School systems can be beautiful but complex ecosystems.
There are the individual schools themselves, and they're
interconnected layers of grade levels, classrooms,
administrators, teachers, staff, and of course all of the
individual students. Zoom up a layer and managing the
schools. Are the school districts the
umbrellas over multiple schools in a municipality making
decisions, establishing practice?
And of course, every individual school exists within the context
of its city, of all the people and systems, the history and the
power structures of that particular place.
And if we zoom out one last time, governing the districts in
each of those cities are the states setting policies.
These folks are often at a distance from, and sometimes
even in opposition to the students and communities on the
ground, but these policies shape the entire experience of those
students and their families. As a parent or a community
member with the concern or an idea, these school systems can
feel overwhelming to engage with.
So how do you get involved? A big part of it was I'd gone
through all of these years of parents and educators, folks
saying it's a challenge to get involved in advocacy.
And so it really was about what are those obstacles?
That's Cardell Oren, and he is highly practiced at sussing out
the obstacles. He works in education policy and
advocacy now, but for years before that, Cardell was a chief
information officer, strategizing and engineering
large scale IT systems. And as a programmer, you know,
you always confront bugs in the system and you figure out, OK,
here's a bug. I got to figure out whether I'm
going to be able to program around a program through it, fix
it, fix the algorithm, whatever it is.
And bugs generally happen to be people and departments and
systems in the work that I do now, but it's the same process.
Now, Cardell is the executive director of Stand for Children
Tennessee, an education advocacy organization that brings parents
and community members together with policy and decision makers
to develop solutions to the ever expanding web of challenges
facing school age students. Welcome to Path Breakers, a show
about what it takes to cut through the noise and the red
tape and all of the other obstacles to progress.
I'm Tracy Pearson and I work on the communications team at the
Kresge Foundation. I'm Jamie Bennett.
I work at the intersection of arts, culture, and equitable
community development. On each episode of this show, we
talk with a different path breaker who's forging new ways
forward in their community. Today, we welcome Cardell Oren
to get into how connecting the dots helps build capacity and
how empowering parents as advocates can better address the
web of systemic issues affecting our young people in their
schools and communities. Hello, Cardell.
Thank you for joining us. To start off, could you please
just introduce to our listeners Stanford Children Tennessee?
So stay and is the organization that is, you know, our mission
is to be a unique catalyst for educational success and social
progress to create a brighter future for us all.
That's our official kind of by the book.
And what that means is our job is to work towards organizing
advocacy that brings together people from our community with
decision makers to build solutions around creating
impact. And we do a lot of that through
coalition and partnership work, through working directly with
people to make change and create differences and and
opportunities, especially in the areas of education and justice.
I want to talk to you just about some of your background and how
you you landed at Stand and I think that you have a very
interesting journey. So the first question I have for
you is tell me about Memphis as you experience it.
You know, a lot of people come to Memphis and they say, you
know, this is a is a unique place and I've been a lot of
places and there are challenges here.
And so growing up in Memphis, my mom was very active and so we
went to school board meetings and, you know, she dragged us
along there and to events in the community and all over.
And I, I guess you experience it in one way, especially without a
lot of resources and having to walk a lot of places or take the
bus or, you know, try to get places or, you know, after
school at the library and things like that.
And so, you know, you experience it in one way.
And I went away to high school and then college and, and coming
back. And as an adult, you experience
it, you know, in a way of, OK, well, what is, is this place and
what made it this way? And so when I moved back to to
work in, in IT at a local Black college, you know, part of the
challenge was there's, there's a majority Black city and county
and there's a lot of challenges here.
And there's, you know, leadership that is
representative of the population, majority black
leadership. And so why do we still have a
lot of the challenges that we still have?
And so, you know, for me, it's been a journey of understanding
what's the history, what's the past, what are the things that
got us here? And so as I experience it is how
does this place persist in a lot of ways in terms of the status
quo that that that that gets developed.
