Hello Alameda. Welcome to the Island City Beat podcast. I'm your host Angie Watson-Hajjem. On today's show, I will be talking to two members of a beautiful organization called the Kindness Coalition. The Kindness Coalition is made up of local Alamedans whose mission is simply to commit radical acts of kindness.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:We'll talk about how the Kindness Coalition came to be and the wonderful things they are doing to uplift our community. And with that, let me say hello to my two guests, Deirdre Freeman and Bert Presberg. Hello, welcome to the Welcome to the On City Beat podcast.
Deirdre Freeman:Yes, Angie.
Burt Presberg:Nice to be here, Angie.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Thank I'm so pleased and honored to have you guys on the podcast. So I want to just start by asking you, how did the Kindness Coalition come to be? What was the inspiration for its creation?
Deirdre Freeman:Well, I would say that about a year ago, I sort of realized that my ethic of life is kindness. And I felt like I was always running around doing kind acts for people all around town. And I could get into what those were, but I won't. And I just started thinking, I started thinking, you know, I know I'm not the only person who does this. I know I'm not the only person who leads with a kind heart.
Deirdre Freeman:I would really love to find some others who do. And I decided at that point to start a kindness coalition, and I did that on Facebook. And it started with three of us. Two were my friends and me, and it has now grown to about two hundred eighteen members.
Deirdre Freeman:We'll talk more about that because it isn't actually two hundred eighteen members. It's two eighteen people who wanted to be affiliated with us, but fewer that actually do the work. But yeah, I've always felt like kindness is the answer, and kindness is more important even than IQ or intelligence. If you're a kind person, you will make a big difference in this world, because if we had more kind people, the world would be just such a different place. So I'm so happy to say that now, after a year, we have a real kindness coalition, and it's been going just swimmingly.
Deirdre Freeman:It's been going beautifully.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Yeah. Good to hear. And Burt, how did you get involved?
Burt Presberg:I think like a lot of us, we know Deirdre, and we know what a what a wonderful person she is, and we know about her for her life of kindness. And then to be able to join in and spread this around, I think, is a privilege. And I think exactly as she said, just the more we're able to represent the concept, the more we're able to educate people about how being kind helps everybody, the better off we are.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:So talk to us a little bit about some of the kind gestures that you guys have done in the year that you guys have been together.
Deirdre Freeman:Yeah well, we we we're, So I need to preface this by saying that we have I think we have two hundred eighteen members, but we probably have between twenty and twenty five who are active in the community. So it's just a percentage of the bigger number. We have tried to do a lot. We have helped we have helped individuals who have been in need. We have helped families in need and groups who have been in need.
Deirdre Freeman:We have started a neighborhood cleanup, and with the neighborhood cleanup, a few of us will band together and we'll choose some streets that we think are particularly trashy looking, and we'll go and clean up trash for two hours on a Sunday. We try to do that every two weeks. That is something that I really feel would it would be nice to have a lot more people joining in because then we could spread out and do more cleanup. We we did we've done two free bake sales. And by free bake sale, I mean that we all baked things, and people put their heart and soul into making beautiful homemade baked goods.
Deirdre Freeman:And we brought them to Park Street and put them on a big table. And we have signs, and we just say to people, free bake sale. And people are like, wait. Bake sales are not free. And we're like, this one is.
Deirdre Freeman:They're well, where do we put the money? We don't want your money. We just want to make your day a little sweeter and nicer. So we have done that. And those have been what do you think Burt?
Deirdre Freeman:How did you you were part of both of them. How did you feel about those?
Burt Presberg:I think they've been really fabulous events. And I I think that having them there and seeing people walk up to us and ask how much money it will cost and hearing that it's free and that what we are there about is kindness is is really striking to people and can see it in their eyes and in their faces. And and and they'll tell their children who they're walking with about it. And it gets the word out there that it's possible to be kind to people, that that we want to smile at people, that we want to hug people, and that everyone can have that in mind and do it, too.
Deirdre Freeman:Right. And Burt, it's a very human thing. It's just it's a way of connecting that we wouldn't have otherwise. If we didn't have those yummy baked goods that we made, we would maybe not have been able to talk to all the people that we talked to those days.
Deirdre Freeman:And it was just, it was beautiful connection. And I think life is about connection, and kindness is about interpersonal joy between two people. And we were allowed to have a lot of that during those two bake sales. So we'll definitely do that again. We'll probably do that.
Deirdre Freeman:I'm thinking we'll do it three times a year. There was a big demand for the we actually got rid of everything that We baked.
Deirdre Freeman:So, those were really fun, fun events. We also we also do things as the Kindness Coalition that people invite us to do. And someone had a 10K race in Alameda about three months ago and asked us if we would be the cheering squad for the race, and we got to do that. And that was just such a special thing.
Deirdre Freeman:And it was kindness is simple. Kindness is is is just very, very simple. It was it was easy for us to show up and just say, yay, you're doing it. You're running the 10K It's amazing.
