you're determined not to let that happen again.

But in life, sometimes you get punched and you get kicked, and you don't want to get back up.

And so, we were trying to get them to have that same energy in life as they did in sport.

The other thing that we did, and I'll finish with this, was Community Bridge program.

And what that was, was going into high schools and elementary schools and middle schools, and bringing in professionals of color in different industries to speak to kids, because kids can't be what they can't see.

So we were like, if we put people in front of them that look like them and who came from their spaces, and can talk to them about, you know, the options out there in their lives, through those relationships, those kids can become inspired to say, "You know what?

"I can do that, too, because someone that looked like me "that came from our neighborhood did that.

"So I'm up next."

- That's amazing.

And I know we could never have enough time to go over all of the wonderful programs.

You know, of course, I've been tracking you all in the work that you've been doing, and it's just been amazing and impacting lives.

And, you know, you ought to be commended for that.

You know, you guys have done something that is, you know, just tremendous as it relates to breaking into an industry that historically has denied African-Americans access.

Right?

There's all kinds of reports out there that the cannabis industry is going to be extremely lucrative, you know, for the future.

But many times, African-Americans end up in prison versus, you know, on the industry side of it all.

The cannabis and marijuana industry is reported to earn billions of dollars in years to come.

And you all are doing some tremendous stuff with the Cleveland School of Cannabis.

Which you have the nice symbol behind you, Kev.

That was a nice up.

I don't know if you did that on purpose, brother.

But I went on your website, it says, "The mission of the Cleveland School of Cannabis is to foster "adult learning through high-quality residential and "online education that integrates personal development "along with career-oriented skills and knowledge related "to cannabis, science, and business to prepare graduates "for entry-level employment in the industry."

Kevin, can you talk a little bit about the Cleveland School, and how it came about and what really is the vision?

- Definitely.

Thanks so much for starting with the mission statement.

And, as Throne said, it's all how if we write something down, it's like, how do you hold yourself accountable to that?

And that's really what birthed Cleveland School of Cannabis, There was a big gap in the educational opportunities and resources available for the general person to get into the industry.

So, it was leaving individuals that have already taken the migration or the chance to move to like the West Coast, where the cannabis industry was able to flourish a bit, and people were able to develop their skill sets, as you said, this is a billion-dollar industry that's continuing to grow and double year over year.

And as it moves east, there was a lack of resources for the general person to get into the industry.

So we saw that, and that's what we created.

We said, we knew that there was going to be a major brain gap and employment gap for employees, for employers that were moving their facilities and opening new facilities on the other side.

And we also knew at the same time, understanding that we always are going to show up as young Black men that have dealt directly in being, you know, myself personally, I have family members that have been affected by the war on drugs in itself directly that are still dealing with issues.

You know, my uncle can't go into an airport without getting pulled into the back room.

- Wow.

- We knew at the same time, we have to be focused on how do we go ahead and really look at the current education system, how even with all the money, the grants, all the endowments, that they still do a poor job of getting Black and Brown students through the system, through the educational system and higher education, and actually being successful.

So, we have a big, big focus on making sure that people of color, and specifically Black and Brown individuals, have access to this education so they can position themselves because our whole entire purpose is all about getting someone in the industry.

We've been looking at the fact that marijuana, the cannabis industry has great upward mobility.

And that's how we value it, is to say that where you are right now, because the industry is growing so fast, it's going to give you the opportunity to be a stakeholder, right, because we still don't have federal legalization.

So when things do go federal and our Black and Brown individuals and others start to position themselves in the industry right now, once that bell curve changes, you are now the person that has the knowledge.

You are the person with the historical work experience that you can now bring to that company, that organization, that school, that government entity, and actually go ahead and start to create wealth for yourself.

And that's what we're doing.

And we're continuing to making sure that we're doing with purpose with many different things like our scholarship that focuses on minorities, women, and equity in itself.

- That's amazing.

So, Tyrone, does the school focus on training for employment, or is it training for ownership or both?

