Pursuing Light - The Bill Strickland Story

Hi, Bill.

Took you up on your offer.

- Fred.

Nice to see you.

- Thank you.

I'd like you to know my television neighbor.

- Hello.

- This is my old friend, - Bill Strickland.

- Nice to see you.

One of the fun things about clay is it's like mud.

And when I was young, I used to play in mud and make shapes.

It's very similar.

MR.

ROGERS: When you see it, you feel as if you just want to touch it.

Yes.

That's part of what got me excited about clay when I was in high school.

[upbeat music] MARK FRANK: Bill is an entrepreneur, an educator.

In my mind, Bill is an artist before everything else.

This is a man on a mission.

I am determined to making the world a better place.

CHAN HELLMAN: Bill thinks different than most people, and he uses the arts as a way of reaching people.

Bill Strickland has spent 50 years trying to end poverty as we know it.

["Study Music - Chillout" by Exam Study Music Chillout] Bill forces you to see the world as it is and helps you to imagine what could be.

He had a tough upbringing, but he never lost hope that there was a better day.

He's been compared to Martin Luther King in the way that he speaks to people and the impact that he has.

GLORIA REUBEN: Bill has tapped into a whole other... energy source or something.

I'm like, "Yeah, I want to... I want to get plugged into that as well."

Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?

Will it go round in circles?

Will it fly high like a bird up in the sky?

Whoo-hu-hu!

Structural poverty is growing in the United States.

The institutions have failed the folks who are in a state of structural poverty, generation after generation after generation.

So, the hope is gone.

And I believe that poverty is cancer, cancer of the human spirit.

And hope is the cure for the problem.

Hope is a basic human characteristic.

Our ability to be future-oriented is just natural to what it means to be human.

But things like extreme poverty or systemic oppression can be so overwhelming that we can lose hope and give up.

[melancholy music] GLORIA: It's the losing of hope that's the killer.

When you lose hope, then you got nothing left to lose.

And that's when people get hurt.

People hurt themselves.

People hurt others, is when you lose that hope.

[clamoring] [sirens wailing] And structural poverty is probably the most significant danger to the stability of the United States today.

[melancholy music] And that's what makes Bill Strickland's mission so important.

The reason I won the MacArthur Fellowship is I figured out the cure for spiritual cancer.

It's called sunlight.

And hope and food.

And dignity and decency.

You put that formula together, we can solve this problem in every city in this country.

Several years ago, a mom walked into my office with five little kids.

[voice breaking] Um... because... she didn't have anywhere to live.

And I was her last hope.

And my answer... I... When she left, I knew that the answer wasn't gonna be the answer for her kids.

It was just gonna perpetuate... So it hit me.

And then, from that point on, I... was on this mission to find somebody that could have an answer to generational poverty.

Everyone said, "Well, have you ever heard of Bill Strickland?"

BILL: My mission is to make the planet a better place.

And I built a center in Pittsburgh, in my neighborhood, called Bidwell Training Center, Manchester Craftsmen's Guild.

And I built this center for people who had no hope.

Can you read 10?

Since then, we've opened 12 centers around the country.

And one in Israel.

Hope is the belief that the future can be better than today and that we have the power to make it so.

Hope is about taking action to pursue that future.

Wishing is passive towards the goal.

Hope is about taking action to pursue that future.

And that's the distinction between, uh... hope and wishing.

BILL: I'm a poster boy for hope, and I'm here to tell you, man, that there is an answer to your suffering.

Demonstrate to people they could actually change their own lives.

And so one of my goals is to show the world that there's another way.

So don't tell me what you can't do.

Tell me what you can do.

CHAN: Bill's ideas for changing the world are autobiographical of Bill.

They are rooted in his story.

BILL: I was born in the Manchester neighborhood on the north side of Pittsburgh.

We lived in an impoverished neighborhood, and my father didn't work.

And so we had economic distress invited into our home because my dad couldn't find any work.

But my mother was determined that our family stay together.

She represented hope, taught me... how to live with hope.

One of the fundamental things that a child needs growing up is... is the basic understanding that they matter, that they are valued.

BILL: My mother is the key to my life.

She is at the center of this conversation, not peripheral.

And she loved me and my brother, had a great deal of respect for herself and the community in which she lived, and insisted that we achieve at a very high level.

She was always that positive force.

"Oh, you can do it, son.

You can do it.

You'll be fine."

She would always encourage.

You know, it's funny, because I thought that everybody's parents did that.

And I found out later that... [clears throat] that wasn't the case, that many kids, um... They didn't have that guidance and that light.

You need something to focus on when you're a kid.

Oftentimes, when children experience tremendous adversity, domestic violence, child maltreatment, homelessness, food insecurity, the message that they're receiving is that they don't matter, and what that will produce is a diminished view of what future they deserve.

But individuals who grow up in a very nurturing... home environment, they're constantly getting fed information, not only of the fact that you're valued, but conversations about the future that is possible for you.

And there are tremendous number of research studies that show that a child needs a positive adult role in their life.

BILL: My mother... was relentless in insisting that her children were going to have life, and we did because it was a function of her expectations.

I miss her a lot.

Because she was the light in the darkness.

And we're all here having this conversation, at least we are, because of her.

- Absolutely, because of her.

- Yeah.

I mean, really, she... Yeah.

I had obviously, you as my dad, but I think about her every single day with every single thing I do.

And what kind of family, what kind of mother I am to my children.

- You know?

- Yeah.

None of us would be here had she not been... There's nothing I can't do because she was tough enough.

She was tough enough for all of us.

Yeah.

ANNOUNCER: Steelton, heart of America's industrial might, on which the whole nation depend.

In the 1950s, Manchester was a community of great diversity and a mixture of ethnic groups from all parts of Europe and America that lived together, dined together, celebrated life together.

[soft jazz music plays] MARK: In the '50s, it was a whole different kind of post-war kind of feel.

Everybody was kind, seemed like they were happy and I knew all the neighbors.

It was like a Norman Rockwell painting, man.

It was just very nice.

Remember the Vestnaver girls... - Yeah.

- ...that lived next door?

Sabila Vestnaver was my first girlfriend.

- Oh, okay.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

She black-haired Italian girl.

Yeah.

Wow.

They taught me how to roller skate.

I remember roller skating with Sabila.

Yeah.

Did their dad speak English?

'Cause-- He spoke broken English.

He seemed like a scary dude to me.

Just the look on his face.

