Building Social Capital with Amir Whitaker

Amir Whitaker:

My name is Amir Whitaker. I’m the founder and executive director of a nonprofit called Project Knucklehead.

Julie Lacouture:

Amir, thank you so much for being here. You are the executive director and founder of a small nonprofit right now, but you also have a full-time job in the nonprofit space.

Amir Whitaker:

Yes. I’ve been working in a nonprofit sector my entire adult life, and I currently worked for the ACLU of Southern California as a human rights lawyer. And before this, one of the nonprofits I worked for was Mental Health America of California, of Los Angeles, which is the largest mental health nonprofit in the state of California, so I am very familiar with the inner workings of a nonprofit organization, even though Project Knucklehead is a tiny nonprofit compared to both of these nonprofits.

Julie Lacouture:

Tell us about Project Knucklehead and why you started it?

Amir Whitaker:

I started Project Knucklehead 13 years ago in about 2011 while in Miami. At the time I was in law school and I was working inside the juvenile courthouse and encountering lots of young people, lots of students and youths who didn’t really have a lot of options. And I would literally see parents crying and pleading with the judge saying their child doesn’t necessarily need a cage or incarceration, but maybe if they had some support, some mentoring, some other things to help them develop their personality and social-emotional stuff that maybe they wouldn’t be there in the first place. So after hearing that long enough, I eventually reached out to one of the court-ordered facilities to see if we could partner with them to provide what they call programming or opportunities for the students, for the incarcerated folks.

And it started with just me going there once a week while I was still in law school. I started gathering some of my musician friends and others, and we would bring our instruments and different things, and the facility eventually saw us bringing all this equipment and then said, Hey, would you all like a space here? Instead of bringing the drum sets and guitars and different things every time, and we happily accepted. And then that became the beginning of what would be the first music classroom and studio in this facility for the young people.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s great. You started it when you’re in law school and law school is notoriously breezy, right?

Amir Whitaker:

Oh, definitely one of the most difficult times of my life academically. But that goes to show the urge really can’t be suppressed. If you’re called to do something and you see a gap, you’re going to fill it one way or another.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s amazing, so it’s always been something that you’re doing when you’re incredibly busy.

Amir Whitaker:

Yeah. And actually even before law school, my dissertation, my doctoral dissertation that I did in California at USC actually looked at what a nonprofit could look like to support the vulnerable youth, so it’s like I did a 300-page research paper on it for two years, and then some of that informed Project Knucklehead.

Julie Lacouture:

Where do these 300 pages sit right now?

Amir Whitaker:

Yeah, so right now it’s in the USC, University of Southern California’s Digital Library. But pretty much if you Google Amir Whitaker dissertation, you’ll find it, but it’s also linked on Projectknucklehead.org. When you go to my CV, you’ll see it linked there as well. But in this research dissertation, I looked at a group of students who were most likely to end up incarcerated and most likely to drop out of school, so looking at black boys in special education, at the time, only 25% of them actually graduated, and about 20% of them, I’m sorry, about 80% of them ended up incarcerated. So we wanted to see what could help those students. And I know I myself was actually one of those students. That’s where my interest came in serving that population. And so I did a deep dive in the research and it all pointed to the need to start programs and initiatives that would provide the students with other opportunities. And we noticed that 25% of students that did graduate and go on to college or didn’t end up incarcerated, that’s what they had. They had these supports and these alternative ways to explore themselves.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s great. Now, where did the name come from?

Amir Whitaker:

Project Knucklehead. We find knucklehead is a word that crosses generations, crosses races, and I think everyone has a knucklehead phase or a knucklehead era of their life, usually reserved for their adolescence. But some of us might go into adulthood a little bit, but a knucklehead, I mean, it goes back to even before the Three Stooges, you would hear them call each other knuckleheads, but you think of a knuckle or that hard part, that bony part of your fist, and we think of a knucklehead, someone who’s hardheaded and things might not get through the first time. And we noticed that a lot of the youth we were working with, and I myself ended up incarcerated.

Sometimes it’s because either we’re learning hard lessons or we don’t have the support in different things that would allow us to stay out of trouble or creative outlets. But I say with Project Knucklehead, we’re trying to inspire hardheaded hope. So we’re taking youth that may be viewed as resistance, and we are trying to make them resilient and show that you can have that attitude, but just apply it to being resilient and not having any doubts or any reservations prevent you from getting to your goal.