,And how would someone engage or even enroll in the school?

- Yes, first, I'll just say if you want to enroll, check out our website, CSCEducation.com.

That CSC, the letters, education-dot-com.

OK, so it's both.

We're preparing people to get into the entry level positions with the hopes that they become owners, right?

So, as you learn information, you learn whether or not you can be a person who leads a particular industry, right, so we have students who graduated from our program and who are now owners of major distribution companies.

We also have people who graduated from that exact same program who are sitting on the front line of dispensaries.

So, you ask yourself, how can someone get the exact same education and then take a totally different trajectory?

For me, that's the history of education, period.

Someone takes something else from what you're creating and they apply it to themselves the way it fits.

And that's exactly what our education is designed to do.

You're going to learn what you need to know about the cannabis industry, and then you apply knowledge that you have coming in and see how it fits into where you want to go, in terms of the next steps of your life, of your journey.

- Yeah, I love the thought.

You know, being a pastor, people are like, "Are you going to have a problem with that?"

I'm like, "Absolutely not."

This is about economics.

Cannabis is a plant that comes from the earth, right?

And it's for the healing of the nations.

And there are, you know, healing remedies that come from cannabis.

A lot of people want to reject that.

You guys are really changing the narrative, though.

This is one of the things, you know, I'm super excited about just changing the narrative from us being consumers to being owners.

Right?

From us participating and spending our money to actually making money.

Many African-Americans are in prison right now in the justice system for nonviolent offenses, right, for multiple years, they come out with, you know, marks on their record that prohibit them from getting work.

What do you think, educating folks in the industry, how do you think it will break the stereotype and change the narrative?

- You know, that's exactly what it's all about, right?

We've been living in this world of cannabis, of miseducation and propaganda, right?

As you said, the biggest thing about cannabis is that it has strong medical properties, and it's providing people a better quality of life in a more of a holistic way of healing.

Now, when we think about the knowledge base, is the fact that especially in the Black community, being able to, you know, I was listening to Master P earlier driving, and he's talking about how we need to own product because we have $1 trillion buying market, right, when we think about the Black community.

And that's what it is.

Knowledge is power, right?

So, as Tyrone's talking about that, someone can come and say, "You know what?

I just want to get a job."

And what I've seen is that a lot of times, the cannabis industry, because it's so new, it's sparking that fire in someone to say, "You know what, I see a gap.

"I see that we could do this better.

"We can create something, a product, a service, "an ancillary business that can go ahead and enhance it and put us in a position to be owners."

You know, the owner mindset does not only arrive when you own a business and you're the name on that LLC or corporation.

The owner mindset starts the day that you decide to take a chance on yourself and start to be a lifelong learner, hold yourself accountable, get up every single day, fail forward, and keep pushing to try to go ahead and make the best, create something for yourself and your family.

That's an owner mentality.

You could work for someone and treat yourself like a business and value yourself and making sure that you're getting the best support, that you're pushing yourself to be the best business you possibly can be.

And that's what we're seeing the cannabis industry providing because there's so much opportunity.

Where we are right now, and I tell everybody, "Look at where you are right now.

"Look at the room that you're in right now.

"Look at the products and things that are made," right?

Levi's is starting to incorporate 30% of hemp within their cotton denim.

Levi's, Nike's starting to make hemp shoes, hemp-crete, concrete, roadways, drywall, the tables, paper.

Cannabis is going to create so many products and so many opportunities for people.

That's why education is key, because the biggest thing with opportunities are they're always happening and they're abundant, is that are you prepared for your opportunities?

And the only way to be prepared for opportunities is to be educated first.

So, you could actually take what's inside of you and your intangibles, and now put them on a product, a service, or the marketplace in itself.

- Yeah, that's amazing.

You know, back when we were slaves, you know, it was cotton was king, and there was this whole thing that came along with needing more slaves to come work the field.

But now, literally we're working a different kind of field and on the other side.