Yeah, he was intense, that's for sure.

I went to school with people that I loved and respected.

They were called my friends.

And living in that neighborhood really provided a social experience that was very profound.

I just made the assumption that having Slovak friends and Polish friends... and German friends, Italian friends was routine.

That was what we considered normal.

And then urban redevelopment.

MARK: Yeah.

NEWS ANCHOR: Today, John Smith can leave his family in the morning and travel safely and quickly over a modern express highway to his job.

BILL: The highway effectively cut off the lifeline for the community.

The economy changed.

White folks started moving out of the city to the suburbs.

And economically distressed African Americans started moving into the city.

And over time, race relations changed.

MARK: And in those days, you took a chance just walking around the neighborhood.

It was just so crazy, man.

This all happened over ten years.

It was very rapid.

And the community went from multicultural and diverse to essentially a homogenous African American community, but economically distressed at the same time.

The feeling going into the '60s was very tumultuous, and the whole climate of the community just changed.

It was very much a shock for me as a child because you can't really process what's going on.

I'll give you an example.

There was a lady, Ms.

Sadler, that used to live up the street, and I used to go to the store for her.

"Mark, you go to the store," and they'd give you a couple of pennies, you know.

And I turned about 14 years old and she was afraid of me.

I remember her looking out the window and I waved to her, "Hi, Ms.

Sadler."

And she shut the blinds and she was... And she never spoke to me after that.

[dramatic music] So all the vitality, the robustness of that neighborhood got erased.

And all of my friends were gone.

And I was miserable.

Trauma, systemic oppression, racism, domestic violence, child maltreatment, homelessness, food insecurity rob us of hope.

And it's our capacity for hope, it's one of the strongest predictors of well being for children, for adults and families.

In fact, a child's hope score is a better predictor of performance and retention than standardized testing or high school GPA.

So we know that hope is a critical, fundamental predictor of success.

BILL: My school experience was terrible, particularly in high school.

I had no inspiration.

Everything kind of... Literally was gray.

And then the days would go by, but there was nothing significant happening, nothing profound.

And that literally changed when I happened to walk down the corridor of our high school and I met Frank Ross, the art teacher.

That was... one of the pivotal moments in my life.

I was flunking out of high school.

My academics were poor, my life was going the wrong way.

But I happened to be walking down the corridor of our high school, and the art room door was open.

And so I walked up to the art room door, and Mr.

Ross turned around and he says, "Can I help you?"

I says, "Yeah, what is that, man?"

Frank was a ceramic artist, as it turns out.

The school had a potter's wheel, and for whatever reason, on that particular moment, he made a great big old ceramic bowl.

It was a magical experience which I had never seen before.

He said, "That's ceramics."

I said, "Well, why won't you teach me how to do that?"

He says, "Well, get your homeroom teacher to sign a piece of paper that says you can come here, and I'll teach you."

So for the remaining two years of high school, that's all I did.

I went to the art room, got pretty good at clay, and I learned that I have a particular affection and affinity for the arts, and that really became my salvation.

I never understood anything they were talking about in math class, or cared.

I didn't understand anything about the chemistry teacher, or cared, but I did resonate with the arts, and that's what I decided I was going to become good at.

And it made sense to me in a language that I could understand.

And I started seeing a world in color, multi colors.

[jazz music plays] And, at the same time, jazz music was ubiquitous in my life.

Mr.

Ross played jazz in his classroom, and at home, my mother was a great fan of jazz music and the people who played it.

And jazz connected me to a way of living that was fueled by these great jazz artists who played music that was so beautiful.

It occurred to me, if I could think like Herbie Hancock or Cal Tjader or Stan Getz, I would feel about life like these musicians felt about life.

And if I could figure that out, I knew that my life would really swing, man.

Jazz is this beautiful combination of structure and freedom.

It's very vibrant, it's very alive.

It's very unexpected and lights up a part of the brain that nothing else does.

Music tends to influence our kind of emotional engagement, which can become pretty important in... really moving away from a focus on the adversity that we may be experiencing in our life, because you're really experiencing deep connectedness to the moment, deep connectedness to... the experience in and of itself, and it can be quite healing.

Jazz allowed me to resonate with the life impulse, the life force that's in all of us, and being able to not only hear it, but to feel it.

Pottery and jazz music have inspired me my entire life, and they're still a source of joy and hope and optimism and getting in line with the direction of the human spirit.

And that's a really special place to be, and that's the quality that I want to give to others.

Man, okay.

SHARIF BEY: I knew that clay is what got him started, and clay is what set him on this path.

And, in some regard, you know, clay kind of saved him.

And then he wanted to kind of build an institution that would, in turn, you know, like, pay it forward.

In my mind, Bill is an artist before everything else.

You know, he's a manager to some extent.

He's CEO, he's a founder, he's on national boards.

But at his heart, he's an artist.

And he could see that if the arts worked for him, a failing student cutting classes, wandering through the halls where some of his friends were already in jail or maybe even dead, changed his life.

And it became a vision.

And he said, "If it worked for me, it can work for anyone."

And that's how all this got started.

Hello.

WOMAN: We do this every day with the students.

It's their opportunity to tell us about their day at school, what gripes they have, what was a positive thing in their day.

And this is our time to vent before we start our classes.

[cheering] My name is Santana, and my day was actually pretty good today.

Had dance, and I got to change my outfit for this special occasion.

Which special occasion?

- You coming here.

- Oh, me?

Oh, okay.

I'm honored.

What do you like about being at ConnCAT?

I like doing art and sometimes getting my hands dirty.

Have you ever tried pottery?

- No, I never did pottery.

- Okay.

I wanted to do pottery for a very long time.

- I do pottery.

- You do?

[laughter] Have you ever heard of Mr.

Rogers?

ALL: Yes.

I've done two shows on "Mr.

Rogers' Neighborhood," and I taught him how to make pottery.

- Hello.

- Bill Strickland.

- Bill, this is Fred Rogers.

- Good to meet you.

My pleasure.

It was 1968.

- I had hair out to here.

- [laughter] Now the clay is open this way, to the right.

25 years later, Mr.

Rogers came to my center in Pittsburgh and they did another show.

Good.

We're going to form the bottom by pushing towards the heel of your right hand.

Very gently.

Just push out.

When you see the train that goes around in King Friday's neighborhood, the art center is us.

We are the art center in the neighborhood.

But people's brains are wired in different fashion.