Julie Lacouture:

And I could see it working both ways too, to say, just because someone has a knucklehead phase, which to your point, we all do, we don’t hold that against you for the rest of your life.

Amir Whitaker:

Exactly. So to show that some of our students need that extra support and everyone needs that grace and that forgiveness to live beyond their worst mistakes as an adolescent.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah, absolutely. Started in Miami, but that is not where the program is now. So tell us a little bit about where and how many students and what you’re working with now?

Amir Whitaker:

So even while I was at Miami, when I started it, I had previously worked in California and like I said, did my research there. So as soon as I started it in Miami and I traveled back to California, I had lots of interested programs, specifically some afterschool programs in South LA were asking if we could provide some similar programming and opportunities for the students there. And our first big event that we hosted in Miami, it’s called a Big Summit Dreams into Goals Summit, where we brought over eight schools and juvenile programs to the university for a youth summit that was like a intervention. Our partners in California asked if we could do that there too. So in 2012, we started that there in Los Angeles, and we started a partnership with USC and some other schools, and it evolved into an afterschool program. So our first afterschool program and more directly in the school started in Los Angeles in 2012.

Julie Lacouture:

All right. And so what’s the shape of the program here in Los Angeles?

Amir Whitaker:

Sure, so today we still work with schools. We do programming with the county, LA County, the Department of Mental Health, also with the Arts for Healing and Justice Network. We work in schools and parks in different places, but now we do a lot more community programming. So we have free community programming, whether that’s healing drums, arts and other opportunities. We do it every last Sunday of the month in Leimert Park in South Central Los Angeles. But every third Wednesday, we also do our Drum for Justice program that supports rallies and protests and different things downtown Los Angeles. But we’re probably right now in I think five different parks in three different schools with our teaching artists that are doing our healing-based arts programs that focused on helping students uncover and heal from different things in their past in the safe and brave space through creative outlets.

Julie Lacouture:

Can we just take a moment and talk about how great teaching artists are?

Amir Whitaker:

Oh yeah.

Julie Lacouture:

Oh my goodness. Someone who is very good at art, but also has the talent with students. That is hard to find, but they are invaluable, huh?

Amir Whitaker:

Exactly. And we’re grateful to be a part of the Arts for Healing and Justice Network because they do sort of network-wide supports for teaching artists, because as you mentioned, not all artists know how to teach. Actually, most artists may not know how to translate that. And teaching itself is such a bastardized profession, and people think it’s so easy, but teachers are demonized so much. But it’s a skill to be able to connect and translate. I’m coming up on my 20th year of teaching now, and I’m still a teaching artist with Project Knucklehead. My favorite thing to do with Project Knucklehead is being a teaching artist.

Julie Lacouture:

Students’ favorite teacher is always the arts teacher, the drama teacher, the music teacher. That’s our friend’s favorite teacher, I feel like.

Amir Whitaker:

We get that in some of the schools and classes we work with. When we visit, it’s like, oh, turn it up time. But we create what’s called the Freedom Zone, where it’s safe to create noise, bang on drums and express your frustration. We even allow students to curse and express things in different ways because that’s how it comes out. And I know in a science class or in a math class, you may be more restricted. In English class, you should have more freedom, but however, they have standards and tests and different things. But there’s the creative aspect of writing that we should never forget about.

Julie Lacouture:

You and I have talked before about it’s hard when you’re small to get people to give you grants or you’re almost too small to be on people’s radars, but you’re doing some really impactful work. How do you bring in support for an organization your size?

Amir Whitaker:

Critical question. Yeah. We’re so small that we’ve been passed on several opportunities. Some foundations show all of this interest, and I meet them in person and they see our youth and they’re wild, but then when they see how small we are, and for many years under $35,000, most of our 12 years, we were under that. And I myself was the volunteer executive director for all 12 years up until this year, just a few months ago, I became paid staff. But it’s a struggle because like I said, I work for these nonprofits with multimillion dollar budgets, and even at my job at ACLU, about 5% of my time is for development. So to meet with donors, potential supporters, I’ve even written grants, but because of our size, we are limited in what we can apply for in some ways. But I think social capital, using that network, I found has been really critical.