And it's exciting to see that you all had the vision and the foresight to launch out into an industry such as this to provide opportunities.

Tell me a little bit about your student body.

Tyrone, what are the demographics of the student body and who's taking advantage of these opportunities?

- Well, if we're looking at age, our student body ranges from 18 years old to 70 years old.

- Nice.

OK. - OK, so folks who have been in the cannabis industry a lot longer than that, we have are part of our student body.

Now, when we're looking at the gender demographics, most folks are identifying us as male in our courses.

And white, if we're looking at race, right?

So, there's still work to be done when we're looking at, you know, the folks who are coming in the doors to get educated.

And, yeah, it's still diverse, right?

So, if we were to break it down to percentages, we're still looking at about 15, 15 and 18% folks of color walking through our doors and taking advantage of our education.

But there's still work to be done.

But the demographics are probably the most diverse demographics you're going to see in an educational space due to the nature of the plant and what it's done for all of the communities in our country, even people who haven't talked about it, how cannabis has played a role in their lives.

You know, they're all walking through our doors.

- Right.

Is this a remote school?

If someone lives in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York and, you know, can they take classes online?

How would someone engage if they're in the state of Pennsylvania?

Is it just through the website?

- Yeah.

So, CSCEducation.com.

We have a full online program.

All of our class offerings are available online.

We're touching right now by 13 different states in a sense of our educational offerings.

And for us, you know, when we're talking about, you know, the Zoom life that we live in now, you know, post-Covid - or I should say during Covid, we were actually ahead of the game a bit, right, with this live instruction online teaching, because our content is so engaging in, as Tyrone said, there's people been in the industry that hasn't been able to talk about it out loud, right?

For so long that they're like, "Wow, we can talk about this "in a constructive and have some courageous conversation?"

- Right, right.

- About cannabis?

That our students yearn for interaction.

So, back into 2019 in October, Tyrone did some investigation, and we made a decision to say, you know what, let's go with live instruction learning and let's take this Zoom platform to do it because we still want to engage and we don't want to give everyone just a prerecorded version, because we know, again, the cannabis industry is new, so it changes every single day, right?

- Yeah.

- Where we were in 2019, compared to where we were at the end of this year, compared to five more states, and all of these laws moving forward, it's constantly evolving.

So, this gives us the ability to make sure that our students are getting the most up-to-date information, and they're prepared for the opportunity.

So yes, anyone in any state can take our offerings, and we'll be launching within the next few months a few more offerings for the consumer market.

We know that everybody doesn't have the time to commit 150 hours or 300 hours to the school.

But we know that there's plenty of opportunity where someone could take an hour program, a three-hour program.

But also, we really want our parents to start to get engaged.

And I'm speaking directly right now to our Black and Brown parents.

We understand that you were there.

You saw what the war on drugs did to our communities.

You saw what it did to our kids.

You know the pain.

We understand that.

The one thing that we cannot do is allow ourselves, now that the opportunity is here, is not to support our youth in their cannabis ventures.

We have to wake up and change our mindset.

And it will be, we will lose twice on cannabis if we do not support youth in their endeavors to want to get in this industry and making sure that education is at the forefront.

We know the pain, we understand it, and we need to change it.

And we need your support in this effort because you are our elders and we respect you, and we love you.

But we need your support in this race as we take advantage of this initiative.

- Well, thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to join us.

To Kevin, to Tyrone.

Thank you so much.

You guys are doing tremendous work, and I applaud you.

This is Black history being made right now.

There are many people in the Lehigh Valley doing courageous work to engage and enhance the lives of others.

And we would like to put them in the spotlight.

If you would like us to highlight the courageous work of someone in your community, let us know by going to PBS39.org/courageous.

We would love to hear your suggestions.

Viewers, make sure you stick around for Counter Culture with Grover Silcox.

His show is straight ahead.

I'm Pastor Phillip Davis.

On behalf of everyone here at PBS 39, thanks for watching.

Tune in Tuesday night at 6:30 right here on PBS 39.