I talk about a lot of times about plantation politics in
terms of the challenges that are created here.
And so, you know, those are some of the ways I experience it.
And then in at the same time, it's such a wonderful place
that's steeped in culture and music and history.
And there's so much impacts both regionally and nationally that
comes from that came from Memphis, that still comes from
Memphis. And it's, it's really like if
you can change places, change the things that things that are
happening here, that that's a model for the rest of the
country and that is, is something that has been in the
past and that I hope to be in the future.
Kudos to your mother for doing the things necessary to make you
an individual who questions why things are the way that they
are. I think sometimes people can
move through cities and just see the end result of certain
systemic issues and they don't pause to think, well, why do you
think it is the way that it is? You know, and I think that as a
parent, as a mother, as someone who who's in contact with young
people, that is a vital role to ensure that they are able to ask
the question of why is that thing the way that you see it is
today? So kudos to her.
Big ups to your Mama for that. You know, I call her, I call
myself a cynical optimist. I call her idealist because
she's been fighting for, you know, 60-70 years in terms of
making change when, you know, she was a young student at the
University of Michigan and fighting against apartheid and
moved on from there in terms of civil and human rights.
And then when she came to Memphis, fighting for parent
rights. And so that really created, you
know, the base where that wasn't necessarily what I wanted to do
because I was like, OK, we get dragged around.
I don't want to do this, but you know, he planted it in me and my
sisters and that is the work that we ended up doing.
And so, you know, that is by where it was.
It was a modeling of things or not as they should be.
And we can create that change. And it astounds me every day
that she still continues to work alongside, you know, the work
that we do and, and be a volunteer with us even in in
what we push for that she can still believe that, you know,
that things should be different and we should keep pushing to
make them that way. And Cardell, when you're, you
know, as a cynical optimist, there's a lot that's going right
in Memphis right now. I've spent a little bit of time
with Mayor Young. I know some folks are doing
really good work there in Memphis.
You know, Rachel Knox over at the found at the Hyde Foundation
and DeMarcus Suggs, who just joined the mayor's staff and
NASA Troutman. There's a lot going right in
Memphis, but it's still a place where there's a lot of stuff
that's bad. The police, the recent fires,
the, you know, all of that sort of stuff.
Where are you on the sort of cynicism, optimism.
You know, where where? How's your meter tipping these
days? I probably tend to be more
cynical. That's why it comes first
because I think that a lot of times we have a lot of the right
people and positions and then the challenges in can you
connect the dots? Will we be honest with each
other? Will we be transparent?
And can we, you know, from a, the sense of, you know, no
permanent friends, permanent enemies, only permanent
interests. Then we have enough permanent
interests to be able to work together towards an end, even if
it's not on everything, on a few things.
And I think that the challenges that we face have been faced for
decades and the choices that we've made.
And a lot of times part of the challenge of of confronting
issues is that status quo presents things as a fait
accompli in terms of, you know, these aren't even choices.
And so part of our challenges advocates is to show that these
are choices, that every day, every year, we are making
decisions that actually are choices, not the way that things
have to be. And so I think that, you know,
there are a lot of great people doing great work.
And I think that part of the challenge is, as I think about
it, being honest about it, being willing to confront the
challenges, being both innovative and courageous in
terms of how we do things that may be different than we did
them before. And being able to, you know, a
lot of what we try to do is connect the dots.
Because a lot of times there are things that, you know, that just
don't make sense that nobody has raised a question about or
nobody has said, well, this person is doing this over here
and this over here. How do we bring those things
together so that, you know, now the pieces are connected,
whether it's to create a path for things to, to move more
smoothly, or whether it's to make sure that there's not
duplication happening and that, you know, resources and capacity
are focused so inefficient. And so that those are the things
that that we tend to see. But you know, my, my meter still
tends towards, I think cynical that, you know, we can pull
those things together, but that's where we fight every day
to try to do. Yeah.