At my ACLU job, I’ve met some people who have gallery space and just other things they can offer in-kind donations that they can offer. And they’ve given that to the ACLU. And sometimes I just say, Hey, well, I have a small little nonprofit too that seems aligned and just not being afraid to ask. And of course, making sure my development department at ACLU is fine with us asking. But I think tapping into that social network and capital. And I had to build that, I will say that I now have privilege being an attorney, and I’m able to get different resources that I didn’t have before 10 years ago when I first started, but now I’ve been able to build up the reputation. But that social capital is key.

Julie Lacouture:

If you were to break down how one builds social capital, can you see steps that you took?

Amir Whitaker:

We know with all types of capital, some people are born with it and inherit it. And I think that’s the most common way is what you inherit those relationships. But even, for example, the fundraiser we hosted to start our after-school program in Los Angeles was at USC. So I was tapping into my college network, and I had one of my former students there who was on the football team, and I asked him, I gave a couple of footballs and said, Hey, can you and your team autograph these? And they did.

And we were able to auction them for, one of them went for like 400 bucks, and we received enough money from that fundraiser to start our after-school program. So there, that alumni network as a student, there’s of course all those mixer events and different ways where you can expand your network. And there are different gatherings that are hosted, whether it’s with the, oh, is it the Chamber of Commerce? They’ve invited me to speak. Just different groups, but usually through whatever your job is and then your social networks, you can try to tap into those resources and networks and see what you can add to your nonprofit.

Julie Lacouture:

From what you’re saying, I hear four things. So one, you’re saying tap into existing networks, so whether that’s the Chamber of Commerce or USC, but networks where there’s some kind of loose connection there, so tap into those. Two, I think what you said was identify assets. So identify that, okay, this student was on the football team, so there’s something for me to leverage here, but it’s also a way for that person to participate in a way that makes sense for them. Which I think is the third thing, which is you are very good at identifying ways for people to be involved at the level in the way that makes sense for them. So whether you hear them offering gallery space and you adapt it to be for your program, you see that they are passionate about football, so you make that work for you. And then I think the fourth thing you’re saying is just making sure you’re in front of people. Does that sound like Amir Whitaker’s recipe for a social capital building?

Amir Whitaker:

Absolutely. And when you combine those things and when you utilize them, you never know what’s going to happen. For example-

Julie Lacouture:

That’s right.

Amir Whitaker:

The person who gave the in-kind donation for the gallery space for us to have for a month also ended up donating a few thousand dollars, and it ended up being the largest donor for our gala, so even though the ads started with an in-kind donation, once they saw the work and it spoke for itself, it evolved into something larger.

Julie Lacouture:

Yeah, that’ll be something my co-host Lisa will be really happy to hear about because I think it can’t be understated how much you can, once you have someone’s engagement, how much you can turn them into a supporter. And I don’t even mean to say it that we’re manipulating anything, but you’re just letting them go along at their own pace on how they want to be involved. Hard to manage though, right? Hard to keep that many balls in the air.

Amir Whitaker:

Oh yeah.

Julie Lacouture:

Along those lines, how have you balanced your full-time job and running this nonprofit? Are there any tips or tricks that you’ve encountered that help you do that?

Amir Whitaker:

I’m constantly learning, even right now because we’re doing this interview during the workday, so I’m technically at work and I had to pack away that part as much as I could, even though I’m still being pulled because we have fires, especially in my kind of work where you’re a firefighter innocent. But I found making it non-negotiable and just because it was that important for me. So with every job I’ve had, and I’ve worked full time the entire time, except when I was in law school, but over the past decade, I’ve been working full time and not just 30 hours a week, but working as a lawyer, which sometimes can be 60, 70 hours a week.

One time I traveled one out of every three days of the year when I was first working as a lawyer, so it was really intense work. But I told them from the very beginning like, Hey, I have this nonprofit that is part of my purpose and how I give back and how I exist in this world. So every other Friday, I’m going to have to go and go inside of this facility during the workday for a couple of hours to do this.

Julie Lacouture:

Right.