Deirdre Freeman:You know? And giving sharing some warm fuzzies with people early in the morning was just such a beautiful and wonderful thing. So we love it when we're asked to be part of things, and that was one of those instances.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:That's great. You know, I read a study not long ago. They talked about when people show kindness so that people actually put their blood pressure up to make them feel better. Like when you hold the door for someone, we let someone go first, when you buy someone's coffee at Starbucks, it has a real profound feeling inside of you of goodness, and it just makes you feel I don't know, makes you feel high, I think. Mean, me, I know when I do something kind and people look at me and they say, thank you and they smile, it feels so warm and wonderful and fuzzy, like you were saying the word fuzzy.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:It really feels that way. When you give, you get so much back. And it's such a great way to model for our children. When you have parents walking down Park Street, they come to a table, all these goodies that are being given away for free. I mean, I think it's so good for kids to see kindness and see it in action.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:And I also want to ask you, because you are a mom. You've two got kids who are teenagers. Are they all born with the kindness coalition? What do they think about mom and what she's doing?
Deirdre Freeman:Oh, Angie. Well, let's just say, they haven't participated, but I'll tell you something really happy. And that is that the other day, my son came in. He'll come in and sometimes sit on my bed and have little conversations with me now and then. And he came in and he said, Mom, guess what?
Deirdre Freeman:And I said, What? And he said, I had to write an essay in class today and I wrote about the Kindness Coalition. And I said, What? You did? That's amazing.
Deirdre Freeman:And he said, Yeah, I needed to write about something that was uplifting. And he said, That's just what I thought of. So I wrote about it, and I thought, Wow, that so even though he may not always act like he's paying attention, he is. I mean, I think both of my children are paying attention to the things I do. I think they think it's a little geeky.
Deirdre Freeman:Like, it's just a little bit like, why is mom doing these goofy things? But I think in the long run, it will be it's good modeling for them. And I think in the long run, it'll help them.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Oh, absolutely. I'm sure it would. And I'm curious, I know you guys have done a lot of really cool things in the last year that you guys have been together. But are there things that you like if you had a vision of things that you would like to do as part of the Kindness Coalition, Coalition, things that you think that may have a need for us to pay attention to here in Alameda, what do you think that might look like?
Deirdre Freeman:Well, I have a couple. Burt, do you have any? Or I can go first while you're thinking or what?
Burt Presberg:I'm happy to jump in. I really find myself focusing on getting the word out there. Just even the word kindness, just as we were talking about before with the bake sale and putting it in front of people. I think it's just such a even more so than ever. We live in a world where people are lonely and where they're isolated, and we have climate, and we have politics, and we had COVID, and all of that going on.
Burt Presberg:And kindness is the antidote to all of those things. A highlight for me was was our participation in the July 4th parade.
Deirdre Freeman:Oh, Burt, I was just gonna say that. Yeah. That was wonderful.
Burt Presberg:And just having everyone see us and notice and find out what we were all about. And we had stickers that said Alameda is kindness, and we still have some and to spread spread that word around. So in terms of what I'd like, I'd like, you know, sign signs and stickers and giving them to people and reminding them that we can be kind and smiling at people when we walk by them, all of those kinds of things that people tend less to do when their when their heads are in their telephones, when they're communicating by texting and not in person that we that we're, we are urging, like you Deirdre said, interpersonal contact, contact with people.
Deirdre Freeman:Yes. And Burt, just to piggyback on what you just said about the parade, my memories of the parade were see well, first of all, there were so many people there. It was overwhelming. I had never been in the parade, and it was just such a joy to be part of the Kindness Coalition to move through the parade. But there were people that we passed who put their hands over their heart when they saw I might even get teary like telling you.
Deirdre Freeman:I felt like people put their hands over their heart like, Oh my gosh, this group is about kindness. And to me, that was so beautiful and sad at the same time that it is something you know, that we had to come out in the parade for people to see that we are doing these kind things and that kindness is really a thing. It is such a simple thing, but it is so important and so, like, at the crux of everything we should be doing. So it was an amazing feeling to see people looking at us like, wow, they're doing this, and simultaneously thinking like, gosh, I hope they find a way to hook up with us because we we all need to be kind.
Burt Presberg:I went I went along the side of the road and handed out stickers primarily to children, and I thanked each child for for being a kind person. And I handed them to babies and thank their parents for raising kind children.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. And I wanna just mention Deirdre, you were talking about hearts. And I want people to know that you are an artist, a very talented artist here in Alameda, and you are the one that has these beautiful hearts all around Alameda.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Remember during the pandemic, I remember walking around. I do a lot of walking and did a lot of walking when the pandemic first hit. I was working from home, and I would see these beautiful hearts on trees and signposts and all that. And you're the creator of all that. You want to talk a little bit about your art and your hearts?
Deirdre Freeman:Yeah, I guess so. Yeah, I've been making art for about, I want to say, about thirteen years, and my art is called Heartwork. And it doesn't need to have a heart as part of the artwork for it to be heartwork. That's just a name for it because all of my art comes from a very deep place of love. And during the COVID times, I put up about 600 works of art around Alameda, usually on telephone poles so I wouldn't be hurting the trees.