And the way Bill's is wired is that he can feel the pain that people have in their everyday existence.

He feels it.

He doesn't see it.

He feels it.

But, contrary to most people, he tries to help them.

My brother was like... one of those people you keep your eye on because he's going to do stuff and, you know, you want to ride that wave, you want to ride that wake, and, you know, maybe some of that'll rub off on you and you might be able to do some stuff too.

Everything that he did seemed like a good idea, and his heart was in it all the way, and you felt that.

And I guess that's what made it seem like a good idea.

Many of my ideas about changing the world were developed as I got involved with the Civil Rights Movement in the '60s.

[clamoring] I became more determined to make a contribution to making the world a better place, precisely because pf the way that Black people were being treated, the way I was being treated.

And so it wasn't a theory anymore.

This was real, man.

The '60s, that whole deal... It's pretty rough.

The President being assassinated... [gunshot echoes] The three kids were killed.

Back when Schwerner and Chaney and Goodman were murdered, I was down there, man, when all that stuff happened.

I'd been doing voter registration in Atlanta.

When we drove down, the Klan was looking for people that were coming from the North.

So we had to check in with the FBI every 90 minutes so they knew we were still alive.

I mean, people were getting lynched, man.

Okay?

And we stopped at this town, you know, in the heat of the night kind of thing, and there were signs, "For colored only."

And I... Man, I'd never seen anything like that.

It just felt eerie because I had never... I experienced racism, but not that... direct, in your face.

[siren wailing] [clamoring] In Atlanta, I found my heroes in Julian Bond and John Lewis.

These were guys who were prepared to put their life on the line, you know, to register Black people to vote.

And so I was mentored by these men.

MARK: The Vietnam War was going on.

I was pretty much terrified.

And then Martin Luther King was assassinated.

[gunshot] The real turning point in my life were the riots and the looting in the '60s.

[rock music plays] REPORTER: Two days after Dr.

Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis, events, once again have moved swiftly and unexpectedly.

There was violence in the cities, something Dr.

King had fought against and spoke out against throughout most of his public life.

BILL: They had the riot police, and you had to be in the house at 9:30 because the helicopters were out.

They would arrest you and that sort of thing.

CHAN: The Civil Rights Movement is actually one of the best examples of collective hope.

Collective hope is really about the idea that a group can cast a clear vision of the future that they want, and that there's a sense that together we can find the pathways to pursue and achieve those goals.

But, more importantly, that we can also collectively overcome potential barriers that may show up.

One of the things that we see with collective hope, when it begins to be nurtured, there is an emotional identity tied to belonging to this group.

And so when the group suffers, the individual suffers.

And when Dr.

King was assassinated, the riots and the upheaval were the direct result of the intense anger, sadness, and frustration of having their identity challenged.

BILL: I was in the neighborhood, my neighborhood, when I saw the riots and the looting and the... the killings that were going on, and the National Guard showed up with weapons and people were getting shot.

And it was unbelievable.

I was in the middle of that and witness to it.

And what I decided to do was, "Okay, well, I'm not going to be a part of the riots.

What I'm going to build is a pottery shop because I think, at the end of the day, we've got to do something positive because the riots aren't going to get us anywhere."

And it turns out, instinctively, I knew the solution had to be something more peaceful.

When you come from the ghetto and there's certain expectations that you're going to be... this or that, and that's your lot in life.

And most of the people lived up to that or lived down to that, but my brother was very driven to do something different.

And when you look at a person that has that kind of... vision about doing things, it's just not like regular people.

[serene music] BILL: I started with the pottery shop, in a dilapidated row house in the neighborhood that had been neglected for years.

There were a couple of homeless guys living in the place, and I think they were selling drugs out the back door.

So we renovated the house... ...floor by floor.

I don't know if they had a plan.

It just seemed to, like, develop as they saw fit.

Because I remember that they kind of had to dig out the basement and put the cement floor down.

And then upstairs, we went out to the countryside to find somebody who was tearing down a barn.

And they would take the wood and cleaned the wood up somehow and put it on the wall, and it looked beautiful.

BILL: And turned it into a thriving ceramic studio.

And we started dragging kids off the street to save their souls with clay.

And the kids were starting to pour into the place because the word was out.

[lively music] That whatever Strickland was doing up there, man, even the school teacher was saying, "These kids are starting to show up at school, man."

One day a station wagon pulls up in front of the studio, and some adults get out of the car.

And Bill's thinking, "Uh-oh, what is this about?"

And they come in and they say to Bill that they're teachers at his old high school.

Each one of them has a student that has changed his or her behavior.

They're matriculating.

They're less disruptive in class.

They're coming to class.

And the teacher said, "We talk about this in the teacher's lounge, and we can't figure out why we have one student that's changed so radically and all of a sudden, it clicked.

We figured out they all come to your class after school."

We probably had 60, maybe 80 kids, per week, coming through, which packed the rowhouse.

But then it, you know, it was getting to the point where it was just getting ridiculous.

We had no more room.

And people were saying, "Strickland's getting outcomes with these kids, and they ain't going to jail, they're going to college."

That makes sense.

If you think about the idea of working with your hands and you've got this imagined picture or idea in your mind of what could be turning it in or at least approximating that image that you had in your head, you begin to experience a level of success and then really beginning to experience that, "If I can achieve in these areas, then I can begin to achieve in other areas as well."

[indistinct chatter] Welcome back to BCAT.

- Nice to see you.

- Oh, so nice to see you.

- Come on in.

- Yeah, thank you.

- How are you doing?

- I'm okay.

- Hey!

- [laughter] - How you doing?

- My true hero... Wow, this is special.

- Welcome.

Nice to see you.

- Nice to see you.

It's been a while.

We got a seat for you over here.

Okay.

Hey, it's good to meet you.

A clay person, or I was.

And you guys know my story.

I built a little pottery studio to work with kids in the neighborhood.

It caught on.

The idea was to build an environment where kids could get excited about the arts.

So art is part of the deal.

I... was one of those kids that was low income, and if I did not have an opportunity like this that was free, I would have never gotten to experience clay.

And, honestly, clay is like one of those things that teaches you that anything is possible.

BILL: And the arts can plant that seed.

GIRL: They did plant the seed of wanting more.

BILL: And it makes you feel alive.

Well, now, you're doubting on why I came here.

I came here really because I need to be around you all, you know, to keep going, man.

'Cause I make this stuff look easy, but it ain't easy.

And you gotta hang around good people to say, "Hey, you know, you're okay.