Amir Whitaker:

Letting them know ahead of time and just saying, I’ll make up the time on the weekends or in the evenings, but this is part of my purpose. And since I’m here working for you all as an advocate for children, it makes sense for me to have this experience and connection and be on the ground to know what students are experiencing. But I know I have privilege in that I have five degrees, two doctorates and can negotiate more, but I know not everyone can throw out the gauntlet like that with job opportunities. But they’ve been pretty receptive. And even now I think with ACLU, they’ve been really supportive and encourages me to do more.

And even the first grant we received over $10,000 came in partnership with ACLU when a funder saw that I was a lawyer with ACLU and then also a director of this nonprofit and had a unique opportunity to align with both and just support it that way. So I think some nonprofits can support, but it is a balancing act. And I’m a Libra, so I’m always striving for balance. I don’t know if I’m achieving it, I’m always striving for it. But finding where, going back to that social network and capital where you can have support with your board of directors and others can provide support with the administrative support and different things.

And then being a part of networks like AHJN, where they actually help and do some of the administrative stuff that we would be burdened with if we weren’t a part of the network. So just finding balance, but also, I’ll just be honest to say, it has not been easy. It’s not been easy. And I’ve even had other executive directors of nonprofits tell me I was doing it wrong to not be working full-time for Project Knucklehead and trying to do that. But I’ve found its kind of like we’re engaged in a battle. It’s like I have my sword in my hand as a lawyer, and then Project Knucklehead I have the baseball bat, and I can’t put down either of them right now.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s a great analogy. What is next for Project Knucklehead?

Amir Whitaker:

Now with Project Knucklehead, I want us to evolve into the next phase where, I mean, I just have to do it. I will work full-time for Project Knucklehead, or at least this year, 2024, I started part-time, well, which very small part-time, which just paid for about six to eight hours a week, even though most average weeks, I double that anyway. But the hope is within a year or two to scale up to be able to come on as at least half-time executive director. And I like it now where we have a paid program assistant and our teaching artists and others as well. And shout out to our Freedom Fellows or our young people who really help.

But I’ve already negotiated it with my job at ACLU, allow me to go part-time or even a third time, and then going part-time to Project Knucklehead, and then eventually full-time to Project Knucklehead. And ideally I would be executive director. So doing all of those duties, but still be a teaching artist in the community, in classrooms with students, and of course having to do some of the development stuff, but hopefully doing less of the communication stuff. Because right now, as we know, executive directors of small nonprofits, you wear many hats.

Julie Lacouture:

Tell me what all those changes mean for the kids you work with?

Amir Whitaker:

Yeah, so I’m excited about the possibility of being able to do more one-on-one support with the students and be more of a, which I already am with our Freedom Fellows, which is our young people, ages 16 to about 25 that we get paid fellowships to. But sometimes I’m not as available because clearly during the work they have other stuff. Another big thing that would change with this is I would bring the sword to Project Knucklehead. So I’ve actually already had to do this representing some of our students who’ve been expelled from school or one of our teaching artists was actually facing deportation. And I was able to, through Project Knucklehead, we helped pay the legal fees and I provided legal representation in different things. So if I come to Project Knucklehead part-time and eventually full-time, we can also provide these sorts of wraparound support services that I can provide directly, and I think it would be really impactful.

And then of course, our students would be able to produce more. I’m excited about the opportunity to have an actual physical space because right now, Project Knucklehead, we’re like an unhoused nonprofit, so we don’t have a physical office space, but we work in schools and in community parks. But if we actually had a physical space where I occupied and our young people had safe space to join, that would really evolve. And we’re looking at eventually becoming a community center sort of model. And we work with several drop-in centers who want to partner and do these sorts of things. So the next phase would have more Amir and more space.

Julie Lacouture:

Tell me what it’s going to take to get you to phase two. What do you need?

Amir Whitaker:

Yes, so we need support so that I can jump off this cliff. Because I feel like I’m standing at the edge of the cliff with my wings ready to fly, but I need to know that once I jump off, there is support there, right? That the foundations and the teaching contracts and different things, so we wouldn’t be able to take this step without the Arts for Healing and Justice Network. They’ve helped us to scale up. And something else I didn’t mention that you know Arts for Healing and Justice Network is also a multimillion dollar nonprofit that I used to be the board chair of and help support for years. And so they really help.

