The Catalyst
Ideas with a spark, energy, range and the ability to start things.
Tamika Mallory embodies The Catalyst, a leader whose private rupture becomes public ignition. The murder of her son's father did not end in grief alone. It became the origin of New York City's crisis management system, which she helped scale from five million to forty million dollars in intervention funding.
“So, I think that that for me is the whole point of black power is that we have to be in a situation, I believe if we have our economic power, our political power, and then we have a sense of unity and responsibility to one another, that we will not need policing in our communities.”
“To take up position actually with my brother right now who is in the nation of Islam. And clearly I know that they have been able to work on people who are even the serial rapists, even the most dangerous, right?”
“Of having to follow this model that they had for what our family was supposed to be. And so I ran away from home at 12 years old. I started to give my parents extreme problems. You know, I wasn't necessarily, I did graduate and did well in elementary school. By the time I got to high school, I was dropping out.”
“Me some tips on different things, and you know, she sent me some stuff like, okay, you should work with this person and, you know, just different ideas. And I always found that that was the right way to approach it was to figure out who knows what you don't know and then try to go to them to get information.”
Angie Martinez IRL: “Tamika Mallory”
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