There's nothing wrong with you."

Just because you're a dreamer doesn't mean you're crazy.

You know?

Keep going.

Bill, thank you for coming here today.

This space is giving people a sense of self and a place to express themselves.

Both, like, to each other, but also through their art and be more confident in the rest of their lives.

Very good day.

Okay.

I'm good.

I got a pot.

I got some friends.

- Thank you.

- Yeah.

- Good to see you.

- Good to see you, too.

- Good luck.

Give me a hug.

- Thank you so much.

- Oh, thank you.

- Good to see you.

So good to see you.

Yeah.

Take care.

Good to see you guys.

- Good to see you too.

- Okay.

I think that that school framework that helps us come together and begin to aspire to something greater, something greater than just survival, and maybe something that is greater towards the idea of... aspirationally, what would it look like to thrive in our community?

To me, art is cool, but getting a job is better.

And a lot of the people I work with were not working.

And you can solve most of the social problems if you got a job, man.

Okay, you can feed your family, pay your mortgage, get a car.

So the arts is cool.

It has its place in life, but you can't eat pottery.

["Tornado" by SATV Music] Bidwell was a failed, tragic poverty program that mismanaged money and mismanaged lives.

They were supposed to be driving building trades to put people into the building trades industry.

And what they ended up doing was enriching the people who were running the place.

You talk about funky.

That place was really funky.

It was in a warehouse.

Boards on the windows, broken glass, was housing drug addicts, and guys were on their knees gambling at the front door.

And that was the student body.

So I bought the beer, and I bought the paint.

I said, "Anybody that doesn't show up to paint this building is fired."

And so that's how we started to roll.

When I graduated from law school in 1974, my first job out of law school was working for Bidwell Training Center.

And my job was to represent the adult students, not if, but when they got in trouble.

And eventually it started to make sense, slowly but surely.

I realized that you have to go where the economy is going, not where it's been, if you want to be around.

This is when I went out and cultivated a lot of corporate relationships.

The one thing I was doing was to listen to what the companies were thinking about in terms of the future.

And what I decided to do was to try to get ahead of that curve.

So we went from the building trades to the service industry, is what... That really was the big shift.

I closed down carpentry and bricklaying and electrical wiring because those programs had basically collapsed.

And I went into the service industry.

If I hadn't, we never would have built this center, much less survive.

1979 and '80, we had two years of back-to-back double digit inflation.

Unemployment started to increase and by 1980 we were in a recession with nearly eight million unemployed, inflation at 12.4% and interest rates at 21.5%.

Often didn't know if they were going to make payroll at the end of the week.

And it was a tremendous amount of pressure.

And he kept thinking, "Do I really have to lay people off?"

'Cause that's not Bill.

And it lasted for a long time.

When you have $112 in the bank and can't make the next payroll, you're at the bottom.

So at 11:00 in the morning, I was knocking down martinis at the Shamrock bar because we had come to the end.

But sometimes when you're at your wit's end is when you begin to see a little light.

And that's when it hit me.

The poor kids never get the best treatment, the best food, the best teachers, the best equipment.

And then people are wondering why you can't get world-class results.

So I said, "Rather than treat the poor kids to the worst conditions, why don't we treat them to the best conditions and see what happens?"

I realized that what I really needed to do was build a Bill Strickland school.

[gentle music] As it stood, the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild was the youth program.

Bidwell Corporation was the program that involved adult training.

Bill's idea was to unite the two entities in a state-of-the-art facility and rebrand it as the Manchester Bidwell Corporation.

And that way we can design it the right way, have the right people running it, who've got the right EQ and emotional equivalency, et cetera.

And hire the brightest people that you can get, and hire the hippest architect that you can find.

And let's make sure this school swings, man.

Period.

Just like Frank Ross' class.

[gentle music] So it had to be nurturing.

It had to be creative, it had to be more light, and the vibe had to be very positive and have artifacts that no matter where your eye turns, there's something looking back at you that's beautiful.

We've actually been studying the built environment and its relationship to hope.

And when we look at the impact of a space that is beautiful to come into a space that looks different than an impoverished community, and it clearly has an influence on the way we look and feel.

And so it gives us a sense that we deserve this future that is possible to us.

And I wanted it to be a beacon of hope for people who don't have any, or a beacon of hope to resurrect the hope that we're all born with, but sometimes it gets forgotten.

Anybody that thinks they can build a $6 million training center is delusional.

And I felt sorry for him 'cause I knew he couldn't do it.

And he became Bill Strickland, the MacArthur Genius award winner.

And I was a schlepper lawyer 'cause I knew he couldn't do it.

I was so relentless.

I had hundreds of meetings in order to sell this center and its programs.

Politicians, philanthropic sources, corporate leaders.

I was like Superman, you know, for two hours I was the guy raising money with a big tin cup.

Then come back, change clothes, and the rest of the afternoon I was making pots in the studio.

And that was standard operating practice for years in order to get this thing built.

And we had some success, but it was a challenge.

BILL: Eventually, the governor from the state of Pennsylvania pledged half the funding, but I still had to raise the other 3 million.

And I remember distinctly the stress getting the center built, which was such an overwhelming task that I started to hit the sauce a little bit too hard.

So my liver stopped functioning, basically, and my pancreas stopped functioning.

So I was swollen up and I was in the emergency room screaming my lungs out on New Year's Eve.

[siren wailing] And I looked over and I could see death.

And they said my liver stopped functioning, basically.

"So we're going to put you up in intensive care.

The good news is you survived to get this far.

But if you want to go back to drinking, you have maybe 12 months to live."

And the doc said that, "I believe you made it through because your destiny is yet to be fulfilled."

And so, carefully, I got to work and raised the other 3 million.

And we built something that was so extraordinary that even the most cynical had to grudgingly admit that we had pulled off a miracle.

Manchester Bidwell Corporation is my school.

That's the school I built.

[lively music] MARTY ASHBY: In the early '80s there was really nothing here aside from an industrial park and a burnt out shopping center.

Now you see other wonderful buildings, other great businesses.

Bill planting the seed here at Manchester Bidwell sprouted, not just this building, but all the activity around us.

Manchester Bidwell, a tremendous opportunity for more and more people to be able to have a life and get ahead and educate their kids.

When you talk to Bill Strickland, understand that this is a man with a vision that in many ways is deeply rooted in his own experience, and he truly wants these adults and kids to succeed.