And Stanford Children, I mean, you said connect the dots a
couple of times and Stanford Children is a connect the dots
kind of organization. And one I think from from what I
know that very much is focused on that sort of permanent
values, not permanent friends, not permanent enemies, but
working with folks to connect the dots.
Tell us just a little bit about the work that Stanford Children
is active doing right now. Yeah.
So you know, our, our past and I've, I've been at Stan now
about 11 years. And so we've gone through a
whole cycle. And of course, we're a national
organization. And so for us in in Tennessee,
we've gone through cycles of early years where our focus was
around parent organizing and engaging with parents, building
teams and, you know, working with them and advocating.
And then a few years ago, we started what I call what we
called Momentum Memphis and expanded that out.
So now let's work with parents, but also educators and community
members and people who are just interested in education.
And then as we expanded that out, also started thinking
about, well, how do we connect with other organizations?
So it's not just about us turning our people with our
T-shirts on and showing that Stan can do things, but it's
about the collective, you know, and collaborative action that we
can take together. So, you know, as a unique
catalyst, are there opportunities to bring those
things together so we can be more efficient and effective in
the work that we do together so that everybody can be, you know,
more successful and impactful? So I tell that story just to say
that, you know, we got here in hopefully an intentional way in
terms of where we are now, which is working a lot towards
specific efforts around education issues.
So we focus around early literacy, high school success
work and trying to push those issues forward both the district
and at the state level. But then also getting involved
in youth justice and justice work has been something that
we've expanded into both locally and that national then expanded
into as well. So that our work in those areas
also includes focusing around specific policy.
So you mentioned the mayor and the challenges with the
policing. And so a DODOJ report that in
patterns and practice findings that have recommendations along
with them that now, you know, the Trump DOJ office has said
will not just not do anything about it, but we will actually
try to retract. There were findings to show you,
to tell you that what you see and what we was confirmed by the
Department of Justice is not really what you saw.
And so our focus is around how do we get to ensure
accountability around the DOJ findings and the recommendations
because we saw them. We've been seeing those issues
for decades, if not centuries in terms of policing in Memphis and
Shelby County. And so how do we have an impact
on that and start to settle into what that work looks like?
We also do electoral work in the work that we do.
So we help to elect a new DA and do the juvenile court judge.
So how do we both work with them and partner to make sure that
they can get the work done they got elected on to do and how do
we hold them accountable as well?
Again, no permanent friends, permanent enemies.
We have permanent interest in terms of how do we move the ball
down the field and then also building coalition.
So, you know, we we facilitate and help to form the Justice and
Safety Alliance, which is bringing together organizations
around a new vision of safety for our community and what that
looks like and the policies around that.
And the Moral Budget Coalition, which is about, you know, we
have a lot of organizations, again, looking across the
pantheon of, of work that, you know, multiple partners do in
education and transit and affordable housing.
And we keep asking for more resources and investment and
everybody keeps losing because, you know, we don't want to make
the investments, we don't want to create new revenue.
So we brought everybody together with a Moral Budget Coalition to
say, you know, this is really a decision.
Again, going back to those choices.
We have to make different decisions if we want different
results for our community. So how do we work together to
emphasize to the decision makers that these are things that we
have to do? And then across the state, I
would say, you know, some of the work that we do is around
bringing together organizations and a network to to focus around
youth justice. And you know, what work is
happening at the state legislature.
And sometimes how we, you know, can work together to mitigate
some of the harmful things happening, to stop some of the
harmful things, and to also push proactive solutions for what we
want to see for our young people here and across the state.
Awesome. I I want to sort of talk more
about the moral budget. When you say moral budget, what,
what are what? What does a moral budget look
like? That's a great question.
We didn't want it to just be have a moral budget and go do
something that's that's better and here are the values.
So what we did was looked around and said, everybody has asks
these different groups. So 111 partner is asking for
more in public transit and one partner is asking for more in
affordable housing and education and pre-K.
