The first time I understood
The first time I understood
A witness piece, my friend Dustin
My parents were the first Black and White couple legally married in Arizona.
I was the child that made them a family in the eyes of the law.
In seventh grade, a boy in my PE class called me a word the country had not yet finished deciding whether I was protected from. And Dustin Wolfswinkel, the blond, blue-eyed son of the richest man in Arizona, beat the hell out of him before I could.
That is the first thing I want you to know about this platform. Before the policy, before the pillars, before any of the language about stabilize and earn and build and lead, the platform was built by a kid who learned at thirteen that a white American raised inside power could choose, without being asked, to stand on the other side of the room.
Dustin chose. He kept choosing. And then he died at nineteen, and I went on, and forty years later I am still carrying what he did at Rhodes Junior High and what it taught me about what this country could be if more people like him chose the way he chose.
Seven Years of Change is partly what I owe him.
Who he was
Dustin was the All-American-looking kid. Blond hair, blue eyes, the face this country trusts on sight. He was the son of Conley Wolfswinkel, who at that time was the richest man in Arizona and one of the most politically connected. Conley was a fixture in Republican circles. He gave to campaigns. He sat at tables where decisions were made about who got what in that state.
His son did not sit at those tables.
His son hung out with a biracial kid whose parents had to experience Racism to be allowed to exist as a married couple, and another Black friend from the neighborhood. Three of us, mostly. Kids in a PE class in Mesa, Arizona, at a moment in the country when rap was in its infancy and the language of race in America was getting louder and more public every year.
Dustin did not need to be taught what was wrong. He saw it. And when a boy in PE said the word, Dustin did not hesitate and did not wait for a teacher. He handled it. The school learned a lesson that day about what that word would cost in the hallway. For the rest of our time in that building, nobody said it around us again.
That was him at thirteen.
The mansion and the mother
Three times, Conley’s security threw my friend and me out of the Wolfswinkel house.
Dustin was furious every single time. He had invited us. It was his house. He was the son. But his father’s security team, the men his father paid to keep the house the way his father wanted it kept, decided we did not belong, and they acted on that decision three separate times.
I want to be careful about how I say this part, because this is not a piece about Conley. This is a piece about his son. But the contrast matters, because the contrast is the argument. The father’s house had rules about who was welcome. The son had rules of his own, and the son’s rules did not match the father’s. That is the quiet American story nobody tells often enough, that children raised inside power sometimes grow up and notice the terms of the house, and reject them.
Dustin’s mother, Vicki, kept her own house. A separate house. And in her house, my friend and I were welcome every time. She treated us with love and respect in every situation, and the way she treated us stayed with us long after we stopped being kids. When I needed somewhere to stay as an adult, she was the person who opened the door. That is who she was then, and that is who she is now.
What he didn’t get to become
When I went into the Army, I asked Dustin to come with me. He thought about it. He decided not to.
He died at nineteen, in a car, in Laguna Beach. January 31, 1988. I was serving. He was gone before I got back.
His family has carried him in their own way for almost forty years. They put his name on a rehabilitation center in Mesa for adults with developmental disabilities. They put his name on a center for homeless teens. His brother Ashton has said publicly that Dustin mentored a special-needs student at Dobson High School. I believe it. That was the boy I knew. The boy who saw who needed protecting and protected them, without being asked, without needing to be thanked.
I have carried him differently. I have carried him the way a friend carries a friend who did not get the rest of the years. And part of what I have done with those years is build a platform that assumes what Dustin assumed at thirteen, that a country can be better than its house rules, and that the people inside the house can decide the rules are wrong.
What he taught me that became the platform
Dustin did not have a framework. He was thirteen. He had an instinct, and the instinct was correct, and he acted on it without asking anyone’s permission.
The instinct was this. When you see a person being harmed because of who they are, you stand in the way. You do not wait for a teacher. You do not wait for a law. You do not wait to be sure you will be thanked for it, or sure you will not be punished for it. You stand in the way because standing in the way is what a person is supposed to do.
Everything Seven Years of Change is built on is some adult version of that instinct.
The 10% interest ceiling is the instinct applied to money. When you see someone being charged 29% to borrow the rent, you stand in the way. You do not wait for the Fed. You do not wait for Congress. You build a system where the line is drawn and the line is drawn honestly.
The seven-person team is the instinct applied to scale. You do not need a national movement to stand in the way. You need six other people and a street. That was how Dustin did it at Dobson. That is how it still works.
The four-phase arc, stabilize, earn, build, lead, is the instinct applied to time. A person who was harmed yesterday cannot be asked to lead today. They need to get stable first. Then earn. Then build. Then lead. The arc is patient because the instinct has to be patient in a country this big. Dustin was lucky. He got to skip the first three phases because he was born in the house that hurts people, and the house had already stabilized him, fed him, and given him the standing to act. Most people are not born in that house. Most people need seven years. That is partly where the number came from. That is what the platform is for.
What I owe him
Dustin did not get to grow up. He did not get to become the man he was going to become. He did not get to see what his thirteen-year-old instinct would have looked like at forty or fifty or sixty, standing inside a country that is right now being run by people who would have thrown us out of that house a fourth time, a fifth time, a hundredth time, and not been bothered by it.
I got to grow up. I got the years he did not get. And what I owe him, what I have owed him since January 31, 1988, is to do something with those years that honors the choice he made when we were kids.
Seven Years of Change is the thing I am doing with the years. Not the only thing. Not the last thing. But the big thing. The thing I want him to have been part of. The thing I wish I could have walked into his mother’s kitchen in Mesa and shown him, and watched him nod the way he used to nod when he decided something was right.
He would have been sixty years old this year. He would have been gray by now. He would have had kids of his own, and his kids would have grown up in a house with different rules than the one he grew up in. He would have been one of the men this platform writes to, and he would not have needed to be written to, because he would already be in the work.
He is not here. So I am writing to the ones who are. And I am telling them, the way I am telling you, that the first person who showed me what standing in the way actually looks like was a thirteen-year-old white kid from Mesa whose father’s security threw me out of his house three times and whose mother opened her door every time I needed it.
That is who Dustin was. That is who he would have been. And that is part of what this platform is built from.
One more thing on the public record
I have filed my own suit in the Northern District of California to recover what was promised under Public Service Loan Forgiveness. I qualified. I have proof. I qualified under the one-time Biden/Harris exception. There has been congressional involvement. I have been denied anyway. I am one example of a much larger pattern - people who worked, who served, who complied, and who were denied fairness by an institution that promised it. The Community Usury Ledger documents that pattern. This platform was built, in part, to interrupt it.
If this lands for you, write to us. Sí Se Puede.