And Bill has been able to successfully do that.

Initially, I was surprised, because when evaluating nonprofits, I had never experienced anything like this.

And when you walk into that building, it breathes success.

You feel it.

This is a successful place.

Bill is driven.

He can be stubborn at times, he's a pain in the ass, but that's the nature of somebody that is a visionary.

And often that vision is 50 years in the making.

And through sheer force of will, Bill has made Manchester Bidwell and all the centers more than just a place for free workforce training or free youth art programs.

From the very beginning, Bill had planted the seed that whatever we create be sustainable.

And he said, "We need to open a business or have some social enterprise associated with these centers," because he recognized that funding over long periods of time would become a challenge, and he needed some way to earn money.

The uniqueness of that piece is critically important and makes it different from many other nonprofit programs with great success.

Bill, to me, is the preeminent social entrepreneur in this country, and his ability to manifest the idea is second to none.

Like, in the mid-'80s, they were barely moved into the new building when he told me he wanted a jazz venue and a record label at Manchester.

He said it would make money and help sustain the center.

And I said, "Are you out of your mind?"

He goes, "Probably."

BILL: From my experience in high school, it occurred to me that the music was the differential.

And I said, "Maybe if you put people in environments where they hear beautiful music, they will start to believe in a completely different way."

[jazz music plays] We're going into our 34th season, and it's really been a whirlwind.

You know, we've won five Grammys, and we've done all kinds of tours, and all our idols have been here, from Dizzy to Carmen to Max, they've all been here.

And then it was orchids, and that blossomed into a horticulture program at Manchester.

BILL: When I was dating my wife, I discovered a greenhouse in Malibu, and I fell in love with these orchids.

And that piqued my interest, so I bought a book, "Orchids for Beginners," and started reading about these things.

And I said, "I can do that."

And that was the genesis of me building a greenhouse in Pittsburgh.

One of your secrets is that not just inspiring people to do things, but you build teams, you inspire people, and people rally around the cause, but they buy into your vision, but they also buy into you.

They like you.

When people go to Manchester Bidwell and they see what is happening, when they see students really, intently in love with what they're doing, they say, "If it could be done here, it can be done elsewhere."

Be it a rural community, another urban community, a suburban community, or internationally.

BILL: People started hearing about this building, so I get invited to the Harvard Business School to tell my story to all these smart MBAs.

And then people started coming to Pittsburgh and saying, "Well, why can't I have one of these centers?"

I said, "Well, you can.

Let's sit down and start to figure out how we can do that."

And so we started building centers.

One in San Francisco, one in Cincinnati.

Those were the first two.

And over the years, built 13.

They're now open and operating.

WOMAN: So I think we're gonna pull to the window.

Okay?

Actually, I'm going to need to go in.

WOMAN: Oh, you are?

Okay.

- Yeah.

I'm going to need to put the food out of a tray because there's medications I have to take in a very specific order.

Well, I have to take the medications every day.

Period.

About 40 pills a day.

This is just the morning.

So I carry a tube that has all my medications for the day.

You don't take the medications, you die.

Very simple.

Bill enjoyed a good smoke because it gave him a break.

And the price to pay for that is the problem he had with his lungs.

He had terrible COPD, and his pulmonary condition deteriorated.

So it turned out that the only reasonable option for him, of the few that were available, 'cause his lungs were pretty damaged, was a transplant.

He was in a ten-hour surgery.

I waited to hear the phone call to say that everything went okay.

And he had a tough recovery.

But it gave him an opportunity and it gave him an opportunity to get more years to do what he wanted to do.

I teetered on the edge of death... for quite a while, actually.

And so that was a... extraordinary reminder of the momentary nature of life and death and how thin of a line there is between the two.

And I walked that line.

I was there.

In characteristic style, he is... He's overcome some of the major things that would have happened for people who have lung transplants.

And he's... He's no different than he was before.

He's driven, he's a pain in the ass, he's a visionary.

He could piss off Mother Teresa on a good day.

He's Bill, he's very human.

He's also very grateful that he had an opportunity.

I got the message, man, loud and clear.

And I made a pledge that if I was spared from this death, I would commit my life to... bringing light into every corner of the world that I could reach.

And, apparently, my offer was accepted because I'm still here.

And so I plan to redeem that commitment that I made every day in some way.

CARLOS HIGHSMITH: The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven called and asked if I would meet with Bill Strickland about transforming the lives of poor people within New Haven by providing them with hope for a better future.

Our students come from various backgrounds.

Most are impoverished, most are unemployed.

80% are Black and brown.

And some have low paying jobs that they're holding onto.

We look at community factors that are associated with... influencing hope.

Extreme poverty or systemic oppression really deplete that willpower, that endurance that we need to face adversity to overcome it.

- There he is.

[laughs] - I'm still here.

Nice to see you.

Can I give you a big old hug?

Absolutely.

- Come on in.

- Looks like it's brand new.

Well, we try to take care of it like it's brand new.

Every day.

We do.

We do.

We have lots in store.

We're gonna have some lunch prepared for you, but I want you to meet the folks that are gonna be making your lunch.

- Oh, sure.

- These are our Culinary Academy students.

So these students have completed all of their training and are now just about ready to go into externship.

This place have given me something to look forward to.

BILL: That's a lot.

- Yeah.

BILL: You got hope.

- Yeah.

And support.

That's one thing I can say about this building, too.

They support you.

From the time I walked through these doors, they've given me confidence that I didn't know I had.

Like, they've given me... They supported me to the point where I can stand and say, "Oh, I can do this.

- I'm gonna do this."

- Right.

They've done that.

So this place has been... really left a major mark.

Now I want you to cut, like, right there.

Matter of fact, let me... Come on.

Remember your tip.

Then make sure the tip of that hit the board and then come down with it.

[lively music] Upstairs, you'll get a chance to meet the adult students in phlebotomy.

And the medical billers and coders, they're upstairs as well.

Hey, folks.

How are you?

Hi.

- Welcome.

- Nice to see you.

- Hi, Bill.

- Hi.

Hi.

I'm Elizabeth Cropper, the instructor.

- Oh, nice to see you.

- Nice to be a student.

- Yeah.

Beautiful.

- Yes.

You'd never know that I was without a home.

I was coming to school every day, but I was living from place to place.

I'd stay with friends.

Sometimes I stayed at the truck stops.

You have to clear it twice.

Right?

This program really did a lot for me.

My teacher and the staff here have made a difference in my life.