And so we looked around at the work that was already happening
in advocacy and said, how do we pull this together?
Let's pull together what we see as a moral budget based on the
investments that we want to see in our community.
And so you can go to to to our website and and see that a moral
budget looks like here's the specific investment.
We want $10 million in affordable housing investment.
We want $2,000,000 in pre-K to get to pre-K for all.
Here's what it looks like for education.
We want I think $10 million in violence intervention.
And so here is what we need for public safety and looking at it
in a different way and how we actually intervene and prevent,
not just focus on continuing to increase the police budget,
broadening out the idea what safety is.
The safety is not just about safety from violence or crime,
but it's also about food security and housing security
and the, the security of people because we know that safe and
secure people will commit less crime that they will, they will
have more opportunities. And again, going back to choices
to, to, to make different choices to be thriving people.
So it's not just about crime, It's about all the manner of
violence that that happens in our communities and how we look
at it with a a more holistic view.
And so for us, a moral budget covers those various areas of
what are the things that we think if we move back from a
more kind of trickle down approach of so let's incentivize
businesses to come to town or let's get businesses to come to
town in that case. And then we'll get property tax
increases, we'll get revenue increases and then we can make
investments and then our our community will grow.
That hasn't worked for decades. So our view is here are the
investments that we need to make to progress that will build both
local businesses and attract national businesses.
So it is economic development friendly.
And so for that we need public transit infrastructure, we need
affordable housing where we have one of the highest rates of need
in terms of affordable housing across the country.
We need investments in education.
We have one of the highest rates of opportunity youth around the
country. So we need to make sure that you
young people are connected. So there is an opportunity fund
in the moral budget around opportunity youth workforce
development. So here are the things that we
know. If we make investments in these
things, we will both impact the the security of of people and
the support for people. So that's a base of the moral
budget. But we also know that the impact
of that will be lower crime, safer communities, economic
development, the development of small and medium sized
businesses, which is where business actually grows and
economies grow. And so we feel like this is not
just, you know, a moral budget. This is the the most sensible
way to to grow and progress our our economy and our community.
And in regard to it in relationship to not just across
Tennessee, but as we compare with peer cities I.
Love it. And Cardell, I've spent some
time on that nine O 1 moral budget.org and we'll make sure
to put the web address in the show notes.
But I love that the sort of reminder that a budget
fundamentally isn't a financial document.
It's a statement of priorities. And so you can tell a lot about
a community by what they're willing to spend money on.
I know Tracy and I wanted to shift a little bit to another
topic, which is the state of Tennessee has some opinions
about Memphis and Shelby County School District.
Will you talk with us a little bit about sort of what what is
happening there and then we'll get into sort of what what you
all are doing about it? Yeah.
So, you know, at at the state, there's an intensive focus a lot
of times on what's happening in Memphis and Shelby County to
create a rationale for creating state policy that will have a
broader impact. And a lot of that is a round of
view of. Of Memphis and Shelby County
being a high crime area, being an area where people just
aren't, don't have value to some degree, where there's no
education, where there are challenges that are happening
and, and it gets modeled a lot of times in terms of this is
unique to Memphis and Shelby County.
And what we know, what the data tells us is that this is not
unique to Memphis and Shelby County, that in urban areas,
there are similar urban challenges.
And in across the state, if we look at rural areas as well,
there's similar challenges in, in terms of, of how education is
being purveyed. We've seen some increases across
Tennessee in that area, but certainly not enough that we
should be proud and, and having a focus on Memphis and Shelby
County. So I think when the state takes
a look at us, they see, well, there's this, this tiny dot at
the other side of the state on the western edge that is
majority black, that is majority Democrat, that we can do
whatever we want to and, and we can assert our power and
authority over to create what we think it should be.
There's a, a, a senator who represents a, a suburban area
here who says that he's on a mission to make Memphis matter.
