Marcus Kar on Transformation (Reconciliation, Healing, Growth)

Achieving Transformation: Marcus Kar is a native of “North” Minneapolis, a predominantly African-descent (African-American) community struggling to overcome racism, poverty, and other forms of American-institutional abuse. Marcus is program director for Youth Farm, “a multi-faceted youth development organization growing food and young leaders, healthy bodies and minds, positive identity, neighborhood connections, community opportunities, and healthy relationships.” In this interview he shares garden-grown wisdoms on how and where to find healing and healthy-self. His insights are extensive (see Quotes, below). He is interviewed by friend, Rev. Louis Tillman and AllCreation exec. editor, Chris Searles, as part of our collection, Envisioning Transformation.

Learn More

• Youth Farm
• Marcus’s LinkedIN
• Marcus’s compelling music  

PROGRAM
0:00 Intro

2:45 Who are you?

   > about Youth Farm 

   > 4:00 about Marcus

   > 5:20 about working w kids 

   > 6:00 about redirecting energy and cultural identity

   > 7:30 about his homegrown Minneapolis Food Council 

   > 8:40 about his nature healing / nature wealth movement 

   > 10:00 on success & his vision

11:30 Does is take a village to raise a child?
   > 15:00 On separation and learned-behaviors

   > 15:50 “Nature is medicine... No one knows how to put the pieces back together... That’s what nature does“

   > 18:40 “I’ve been guided by powerful women“
   > 19:40 America’s worldview = Duality (duality is a divider)

   > 22:20 We have to find social balance.

   > 24:00 Comments on Bio-intelligence  

   > 28:35 “I want people to know…“ 

32:00 What is your message to the world?

   > 38:45 Coming together nonverbally, redirecting trauma, angst , pain and alienation

44:45 Wrap up

 

References

• “North“ = North Minneapolis 

 
Quotes

I’m an indigenous person. I’m a product of so many people.

What I try to tell people now is: I wish they would spend a little time with me when it comes to what they wanna see as far as change in their immediate environment, because I redirect energy...
  
No one is helping young people understand how to feel their feelings.       
 
I’m trying to create a movement around growing and I want people to use it as medicine. I wanna share what I gained from nature with my entire environment. 
  
One of the elders told me, “If you don’t move your physical, you lose your spiritual.”

Nature is medicine.

There’s a very thin line between a plant and a human being.

Everything we want for ourselves and we want to know about bettering this world, bettering our environment, you can find in the bio-ecosystem. We need to be a part of it, not necessarily be in control of it. You can’t control her.   

I tend to never be married to any one idea or approach. I’m not trying to sustain any of these (institutional) systems. I’m really trying to figure a way for us to be able to listen to each other and self-correct, in order to provide the kind of environment we need to thrive.

This idea of “intergenerational processes”: it keeps the Old young, and the Young wise.

It’s very hard for people who’ve never dealt with any kind of adversity or any issues with the police to understand, but a kid who got his arm broke by a cop will live his whole life feeling that phantom pain. We need to recognize how we can extract it: by holding him; telling him he’s ok; telling him how to avoid those things; and telling him where his power is or her power is…   

Instead of listening to people, you wanna write policy...

The new revolution has nothing to do with control or division. It has a lot to do with addition and it has a lot to do with balance. 

Seeing this stuff is traumatizing. . . Man, if you coul