You know, it hasn't been easy, but... Oof.

Sorry.

- My name is Shatoya.

- Shatoya.

- Yes.

- Krishana.

Hi, Krishana.

Wow.

Man, I hope there's no test about spelling your name.

[laughter] - Marnelli.

- Marnelli?

- Yes.

- Hi.

Naderia.

Naderia.

- Yes.

- Beautiful.

Hi, Mr.

Strickland.

I think you're my godfather now.

[laughter] We have the same birth month, too.

August.

- Oh, wow.

- Yes.

- Yeah.

I'm August 25th.

- And I'm 19th, so you can remember me.

I am from Jamaica.

I was born there.

I came here many years ago, and... it's been a rough road, but I'm getting there.

I'm getting where I want to be.

I'm here training now, and it's a wonderful experience, and it gives me a sense of pride, too.

I don't want to get emotional.

But it does.

Knowing that you have a place for yourself, you come, get a training.

And you know that four or five months from now, you'll be working, holding your own, and have your name beside a title.

Yeah, sorry.

I know my life will be changed.

It is already changing.

And I know I'm gonna be a good phlebotomist.

[cheering and applause] These students know where the world is.

They know what we're up against.

- Yeah.

- And they still signed up, which is really a credit to them.

BILL: It's the energy you feel when you're close to them.

Yeah.

I'm very sensitive to that, and they found some peace.

There's something to that.

That's wonderful.

Thank you.

We've been so beaten down.

Yeah.

You know, for so long, we've forgotten how to smile.

So to walk in here and see people who engage you, they look in your eye, they shake your hand, enthusiastic about what they do, you can't buy that.

They'll take that to their new jobs, to their externships, to their families.

And it transcends beyond a classroom experience.

It is generational.

I see my... vision reflected in centers that we have built.

- Good to see you.

- All right.

Hey, Carl.

Welcome back.

But in New Haven, Carlton and Erik, they get it.

They have amplified the vision to develop a whole community, not just build a training center and make a significant difference in the destiny of that community.

I'm in awe of the power of hope.

And one of the things that we know is that hope begets hope.

It's incredibly contagious.

So hope sort of builds in a community, and the entire community benefits.

Hundreds of adults have gone through our programs for the last decade in New Haven, where they're not only surviving, they are thriving.

- I got you.

- We're seeing life differently.

Walking with their head up, feeling the light, walking with light within them.

We ask ourselves, "How could we use the light that's within us to take it to dark places?"

We said, "You know what?

Let's really look at the neighborhoods.

Really go into the neighborhoods."

And so we chose the Dixwell community, namely because it's a historic Black community that has languished in poverty for decades.

BILL: Yeah.

Right.

The Dixwell community was probably the most ignored, disenfranchised community in New Haven.

In the early days, if you moved to New Haven, and you were Black, you had to live there.

In the '40s and '50s, this was a thriving community filled with middle class, blue collar workers employed by the Winchester Repeating Arms Company.

They employed over 10,000 people.

But when they closed and left town in the late '60s, early '70s, it decimated New Haven.

Unemployment soared and poverty levels skyrocketed.

And this community has never recovered.

And so we said, "Let's bring what we did at ConnCAT.

We'll bring it to this neighborhood."

And that's what we've been doing.

BILL: Carlton and Erik, they get it.

They have a vision of rebuilding a whole part of New Haven.

Not just one building, many buildings.

And, aspirationally, they could become the prototype centers around the world.

Probably going to be a $400 to $500 million project.

Seeing a whole different world... - That's right.

- ...of Black excellence.

This is what it looks like.

It's on our balance sheet.

We underscore Black people in Black communities because we want other people who aren't Black to care about Black people.

- Amen.

- Right?

And so the idea is, how do we draw the whole of New Haven to this historic Black community so they can see the beauty and dignity of these people?

So the culture becomes part of the solution.

- That's right.

- It ain't an ad.

White people spent their time trying to run away from us.

- Mm-hmm.

- We may provide them for an opportunity to rejoin us... - There you go.

- Okay.

...in some of that housing you're doing.

- Right.

That's right.

- ...and that mixed-use plaza - you're developing, man.

- That's right.

Yeah.

These centers demonstrate that it is possible to change the trajectory of people who had no hope.

It's not abstract.

This is not poetry.

This is reality.

Doesn't matter whether they're Black people from the inner city or white people from rural Pennsylvania.

Poverty in Brazil is the same poverty in Israel.

The misery is universal.

We're isolated.

Nobody cares about us.

We have no hope.

It's a witch's brew of misery.

Race, economic circumstances, are adjectives that describe a more fundamental condition, which is when people don't have hope, they don't have life.

That's cancer.

Cancer of the human spirit.

[dramatic music] Increasingly, what we know is that our rural communities have... really depleted access to resources.

Those lack of resources, lack of social role models, for instance.

And then clearly that robs the idea that the future can be better.

DEBORAH HEIGEL: We are rural with a population around 2,000, but we see it all.

Drug addiction, generational poverty, broken families, abuse.

We are here for a population that isn't being served.

One of the coolest things we've done is that we opened a branch classroom in Titusville with an accelerated clinical medical assistant and pharmacy tech program with externships into local hospitals.

And last year we had 100% job placement.

BILL: Beautiful.

Places like the University of Pittsburgh at Titusville, I believe could be a prototype for other universities do the same thing.

So this could have significant and wide application, not just in Pennsylvania, but, as far as I'm concerned, the United States of America.

We serve people from one of the poorest areas in our region.

And the goal of this whole center is to engage the community and sustaining our social mission.

We have a commercial facility full of grow beds and tanks.

The tanks will hold the fish, the grow beds will be the vegetables.

So that's going to be part of that social enterprise piece because we'll be selling our product to regional grocery stores because they want to buy our product so that they can private label it.

BILL: These centers are a demonstration that there are answers to this stuff in every country in the world.

And people don't have to be living like this anymore.

But we're late.

Enough people have died, we've wasted a lot of money, and now we have a chance to demonstrate to the world that there's another way.

Man, these people are hurting.

[sighs] The dream hadn't changed.

The physical realities have changed.

There are a lot of uncertainties.

And... poor people who are never in a good place in good times are even in a worse place in bad times.

Tent city, drug addiction, homelessness.

This is absolutely astounding that in Boston, Massachusetts, people are living like this.

It's unsustainable.

We cannot continue to do this to each other.