And so part of what we've said is you don't have to make
Memphis matter. Memphis matters, you know, we
matter already and we know the things that we want.
So when we say that, you know, as a city, we want to stop
pretextual stops so that we can, you know, intervene in
disparities that are happening with Black residents in our
community from policing, that that's what we want to do.
And this is the state came in and overturned that and said,
well, you can't intervene in pretextual stops and do that.
And so we will overturn that. And you can't have this type of
revenue or you can't have this type of, of, of local decision
making. And so there's been a a view
from the state that we have to show those people over there
what is needed to be done and a lack of recognition and support
for local autonomy and local power, which is something that,
you know, it seems like folks would be united in in wanting to
have. And that's not necessarily the
way that it happens. Yeah.
And my understanding, Cordell, is that the state was proposing
that they would put together a management group or something
that could actually override the local school board and, you
know, could change things about charter school decisions and
budgets and and all sorts of stuff.
But that's actually on hold at the moment.
Is that correct? Yes.
So, yeah. So getting there.
How did how did that happen? Why is it on hold?
How did that? Happen.
Yeah, so more specifically is so we had some challenges here and
you know, we had a Superintendent who was
terminated and yeah, a little messy between the school board
and the community and there were challenges, but those are things
that happened, you know, school system hadn't terminated
Superintendent and I don't know if it ever had.
And so it's a challenge of how a community comes together to
recognize and understand these challenges that have to happen
in the public eye and the decision making that has to
happen from the people that we elect.
And so those are things that should be, you know, kind of
recognized and that get get handled by the power of
elections in a lot of ways. But the state looked over and
said, oh, this is another opportunity because they've
tried it, you know, for multiple years, if not decade.
I mean, again, going back to decades now to say that what we
should have control over what education looks like in Memphis
and Shelby County. And so previously they had tried
that with a 10 year experiment, the achievement school district
that was meant to increase education.
And of course, you know, didn't wasn't successful in doing that
as the achievement school district.
And they looked at this opportunity again to say, well,
there's opportunity here to use this.
And they, you know, it shifted over time about the rationale
and the reason they were doing it.
And so and some of the legislators admitted what we've
been wanting to do this for years.
And now, you know, we just can't not do anything again because
the majority of money, again, the majority of population of
students is in Memphis and Shelby County.
And so that's why the majority of money is here.
And you know, Tennessee is on the lower end of states across
the country in education funding.
And so, you know, as they utilize kind of the excuses of,
well, here's where the most the majority of funding is going.
And so we should, as a state legislature and a state
administration, we should be uniquely looking at what happens
in that district. Whereas, you know, the
challenges that they tried to bring up of education applied to
multiple districts across the state in terms of the
challenges. But the focus of this, you know,
so-called solution was focused clearly around Shelby County.
And So what they wanted to do was to on the on one side, it
was supposed to be modeled around kind of the Houston
school takeover of having a board of managers and being able
to make have authority over the school board, elected school
board in terms of spending, in terms of decisions that were
happening. And in addition to that, the
ability to, to be able to take schools and turn them into, into
charter schools, the ability to expand vouchers extensively more
than they, they are in other places across the state.
And so those were some of the opportunity and to be able to
have access and control over the facilities.
So in a lot of ways, there's a concern that, you know, the, the
control that that folks want is over a budget that's, you know,
between, you know, 1.5 to $2 billion, depending on the time
and federal dollars over facilities that are across the
community and clear infrastructure and, you know,
land that, that could be valuable and control of, of
where students are, are going. And, and what the access to that
to, to education looks like. Not focused on actual solutions
that might be around investments we could make in early literacy
or high school success or middle school math and, and, you know,
social and emotional learning. You know, the things that, that
we're clear on here are the investments that actually
matter. It was focused on, let's take
control. Let's take it away from the
elected school board. Let's stop them from making
decisions and let's have people who are appointed not by local
folks, but even local people who are appointed by the state.