I’ve learned a lot by working with them for now for about seven, eight years. But also they’re helping us to see how we can evolve and scale. But what we need is those partnerships, those foundations and people who’ve done the work, if you’ve already done so. Let us know, because I find nonprofits, some of them either start large just because of different endowments or different connections and networks they have, or they eventually make this transition. So would love to know how other folks have found it helpful. But of course, if you have a rich uncle or something like that, that’ll also be welcome.

Julie Lacouture:

Let’s describe to someone if they were to encounter Project Knucklehead where you are right now in one of these parks or in one of your events, what would they see?

Amir Whitaker:

They would see Healing Justice in action. They would see creative expression and like I mentioned, the freedom zone where you’ll see children running around being knuckleheads, and we give them that space. I noticed in our community in Leimert Park, sometimes parents just basically drop their children off with us like we’re their babysitters and there’s something about the drum that really creates adrenaline and excitement. And you see the children running around. And then at some point I’m always like, okay, where are the parents? They really just drop them off, especially with the smaller ones. I’m like, okay, they really just drop their kids off. All right. But it’s one of those communities where it’s that trust in open relationship like that. So if someone came and observed, they would see a big family of, and if I’m there, you would see me known as Dr. Knucklehead. Also living that youthfulness and that part of me that I won’t let disappear, that I can’t let disappear so that I can connect with young people.

One of the most important things about Project Knucklehead is our motto or mantra, which is free to you, and it’s a double meaning double entendre. It’s like free to you, freedom from cages, freedom from oppression and that sort of thing. We shouldn’t have our children kidnapped and taken away from their families, but it’s also freedom of expression. So free the youth allow for them to have that freedom space. And that can be liberating, that can be healing. And we have a lot of people, not just young people, but we have a lot of people who have encountered trauma and pain, sometimes at the hands of our own government when it’s incarceration or your parents being taken away by incarceration or different things. So we have a Healing Justice model that we feel is essential in centering that healing and understanding the power of arts to do that is really important because we can’t have full justice until we have healing.

Julie Lacouture:

Do you have a memorable student over the last 12 years?

Amir Whitaker:

Oh, yeah. One student, and it’s interesting, I have pictures. I mean, we have a lot, and oh my gosh, all right, so I’m excited getting chills thinking about one student, Mya Edwards-Pena, who she now is about to graduate college. She’s a senior at Goucher College in Baltimore. We started working with her when she was in high school, and actually I met her at a protest when she was 16 and teach and dance and at the protest at a student protest. And we started working with her to create her own dance style that when she went to college, she started teaching this dance style, which is called Body Liberation and Movement at her college actually. So she’s teaching it, she created it with Project Knucklehead at a protest in front of City Hall, and then she’s teaching it thousands of miles away on the East Coast.

And now next month, Maya and myself we’re getting flown to Albuquerque to work with Keshet Dance Studios Dance Academy to basically Maya’s going to be dancing in a production. Now she’s getting her degree in dance, which is also really rare. She stuck with it and stayed with it, and we actually have her a paid opportunity to dance, which is really important because I saw some statistic that said something like, less than 5% of people who study dance actually get to perform it. So she’s doing that next month. So we’ve seen her go full circle from high school to college and now alumni doing it, and of course we’re going to try to snatch her up as a teaching artist.

Julie Lacouture:

Excellent. Tell folks where to find you.

Amir Whitaker:

Sure, so you can find Project Knucklehead on Instagram @projectknucklehead, on Facebook, on Twitter, or X @ProjectKnucky. We also have a YouTube channel with over 40 videos, and we have all different things. And I didn’t mention, we have our Afro Unidad movement, which can also be found on different social media outlets.

Julie Lacouture:

I’ll put in a plug for watching the video you all did around when the Super Bowl was in Los Angeles. I think that that’s a really good, nice capsule summation of what you do.

Amir Whitaker:

And that’s actually, Mya is in that video too.

Julie Lacouture:

That’s her. Oh, well full circle here. So excellent. Amir, thank you so much for being here. You have less time than almost anyone I’ve ever had on the podcast, so I’m going to get you back to your regularly scheduled life.