S4 E64: Advocating for stronger families and healthy communities
with community activist dad Dereck Reynolds
Key Takeways
I have my foundation, I help other people, but I've been needing help along the way as just as much as I've been helping other people.
When you ask me how am I balancing all these roles it's a very simple answer. And the answer is that I'm not, I'm not doing a good job at it. But I feel like everything that I went through so far has helped me out. I've been able to use it for some kind of advantage, so if I can figure this out, then I'll be able to use it to my advantage and to help my community.
There's so many things that I see that I feel like need to be done. And there's so many things that I feel like need to be said that nobody else is saying. Not that other people are lacking, but it's just things that are my ideas that I feel like I wanna share. So I wrestle with myself with that a lot and on my really frustrated days I wanna give up, I wanna quit, and then I'll turn on the tv. Or I'll watch something on my phone and I'll start yelling at the screen. No, that's stupid. You need to do this. And then that's when I walk right back into it so I know that I'm doing what my purpose is.
And that's why I try so hard for this interview because I want to be able to tell fathers and people, like the purpose of dads. What are dad's purpose? What are we here for? This is what we here for. We're here to teach. We here to feel, we here to love, and console and protect and all these different things. and I wanna show people that we get busy too. We are busy, we have busy schedules. Cause I know plenty of dads that are active and I want other people to start saying that I know plenty of dads that are active. So that's my purpose.
I think community organizing is important. I want to be able to show my sons and my daughter, to be givers, to give, don't be a taker, and when you give, don't look for anything in return. I don't want to be negative, I want to be positive. When I pass away, if there is like some big heavily gates that you have to walk to, you know, show your record of life what you've done. I don't want my highlight reel to be me doing negative stuff, following after other people. I want mine to be he'll be positive even when others are negative. I just wanna show love. I just wanna show respect and love to people.
I always had a kind heart. And I used to be mad about that, like when I was younger I used to be like, you know why I can't just be like F this, F that like everybody else. Why I can't just be coldhearted like everybody else? Why I can't just say no and be mean when something bad happened to me. It's just never been in my heart. And I used to hate it cuz I used to just feel like I was too soft.
And it's my opinion that you can't have a healthy community full of broken families. That will never work. So I would like to see more families, two parent households. More men on these streets that hold kids accountable. We need more dads to do, is to be nosy, to be in the business, to get in the middle of stuff to just be the annoying guy that get on the kids' nerve. Just be there. That's what I would say.
I think what moms could do is champion this happening. Talk about it, respect it, promote it because it's very important. I feel like the presence and the perspective and everything that a man brings to the table is just discredited. There's a lot of dads who don't get the same respect as the mother. I think that dads deserve it as well. But, you gotta actually know how to do them. And I'm learning as I go. The only type of reference that I have for this is the Cosby Show. But I never seen it up close in person. So that's why it was important for me to be in the home, to be there the best I can so my kids are not having to learn everything on the fly as they go. And that's important.
And a lot of times moms, our matriarchs just protect us. They might protect us to a fault. And I think that we didn't always get the things that we needed, and if there was no man there, who do we mirror? We looking in the mirror for something to mirror after and all we see is ourself. All we see is our friends or we don't see anything. You gotta know how to do these things and it is important for dads to have that reference.
I think we help the next generation by showing the presence that you can be there, that you can be consistent. And one thing that the Hug of Dad Foundation is doing and the reason why I started it was just because I was having an incredibly difficult time getting, respect and rights to my son in a family court system. And then I would see a lot of other dads, who weren't getting the respect. And, I used to think my situation was the worst. Until I seen there's people with way worse situations. So for me, I felt like if I'm barely dealing with this, I wonder how other men are feeling.
If my mom is a small, petite woman and she know that she can, raise hell in front of the cops and do this and do that and move her arms, is it going to be the same for me? Who, where I could be 6' 3'', 320? Am I gonna get the same? Are they gonna look at me the same as they looked at my 5'6'', 120 pound mom? Probably not. They gonna look at me differently. So I need to adjust my doings and my life based off of how people will see me. And so that's the same thing for my son.
We need more dads to step up and apply pressure to show that if y'all are not willing to allow us to parent the way we should then we just gonna fight for it. We going to keep filing motions. We gonna keep showing up, we gonna keep attending these events. We gonna keep marching, we gonna keep speaking, we gonna keep protesting. We just going keep doing it until y'all let up. And that's what I feel like dads need to do. I feel like we need to fire up our attorneys and we need to go to court for ourself because we're funding this system right now. They're using our money to keep us away from our children. And that just doesn't make any sense to me. And it's gonna take me to start to have more confidence in myself and my speaking abilities to really drive that message home.
Not just dads, but I'm helping moms too. Think moms who are having significant issues, moms who are having issues with drugs or parenting period. When I go to court, they make it seem like motherhood is all time nurturing, but I feel like I'm nurturing as well. I might not be nurturing the same way as a mom, but I'm still nurturing. I give my kids hugs and kisses. I cuddle with my kids when they go to sleep. I read books, I give baths. I drop off at school, I go to the bus stop, I do all the same stuff. It just doesn't make any sense to me.
We got politicians, we got people who say they want to lower crime and stuff like that, we got people who are, lovers of statistics, they love numbers, but they won't look at the numbers of fatherhood. They won't look at how important the numbers say that fathers are, in the lives of these kids, they won't even listen to themselves. Kids who are in high school who drop out, last time I looked at it, it was over 70% of those kids drop outta school. I don't think any kid is about to drop outta school who has a dad who works in the building. Or a dad who they know has a direct line to the teacher, a dad who they know comes to report card conferences.
My message to the men in our community, any man is to never give up, you got something positive in your heart, in your mind. You got kids, you're fighting for your kids. Never give up. Men stretch ourselves thin. For a lot of things, a lot of material things, and I think it's time that we give that same energy to stretching ourselves for our families, our communities, our kids.
And for the young boys, I would say, just find the things that you think are cool. Find the things that are important to you that make you feel like somebody. And be with the people that make you feel like somebody. And don't always think you gotta keep up. Keep up with yourself. I don't try to keep up with, who has the nicest clothes or anything like that.
And I think that our women need to understand that men have feelings. We might try not to show it all the time, but we have them. And I would just like to see where people can co-parent together. People can put aside their differences and just try to really do things for the good of our children, our communities, our families, and that's my goal.
Bio
As a single dad, I quickly learned how unwelcoming the family court system is to the family structure. This became evident once I witnessed dads of all races being marginalized in their desire to be active dads. The Hug-A-Dad Foundation is dedicated to strengthening communities by strengthening families through the lens of fatherhood and mentorship. Fatherhood and male mentorship is crucial to the health of our communities. Active positive men give male youth something to mirror and young girls an idea of what characteristics to look for in good men.
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