Deirdre Freeman:And that was a really special time. Before that, about two years before that, I would cut hearts out of prints of my artwork and leave hearts all over Alameda, and I left 5,000 of them at that time.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:oh, 5,000.
Deirdre Freeman:And that was also very special. Those were two very special things that I feel like maybe won't happen again, like I had the time in my life to do those things. I wasn't working. I was just a mother not just a mother. You're never just a mother.
Deirdre Freeman:But I was home with my children at that time. But it was very, it was a special thing. And I did make a lot of I made a lot of friends that way, and I I made a lot of really great contacts that way.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Mhmm. If..
Burt Presberg:Angie
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Yes. Go on, Burt.
Burt Presberg:Yeah. You were you were talking before about research about kindness and being a doctor person, I'm very interested in it and won't go into a lot of it. But one thing that's really struck me is not only the calming, fuzzy brain chemicals that get released when someone is kind to us and not and not only the same thing that happens when we're kind with others, but people who witness kindness have serotonin and dopamine and oxytocin release and feel warm and fuzzy just seeing kindness happen. And
Deirdre Freeman:And that makes me think of the fact that kindness is a ripple effect. So if Bert and I go out and do some kind things, people notice and then they think, Oh, that's easy. I can do that too. And it sort of like it spreads in a ripple effect. It's just the most beautiful thing that if you see something beautiful happening, that will happen.
Deirdre Freeman:Someone else will make that happen sometime later. And it's just like throwing a little pebble in the lake and watching the ripples happen from the kindness. So thanks for giving us that scientific explanation, Burt. Haaa.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Yeah, that's really cool. I just want to say that I've noticed that when I'm on a freeway and I let someone come in, I let them, they're trying to get into their space in front of me and I let them go. I notice all the time that same car will let someone else go. Like if I do something, that ripple effect, it's always fine to me. Let me go ahead with them. Oh, someone else go ahead with me.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:So it was really great. Really, it's just all this connection that we have with each other, know? How we have to look with each other. It's really cool.
Deirdre Freeman:And just imagine, imagine what the world would be if everyone really made kindness their ethic. Yeah. It would be such a different world than we have right now. I just really I really believe that I believe in the ripple effect, and I believe that we can make change by being examples for other people as well.
Burt Presberg:And we're we're doing that here in our our little city. I've lived here for three years and on this small town on this island in the middle of the busy Bay Area, and we're surrounded by the bay and its ripples, and we're sending them around our city and and out beyond. And it's a honor to be able to do that.
Deirdre Freeman:Yes. And Burt Alameda is so happy to have you. You're so special. I'm so glad that I took that...
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Both of you guys are ..
Deirdre Freeman:Oh, thank you, Angie.
Burt Presberg:thank you.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:.. All over earth, I I would say. My last question is I wanted to find out if people are listening to this and think, hey, this is so cool. I wanna be part of the kindness coalition. How would they get a hold of you?
Burt Presberg:On Facebook. So we are under just simply look under the Kindness Coalition and ask to join the group. Okay. People are free to join us, and we hope that they'll come in and be active and work with us towards towards doing more things.
Deirdre Freeman:And I should say, also to piggyback here, that we have a monthly meeting. And during the meeting, we talk about things that we want to do. We brainstorm a lot. That's how we get our ideas more than getting them from others. We brainstorm our own ideas.
Deirdre Freeman:And it's also a very sweet social time. It's been a great way for people to meet each other. We've had some friendships made through the Kindness Coalition, which is really sweet. And we would love for you to come and join a meeting and see if we seem like nice people to you. I think we will.
Burt Presberg:I'm pretty positive that she'll think that we're nice people. Yes.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Oh, that's great. Well, it's been so wonderful having you come on and just sharing your heart and the work that you're doing to make this world, to make our little Alameda a brighter, more wonderful place than it is. I mean, there are already so many good things here, of course. But when I see people like you doing work in the world here in our community, it just makes me feel like we are so blessed here in our community. And it's such a pleasure to have people like you in it.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:So thank you, Deidre. And Burt, thank you for coming on the show and sharing your work.
Deirdre Freeman:Thank you, Angie. Thank you doing what you do and getting the word out to people. And I look forward to hearing from anyone who might be interested in joining us. Everybody is welcome.
Deirdre Freeman:Even children can help if they want to help. Anyone with a kind heart or a heart that wants to become kind can join us.
Burt Presberg:Thank you for having us here, Angie. It's been a pleasure.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Thank you. Oh, my it's been my joy. My pleasure. Thank you both. So that's going to be it for this edition of the Island City Beat Podcast. I hope that you enjoyed the show.
Angie Watson-Hajjem:Hope you come back and join us for another edition of our podcast very soon. Until then, I am your host, Angie Watson-Hajjem. Take care everyone, Goodbye.