Meet Jason Harris

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Jason Harris. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Jason, so great to have you sharing your thoughts and wisdom with our readers and so let’s jump right into one of our favorite topics – empathy. We think a lack of empathy is at the heart of so many issues the world is struggling with and so our hope is to contribute to an environment that fosters the development of empathy. Along those lines, we’d love to hear your thoughts around where your empathy comes from?

Fortunately, for me, I was born into a family that valued service as an intrinsic human behavior so empathy was something that was modeled for me through the work and behaviors of my grandparents, parents, aunts, uncles. This part is through the church, but it was a general behavior, and the value of it is that empathy, as an energy is something that creates movement in your life in a positive manner. What I mean is that doors open; it engenders reciprocity. I remember things like my father always no matter what he was doing made time to run our church’s soup kitchen. I remember my grandmother preparing bags of food for neighbors to pick up. I remember one evening a whole Polish family showed up at our door and took refuge in our house as my mother was working with some people to arrange housing for them. Cousins would come and live with us because they needed a change of scenery or because they were going to school near us. All of these types of decisions require empathy. Empathy is a social energy that requires one to develop the perspective of valuing how your own decision making can positively impact something other than oneself. The gift of empathy is that it operates as a force, thus when you put it out in the world, an equal amount of it returns to you.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

Hi, my name is Jason and I am from Connecticut. I have made my life as an adult in Baltimore Maryland for the past 25 years where I have raised children, owned houses and worked in community. I am currently excited about my work, because I am doing pretty much what I envisioned myself doing in third grade, but there was no job description for who I felt I was going to become, so I went to college studied journalism ended up in a mail room in California and then spent 20+ years working in information technology only to get burned out and switch over to educational technology which has led me to working in Baltimore’s beautiful library system as a technologist who teaches computer literacy to the community. In parallel to my IT career, I work in community as a cultural worker. I helped found a martial arts group that teaches Capoeira Angola, which is an Afro Brazilian martial Art; I played in a samba band; I’ve built websites for people in the community and eventually I begin leveraging my technology background to teach STEM to youth. For the past six years, I have been building a practice that teaches coding and robotics and other stem-based subjects to youth in Baltimore and Dakar, Senegal. My business is called The BlkRobot Project and currently our biggest project is that we have high school students at three schools in Africa building satellites. I am absolutely excited about what I get to learn and share with students and I feel like the third grader that dreamed about geodesic domes built by Buckminster Fuller and solar panels on top of the White house (which President Jimmy Carter did do when I was in third grade).

If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?

Remember when we had PSAs that said Reading is Fundamental? It really is! One thing I’m always asking people around me whether they are youth or older is what are you reading? I ask that because it’s one thing to read something on the website it’s a whole different practice to read a book even if it’s in the Kindle or some kind of reader. Reading a book is the key to unlocking a comprehensive way in which to interact with the world. Reading allows us to be confident about information because what we read is generally built on bodies of information. Now those bodies of information could be erroneous, but it’s a different basis upon which we can build our our on and the practice of reading gives us an intellectual discipline and desire to continue to learn. You know what you know and what you don’t know when you’re reading a book versus reading or listening to a podcast. We are allowing ourselves to be acculturated in this moment by opinion, rather than fully formed bodies of information. My parents gave me a set of encyclopedias when I was young and I read them cover to cover; the world book encyclopedia, and that became the window that opened me up to the world and developed my curiosity and confidence to find out more about the world. We’re in the information age so there’s so many things that are available and we can have them literally in the palm of our hand through our phones but the info is not curated in any way shape or form. We can pick information that targets us because it wants to sell us something, and we don’t have any kind of cultural or educational processes that allows us to discern to filter that information so reading books is fundamental that for me is the core of how people can live, fuller more informed lives. So reading is one thing in this moment that I feel is the most important quality or skill for us to nurture. Secondly, I would say, going outside and touching the ground, holding a leaf, standing and allowing a breeze to touch your face. We spend so much time indoors attached to devices that our humanity has been compromised. Touching and experiencing nature helps us re-establish that. Finally…meeting and talking with people in person. Covid placed us in bubbles and silos and we need to emerge from them.

As we end our chat, is there a book you can leave people with that’s been meaningful to you and your development?

The Autobiography of Malcolm X changed my life at the age of 13. My parents had three books in our living room in the house in which I grew up: “Roots”, “Jaws” and “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”. I didn’t read the latter until I turned 13, before that, as I stated early, I was reading encyclopedias, Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew mysteries, Star trek books, Marvel Comics, magazines and such…but Malcom X’s autobiography showed me the story of a man who overcame the limits that were placed on him, overcame the limits that he placed on himself through bad choices, to become self realized, impactful and valued by his community. He was a shining example of discipline and love for his community and even though I had that type of example in front of me with the men in my family, they were quiet about their struggles and missteps, so I only saw the finished product. Malcolm X pulled back the curtain on the journey and pitfalls of becoming a whole Black man, and I return to his book to reinforce the lessons as I get older because his wisdom is still applicable to me.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.blkrobotproject.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/jharrisfuture

Image Credits

Maurissa Stone