Thursday, the Kern Community College District (KCCD) held an African American Luncheon with a panel of local Black leaders to discuss what leadership looks like and how they serve their communities.
The event kicked off with a welcome from the KCCD Chancellor, Dr. Steven Bloomberg, who quoted Dr. Martin Luther King and called on everyone in the room to be leaders and take action to bring about change.
A major theme of the panel was what it means to be a leader, even when it is challenging or can take a toll, and when resilience is needed to push through everyday challenges. Pastor Jovon Kemp, Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor and Behavioral Health Unit Supervisor with Kern County Behavioral Health and Recovery Services, stated this happens in his life when he’d rather sit in the back of a room and listen, but is called to lead. He stated that being a leader is both a blessing and a burden.
“The blessing is being able to see the progression of the community, and the tension is, for instance, for me, if I had it my way, I’d sit in the back of every room. I wouldn’t be up here speaking. I would be just minding my own business,” said Kemp. “But the call that’s on my life, and I take it very seriously. So even when I don’t want to do something, I do it because it’s my calling. The tension, for me, is that I want to be in the background. But life is pushing me forward. I don’t want to have certain conversations, but because of the call and the position that I have in the community, and because of the loved ones that I have, and because of the burden that I have for my community, it pushes me to do things that I wouldn’t otherwise do.”
To all leaders, he said it is important to recognize their personal tensions, but also those that they serve. Odessa Perkins, CEO and Founder of emPOWERment Dess Perkin Foundation, is a survivor of human trafficking and advocates for the safety of all children. Moderator Danielle Hillard noted that Dr. Martin Luther King said delay is not neutral; it’s a decision, and asked Perkins what being asked to wait means in her work.
“That wait is a slap in the face,” said Perkins. “That wait means I’m not seen. I’m not hurt. I don’t matter. You’re not as important as everyone else within the community. We’ll get to you later.”
Perkins explained that sometimes people do not want to get involved until the issues directly impact them. She added that if people took action before it hit them, then it might never come to them. As a community, what happens to one person happens to everyone, so Perkins called for leaders to get to work now.
“Let’s be about our business. Dr. King was about his business. There was a call to action that he did. So us as individuals, if we say that we’re leaders and we want to work in his image, we have to continue to do the work. We have to show up, and we have to be honest and have those transparent conversations. So there’s no more wait,” said Perkins.
California City Mayor Marquette Hawkins answered a similar question to Perkins, adding how, as an elected official, he navigates community urgency and institutional processes.
“We have to strike a balance between procedure versus what the community wants yesterday. And so it’s finding that happy medium that makes it tough,” said Hawkins. “This relates to the tension. Tension, essentially, is when you make the decision to do something right versus doing something easy. And at some point, as an official, someone who represents the community, you have to make a decision, and you have to act on that decision, and you have to motivate others to act on that decision as well. You prioritize, you see what issues impact the community the most, and you work down from there, and that’s the way that we handle these problems in terms of what you want.”
When speaking of hope, Perkins explained that she had been advocating for a change made to the eight-hour training that teachers and school officials do on the computer at the beginning of the school year. The issues, according to Perkins, were that only about 10 minutes of it focused on how to spot if a child is a victim of human trafficking. She stated that in 15 years, it was the same training that was not enough to equip a teacher with the needed tools, and while it never changed, “traffickers change every day.”
“Traffickers learn things every day. Buyers learn new ways to do what they do every single day,” said Perkins. “So I was very frustrated doing that training, and I told different elected officials here in Bakersfield, I said, I’m going to tell on myself, yeah, I click through it too. I don’t pay attention to that because it’s the same thing. Tell me something I don’t know already. So, for years in education, I saw that same training.”
She stated that last year, the training included about 25 to 30 minutes and had a lot of information. Perkins explained that, thank God, it felt like a huge change, and someone had finally heard her. She added that trafficking is everywhere, and many times when kids are speaking to people on the internet, it’s not a child on the other end. So, the training is very important for those who may not know anything about trafficking.
Kemp spoke about what vulnerability and accountability can look like in leaders and stated that they must lead by example.
“I think the modeling of vulnerability is okay, but the living in vulnerability is the goal. It’s hard to put on an act when you don’t really live it. And the vulnerability, I think, comes with the ability to have courage to be transparent. I don’t know where we’ve gotten this idea that leaders are mechanical or robots. They don’t have feelings, or they don’t fall short sometimes,” said Kemp.
He continued to say that leaders have to truly live in what they say because people are drawn to love and compassion. Kemp explained that people want to see leaders who do “what’s right even when it’s not popular.”
“The challenge between comfort and conscience. The conscience is that navigator, that compass, that shows you where the North is, shows you where the true North is,” said Kemp. “But sometimes comfort will try to counteract and contradict that conscience, that pilot for you, that purpose for you. And so for leaders, and just in this room, for us, there are sometimes a challenge and a thought, man, if I just went this way, I wouldn’t have to deal with all of this. But all of this is where we need you. All of this is what we need to speak to. All of this is gonna benefit us in this current generation and our children and our children’s children.”
He added that it has become easy for some people to take the easy route, but he encourages all leaders to be resilient and push through the challenge rather than take the easier route.
“So, there’s a challenge between comfort and conscience, and the sad and the scary thing is, some people have overridden the conscience for so long, they don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong. And it becomes easy to do what’s wrong and easy to do what’s comfortable,” said Kemp. “We depend on your giftedness to shine. We depend on your giftedness to lead us to where we need to be. But for the leaders in this room, I challenge, I encourage you that the easier route, the comfortable route, is not always the best way to go. Sometimes we have to shake trees to get the fruit free.”