So then all the, the, the people who would be appointed are
decided on by the state. So you know, where the clear
level of accountability and kind of connection rests is not with
the people who are local, but with the state.
And So what we did as a community was, came together and
said, hey, this is not what we want.
So we started a, a, a group coalition with business
partners, community partners, educators across the board, save
our students, save our schools SOS.
And we pushed back and said this is not what our community wants.
And so, you know, it got caught up at the end.
It actually did pass the House and the Senate.
It got caught up in committee. And so that's where to your
point, Jamie, where you got stalled.
And so we stopped it for a year. And now and then what they, what
they also did was, was say, well, you know, because in a lot
of ways we can't create rationale around why we're just
doing this to Shelby County. So let's do a forensic audit.
So let's put $6 million into the state budget to do a forensic
audit, which is similar to what they did with TSU, Tennessee
State University, where they then use the, the audit to come
in and take over and appoint a new board and have control.
Where just recently it was announced that this massive $2
billion that the state owed TSU was now going to be settled for
at I think a pittance, you know, 1% of that in terms of that of,
of, of what was owed to this historically black university in
our, in our state. And so they'll do this forensic
audit, they say over the next 9 to 18 months and you know, then
we'll make decisions and kind of create legislation around what
what happens. They've also said, well, we'll
have a rollout of information as we go.
So what we expect is that coming back in the legislative session
next year is that there will be something that they find and
that they utilize is another rationale for why they need to
take over and, and have control where again, it's utilizing
communications and what the public understands it doesn't to
try to justify it. So, you know, it's a billion, $2
billion budget. You find a difference of
$1,000,000 or $3,000,000. That sounds like a lot, but in
the grand scheme of things, it's, you know, it's all
relative. And and they won't make that
comparison. They'll throw out some number
and then say, see, we told you. This is why we need to take
control with no clarity on you know why that will be impactful
or supportive of the children and educators in Shelby County.
Tracy, I know you're sitting in Detroit.
I can't imagine you're having any feelings about a state
takeover of local control. Yes, Carter, I don't know if I
told you I'm here in Detroit and I attended graduated from
Detroit Public School. So I'm very familiar with the
concept of a state takeover and someone from outside of your
community coming in and saying this is how we're going to do
things and the residue that is left from that process, which is
just absolutely terrible. I want to ask you as someone who
now has a student in the Detroit public school system, I'm a
parent, but it's like, how do I get involved when when I see
that sort of thing happening? How do you get parents involved
in coalition building and being more active in the things that
are happening in their communities?
Great. Yeah, I think that's that's a
great question. That's really the foundation of
where we started at staying for children.
I came in doing parent organizing as I've talked about,
you know, we've expanded that out some, but not never lost
that grain of our core is, is organizing how we get voices
involved. Now, people might not always
know the ends and outs of it or what happens or the role of the
school board versus the county Commission versus the state
legislators, the the, you know, commissioner of education, State
Board of Education, all of these different places.
So part of our job is to try to clarify and pull folks in and
give them information. So when I talk to parents, it's
will come out to a meeting. So monthly we hold a meeting of
our Momentum Memphis and that is really kind of the foundational
entry point. So no matter what you care
about, you can come to that meeting and you can start to get
engaged with folks around the table who are already working on
advocacy efforts. And then we also encourage folks
to go to school board meetings or county commissioner, just
pull them up now online and watch and see what's happening
to really get engaged and pull that process US.
And and as always, you know, a really great starting point even
where we started is getting involved in your school.
So for parents getting involved in their schools, I was talking
to a parent recently who was talking about building up more
of their parent teacher organization.
And as they got more involved at the school level at really
trying to hold the school and the leader accountable of what's
the role, what's our voice as parents?
What do we get to decide on? What do we get to have input on?