JOEY CUZZI: Many of our students live in some of the poorest areas in the city with the highest level of unemployment, has the highest percentage of people of color, has the highest number of adults who have been incarcerated.

Many have been unemployed or chronically unemployed their entire adult lives.

As you can clearly see, the neighborhood itself has deteriorated a lot.

We have drug users, drug sellers, human trafficking, everything that you can imagine.

But we're still one of the few sort - of optimistic places... - I see that.

...that are offering people something very concrete in a way out of the situations that they're currently in.

We have two programs.

The first program has people in it who are not currently incarcerated but have criminal backgrounds.

And some of our adults are in a pre-release program that allows them to come to NECAT and train here even while they're remanded.

So they come with a court officer every day.

They get dropped off and they get picked up.

But they're part of the program.

- Good morning, everybody.

ALL: Good morning.

It's so good to see y'all.

We're gonna start by just noticing that you've made it here on time.

You're in the line.

You've got your uniforms.

You look awesome.

Start by taking a deep breath in.

Let it out with a sigh.

[exhales] At any point today, we can return to our breath, to our breathing if you feel stressed, if you get overwhelmed.

You can't take the heat in the kitchen, take a minute, take a breath.

MAN: Our time.

- Yes, sir.

No matter what happens today, we have this resource with us.

There's plenty of air around us.

And imagine a glow in your chest that lights up.

Let that glow fade softly as you breathe out.

Whatever happens today, we can return to our center.

- We can return to our ground.

MAN: We got 11 minutes.

Okay?

So let's shake it out.

All right, guys, let's go.

We have a special guest in the house.

Mr.

Bill Strickland.

Bill Strickland is the founder of our organization.

I apologize.

I had to put my mask on.

I'm a double lung transplant survivor, so I'm immunosuppressed, and they have me on a very powerful medicine, but I have to wear the mask.

I'd just like to stick around for a while.

I'm excited to be here.

I'm excited to see you here, and I'm having a good day because you're bright.

You don't look depressed.

You look like you got something to do.

That's oxygen for me.

I breathe better when I'm around you.

My goal in life is to demonstrate that there's hope in the world, 'cause that's my thing.

[applause] I'm a single mom of three.

I put myself through college.

I became a teacher.

I also became one of the first women to actually do a charter school here in Massachusetts.

- Right.

- I had a very good trajectory in my life until I got into a really abusive relationship.

And during that time, I experienced a little bit of trouble with the law, unfortunately.

I wound up getting a federal charge of bank fraud.

But... Please, I apologize.

My life was pretty much in a wreck, and I was a little broken when I got here.

I'm not gonna lie.

But I always seem to find my way back to the kitchen, you know, especially when you are... When you may not necessarily be having the best of days.

It's one of those places where it's gonna lift up your spirit, and you're gonna want to create something beautiful.

- That's magic.

- That is def... It is magic.

And then watching my mother make magic every day with very little, I think, is what really made me honor the kitchen.

- That's the heartbeat.

- Yeah.

The idea of nutrition, food and hope are strongly connected on many different levels.

Sitting down at the table or however a family might come together and eat a meal together offers opportunity for connectedness, an opportunity for relationship building, for, um... celebrating successes of the day, helping to problem-solve through barriers.

So, you know, certainly nutrition and food can create a connectedness, something greater than just me, like family or community.

BILL: Food was an essential part of the culture of our home and our family.

My mother fed everybody that came by.

Friends were welcome at the table.

Even though sometimes we didn't have a lot.

It was still available to anyone who visited the Strickland home.

And it's still the case as far as I'm concerned.

And that was really a very powerful image of the generosity that my mother provided.

Almost anyone who cared to make themselves available to it.

The reality is food's fundamental.

You don't eat food, you die.

This is not theoretical.

I'm grateful to be here in this conversation.

And the fact that we have survived with dignity and accomplished something in life... That's my mother's spirit speaking through all of us.

The research around this idea of willpower shows that your willpower and my willpower is tied to the glucose in our system.

And what that means is that when our glucose depletes, so too does our willpower.

And the problem with that is that willpower is strongly associated with a concept called self-regulation.

And what that means is, is that when our willpower is depleted, our ability to engage in self-control of our thoughts, emotions, and behaviors is also depleted.

And because hope is, or this willpower concept is tied to glucose, what that tells us is nutrition matters, food matters.

BILL: We've learned that food is spiritual as much as it's nutritional.

And so we have a culture of celebrating food and, by the way, human health, they're connected.

- [indistinct chatter] - There you are.

It's the value proposition that goes with the food, is the key to the puzzle.

I mean, anybody can teach a person to push a button at McDonald's, but we've gone well beyond that in our program.

It's a curriculum, it is aspirational.

And when they graduate, they have a skillset.

More importantly, they have the confidence to go with it.

[indistinct chatter] STEVEN W. TOMKINS: I'm a county sheriff, meaning that if your sentence is two and a half years or less, you come see me.

On any given day, I have 12, 1,500 inmates that are at the lowest ebb in their life.

I will say this.

Most of the people that go through the system, we don't save.

It just happens.

We don't.

But I will take that percentage of those that we do save.

I know.

So when you talk about having a program like this that is open to coming behind the walls into a prison setting to teach individuals how to better themselves, it's awesome.

The program is pretty intense.

Rise to the challenge because they're being challenged, but they're being challenged in a different sort of way, in a way that they'd never been challenged.

It's a wonderful thing though, to see.

We've actually looked at incarceration and one of the things that we're specifically looking at are not only aspects about childhood adversity that may have robbed us of hope, but the experience of shame and rumination limits the possible futures that I think I deserve.

Now, part of this is important because we know that hope is one of the strongest predictors of wellbeing.

But there's also a body of research that shows that when we nurture hope, recidivism rates diminish.

I got kicked out of school.

I was a bad kid.

I was doing dumb stuff, and I went to a vocational school and culinary arts really grabbed me.

It pulled me into something.

And if it wasn't for culinary arts, I don't know where I'd be.

I'll be somewhere either gang-related, selling drugs, locked up.

- Same old story.

- Like, it really changed who I am as a person.

This is my domain, this is home.

It's amazing to me to have something so nice inside of four walls that you would never think.

This is sanctuary to me.

And I explain to them that all the time, whatever goes on out there, don't bring it in here.

These four walls were different.

And we act different, we move different, and we have fun in here and doing something.

Hope is something that happens in relationships and is oftentimes depleted as we feel like or experience loneliness.