There was some challenges in that and they had a back and
forth and, you know, challenge over the leadership of the the
PTO. And so all of those things come
to play. But that's part of of the
engagement and part of building up yourself through that process
as you go through the school and what matters to your child, as
you mentioned, and then expand out to what matters to the
children in your child's classroom, in your child's
school, and then across the whole district is our hope that,
you know, that's how people progress and get involved over
time. And how do we remove the
barriers and obstacles? So one of the obstacles is I
don't know enough. So we started having information
sessions. And another obstacle is who else
do I work with or how do I get this information?
You know, so we started the Momentum Memphis Task Force
meetings to coach people through the process and know how to get
involved in the advocacy and meeting with school board
members and meeting with commissioners.
So really it's it's our job as advocates and as folks who want
people to be involved as organizers to try to figure out
what are those obstacles and how do we break it, break them down,
because generally the systems are not set up to encourage
engagement from the public. So Cardell, when you know,
getting ready for this, I, I was sort of reading about your work
and then I went to your bio and I expected that, you know, you'd
be a political science major, have done community organizing.
But I see like engineering and IT stuff like how do you sort of
walk out of Upenn with your engineering IT degree and end up
doing parent organizing and public policy in in the
Tennessee schools? Yeah, it's a little bit of a
roundabout where I'll give you the short version, which is
really, you know, when I left, I was a programmer and when I when
I left school, I was a programmer consultant.
And then when I moved back to Memphis, I moved back to
Memphis, making the opportunity and being young at a young age,
I was given an opportunity to run the department and be the
chief information officer at Lemoyne on College HBCU here in
Memphis. And that's what really brought
me home, brought me back to Memphis.
And then when I left there, I was interested in consulting.
So I started getting involved in consulting, which went from IT,
but then expanded to strategic plan and community development,
working with a lot of community nonprofits and government
agencies. And at the same time, me and
some friends just decided, hey, we want to impact our community.
We want to get younger people involved.
So let's start a political action committee.
We had no idea what we're doing. We just knew, hey, we want to
get involved in politics. We need more young voices.
We need more folks who are engaged and and thoughtful about
the way that we conduct leadership here across the
board. And so we started a political
action committee, a pack called New Path.
And that's what really brought those pieces together, like the
nonprofit social component, the, the political side.
And then that kind of, you know, led me on a path to, to, to
stand for children. And because it, it was able to
bring those pieces together, both the policy organizing human
component along with the electoral and we get involved in
elections and, and that's a, a, a real benefit to bring to the
table. But the way that I kind of
reconcile those is it really is about, you know, from an
engineering perspective about systems and the systems, whether
they're, you know, technical systems, whether it's putting
together a program, it's about what's the end result that we
want and what are the steps that we go through to get there?
What's the system that we want to see?
And when people throw our obstacles in our way, how can we
be consistent, persistent and diligent about confronting those
obstacles and figuring out if there's a way through around in
partnership, what is that? And then from an advocacy
standpoint, we're shooting for a goal and impact, and either we
get there and we win or we lose and we circle back and decide is
there a path to winning? No.
Then let's go figure out something that is just as
impactful and figure out how we get there.
If there's a path to winning and it's just obstacles in our way,
how do we one by one knock down those obstacles to trying to get
to a goal? I love that and I'm also, I'm
thinking about all the nonprofits that I'd like to sort
of turn off and turn back on to see if that fixes all their,
yeah, blow on their floppy disks and see if we just get the dots
off. Tracy, I'll explain to you after
the podcast what a floppy disk is.
I don't. Know what a floppy disk is?
I know what that is. You put it in the little hole,
and when you had the towers, I got it.
I got it. You had little metal.
Cheese on it. Well, we still have our
lightning round that I want to do, Jamie and I'll go back and
forth and we want to just hear the first thing that sort of
pops into your mind with these questions.
OK, all right, that sounds dangerous, but let's do it.
So the the first really difficult one is do you have a
favorite TV show or movie about public schools?
Oh wow, you know the first one that popped into my head was
what's the one with James Edward?
Almost. Is that a standard that's not
stand and deliver? Oh yeah, stand and deliver.
That's a classic. I don't know if that's my
favorite, but yeah, that's the first one that popped in my
head. OK well Memphis is known for BBQ
but we understand you're a vegan so no smoked brisket for you.
But wondering if you have a favorite Memphis BBQ spot or one
you refer people to? Yes, Cozy Corner.
I can't eat much there. I can eat the fries, but if I'm
sending anybody anywhere, the people I trust tell me Cozy
Corner is the place to go. So we've got to get Cozy Corner
to buy some jackfruit. Right.
If you had to write a memoir today, what would you title it?
Oh, I don't know. I go back to what I said
earlier. Probably cynical optimist.
Oh, I like that, yeah. When out of Towners come to
visit Memphis, they'll hit Cozy Corner, but where else do you
know that you have to take them? Oh.
I think the Civil Rights Museum stacks going over to to
Soulsville, there's the Memphis Slim Collaboratory.
I mean, it's just so much history here.
But we've also got, you know, great green spaces and parks.
You mentioned your daughter, what's the best part about being
a girl down? The mirror maybe put in your
face. What gives you hope?
We facilitate and support the Youth Justice Action Coalition,
which is justice involved youth that interested youth who are
focused on advocacy. But the work that they've done
over time and the engagement, the challenges that they go
through, and they're still willing to talk about the things
that they want to see in our community and can believe that
there's better. And the the idealism that my mom
continues to have after 50-60 years of being an advocate and
activist, that it's just amazing to to see that she can think the
world can steal and should be different than what we confront
every day. Your mom and your daughter.
I love that. So if I picked up your iPhone,
what's the last song you listened to?
Yeah, it's probably hip hop something Royce, the 59, Eminem.
Detroit. Yeah.
I'm like, did he say that? Because I said that from
Detroit. Are you really listening to
breaks? All right, last one, who's a
path breaker in your life? I mean, my family and I, I was
remiss. I should mention my wife as I
talk about who inspires me in terms of being better and being
hopeful that I could be better because she's stuck with me for
a long time and helping you to be better.
I think, you know, those are the path Breakers I think of.
I mean, my mom again, as she, you know, went through and
challenged her family and challenged, you know, systems.
My father, even as he was kind of beat down by systems and
ended up being abused by them, that he could take the time to,
you know, be a forthright proponent in his early years of
getting a, you know, helping children to walk out to get our
first black members on the school board, the crew I have
around me. So I'm I'm lucky to have a
strong community. Cardell, thank you so much for
taking the time today. Thank you so much for sharing a
little bit about the work of Stanford Children.
Tennessee, I know you're leaning a little more heavily on the
cynical than the optimist, but I'm leaving with hope.
I'm leaving with a smile. And if we have more women like
your mom, your wife and your daughter, I think we're going to
be OK. I think the kids are going to be
all right. Thanks so much for taking the
time. Today, Thank you, Cardell.
Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. Cardell Oren is the executive
director of Stanford Children Tennessee.
We've put links to STAND and the Moral Budget Coalition in our
show notes. Path Breakers is produced by the
Kresge Foundation, which was founded in 1924 with a mission
to promote human progress. Today, Kresge works to expand
equity and opportunity in America's cities.
Read the stories of all of this season's Path Breakers and learn
about our grant making and social investing work in
Detroit, Memphis, New Orleans, Fresno, and cities across the US
at kresge.org. To hear more stories from the
Path Breakers, be sure to subscribe to the show wherever
you listen to podcasts. Our producers are Juliet Hindley
and Zach Rosen. Managing editor is Krista
Yankee. Our show art is by Rochelle
Baker and Creative direction by Alejandro Herrera.
Special thank you to my colleagues on the American
Cities program for lifting up Cardell and speaking his name as
a truly phenomenal path breaker. We'll talk to you all next week.