And so a culinary program where many individuals are working together, supporting each other, holding each other accountable for achieving the goals and the pathway absolutely can nurture hope.

BILL: Well, there but for the grace of God go I. I said, "Look, I could been in one of them prison uniforms, instead of here with you."

If I hadn't had Frank Ross as my art teacher, if my mother had not put me on a... on the path of straight and narrow.

But this chef instructor, he's very gifted and really an extraordinary human being who, in spite of all odds, has got these... prisoners thinking that they have a chance at rebuilding their lives.

- That's hopeful.

- Concentrate.

Stock is more... With a lot of vegetables and a lot of things leftover for soup.

- Yeah.

- It's important that we reach you.

Because, in my view, you're our future.

There are a lot of people that tell you aren't.

I'm telling you, you are.

And just because you may have had a few bumps in the road does not mean that that's the total story, because it is not the total story.

You're just beginning your life.

Now, you've had some setbacks, but I'm here to tell you, that is not the end of the road.

I'm betting my life that I'm right.

For real.

That's the reason I came here.

I'm starting to look back on my life and see all the bad mistakes that I've done, and I'm trying to correct it now, this time around, it's like I had enough.

I don't know anything about cooking, but at the same time, it's something new.

And if you can't experience something new, it's hard to change.

You know what I mean?

I'm willing to do anything to be able to change.

So that's why I'm here.

BILL: I'm gonna make sure people who have been incarcerated, that they have hope.

And that just because you came up poor or in a tough neighborhood is no reason why you can't succeed.

Don't tell me what you can't do.

I know what you can do.

My family was poor, man.

My dad didn't work.

He was a brilliant contractor.

Because he was Black, he could never get into construction units, and it killed his spirit.

And it was tough to see that happen to my dad.

My father had this very tragic fascination with sort of the darker side of life.

And he made his living for a while as a pool player.

And so my dad was a man of many talents, let's say, and that was one of them.

But, on the other hand, he had this sense of industry and purpose.

So it was a very mixed portfolio of personality in my father.

So I built the school, and he said, "I want to go back home."

I said, "Where are you at?

You are home."

He said, "No, I'm going to go back to the kitchen."

And so I found out that he was the first Black chef hired by the Hilton hotel chain in Chicago after the II World War.

And so he went... We put him back in the kitchen, and that's where he died.

He was a good employee.

My mother said, "Your father will never tell you, but I'll tell you, you saved his life, you gave him a job and you had Mr.

Strickland on his door and he had a chef's outfit on when he came to work every day.

You gave him his pride back."

The centers actually saved me too.

They saved me by keeping my spirit alive.

Because I am... a very complicated man, because I'm not normally balanced.

My deal is I go from despair to hope in a millisecond.

And these centers became the antidote to my own depression.

If I hadn't built the center, I probably never would have made it.

These centers are about living, not about dying.

So I need to continue this work.

We've got 13 of them open now around the world, including Israel.

There are not many programs like this in Israel that bring Arab Israeli and Jewish Israelis together under one roof.

NAIM OBEID: Akko, it's North Israel.

Akko is a shared society.

Arab and Jewish living side by side.

But our students will live most of their lives separated in different neighborhoods.

But within the center we have 50% Arab and 50% Jewish.

And just by bringing them together, we can show them that there is nothing wrong about meeting, speaking to each other, respecting each other, and even talk and discuss about the sensitive issues, but in a very respectful way and then watch them becoming friends is actually the proof of the success story we're having here.

We made it possible when people didn't believe that there gonna be any chance that they could be united again.

We made it possible when all other organization did freeze all shared society activities, while we did believe that we can do it.

This was our place as A-CAT to step in to say, "We're here, we gather together to bring what's right to the table, what is needed to our community and support them."

From my understanding, we gave hope to a lot of people, people that lost hope, that didn't have any chance.

And hopefully one of the students that is studying here today or tomorrow will take it a step further and change the future for my children.

I think just by the experience of... getting to work together, getting to know each other, understanding that we're probably much more similar than we are different, you're creating a sense of community that transcends those important cultural divides.

That can enhance this idea of a collective hope within the context of that school.

Now, there may be some where that trust has been shaken in some regards.

I'm not saying that because we nurture hope, everything is going to be wonderful.

But the foundation is there.

And even in Israel.

It works, the vision works.

And to me, that's the genius of his vision.

That it's human.

You wouldn't think that it would change people's lives, but it clearly does.

What he's done is nothing short of remarkable.

He saves lives.

He helps people.

Bill would probably say that I was one of the kids who kind of got it, you know, and I understood what that place was and what it could offer me... in my life, really.

So now it's like, "Wow, a water fountain, fresh flowers, good food, trust."

I get it, you know?

And at the time, it was just life, right?

So, in some ways, like a teenager would, I took it for granted, right?

And now it's like, "Wow, this is what I want for everyone."

I commend you for keeping your word.

Because you keeping your word didn't just help you, but it helped people like us.

We respect you, we value and we just thank you.

So great to meet you today.

BILL: I'm only here to celebrate what you're already doing.

I'm not doing the work.

You are.

Something inside of you is changing.

You have to do this for yourselves.

It's really important that you remember you're a symbol to your children, and they are counting on you.

In fact, I'm counting on you.

I see you as solutions.

I came here because... This has got to stop, man.

We can't go on like this.

We can't have people... dying in the streets because they have no reason to live.

And I believe it so much I'm prepared to bet my life that I'm right.

The other thing I'm prepared to do is to join forces with you, guys.

To change this country in our lifetime.

I'm not doing this for my kid.

I'm doing it for me.

I want to play this hand out and see where it takes me.

["I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free" by Nina Simone] Wish I knew how It would feel to be free I wish I could break All the chains still binding me, yeah I wish I could say All the things that I can say when I'm relaxed I'd be starting anew I wish I could be Like a bird in the sky Don't leave me.

How sweet it would be To find that I could fly I'd soar to the sun And look down at the sea Then I'd sing 'Cause I know how it feels To be free Then I'd sing 'cause I know How it feels to be free I wish I could share All the love that's in my heart Wish I could break All the things that bind us apart Wish you could know what it means To be me You'd see You'd agree Everybody should be free 'Cause if we ain't we're murderous Wish I could be like a bird in the sky How sweet it would be If I find I could fly Soar to the sun Look down at the sea I know Yes, I know Oh, yeah Spirit's moving now [hums]