Hugging Community | Artist and Activist Dewayne Barton

Dewayne Barton is an artist, activist, social entrepreneur and voice of vision—all from the vantage of uplifting his Burton Street community. 

He escaped the scourge of crack cocaine while growing up in D.C., moved to Asheville after time in the U.S. Navy and devoted his life to building up community. He co-founded the nonprofit pathway to employment called Green Opportunities. He developed Hood Huggers International and the Peace Garden in his beleaguered Burton Street neighborhood.

His latest initiative is a business incubator called Blue Note Junction. We’ll talk about all of that, along with his new playbook for community development with accountability.

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Transcript

Dewayne Barton: In D. C., straight up, yeah. I used to have to go out early in the morning with my father to do all types of stuff.

And I hated it. Yo, man, I'm 10 years old. I want to watch cartoons, eat cereal, hang out with my friends. I'm not trying to go out and, Change the world. Yeah, man, nah. I was still in chill mode. Cartoons and cereal. 

Matt Peiken: So you were that young when you were indoctrinated and introduced to the idea of community activism.

Dewayne Barton: If not younger yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to have to be out there. Even if I didn't know what they was talking about, even if I didn't know what they was doing, I was in the room. I was present. And, so that's how I got into it. 

Matt Peiken: What were some of the things your dad was fighting for and advocating for?

Dewayne Barton: Man, taking care of the neighborhood. People stopped pissing in the buildings. He taught boxing. He used to coach a semi pro football team. You name it. I just remember either being around it or listening to it. And yeah, he was just active. 

Matt Peiken: Wow. When do you remember something mattering to you?

Dewayne Barton: That's a great question. A real good question. This is the thing immediate on my mind, I just had a tour with Habitat, and we was just really talking about building, and the future of the city, housing, and getting people in housing. During the crack era, it was like all these crack houses and people selling crack everywhere as crack houses. And what I noticed was that people was flipping the crack houses and turning them into renovating them and then selling them for nice piece of change. And I said, man, that, I see that, that look like that's a value proposition for me.

How do I get involved with that? How do I become a skilled craftsman or a skilled person where I can start flipping these houses? Cause you could get them for real cheap, cause it was the neighborhood was run down boom, boom, boom. And I said, that matters, and then I just remember looking through the fence and feeling like, wow, this is happening right in my community, but I'm detached from, I don't know how to get to that goal.

I said, one day I want to be able to do those things. I want to be able to redevelop a neighborhood, not just by cleaning it up, but actually building it. 

Matt Peiken: And did you do that for the first time in D. C. or did that wait until you arrived in Asheville? 

Dewayne Barton: Hell nah man, nah, D. C. was I just felt wow, how could this be happening right underneath my nose and I don't know how to access it. So you Fast forward 50, 40 years later, 30 years later, whatever. And yeah, that's what came up.

The idea around Green Opportunities, that green jobs training program came in my head back in I was like, Sophomore, junior in high school, and I was like, man, I want to get into this. I think that there's some promise, there's a future in this, but it never materialized. My life didn't take me into that area until I came here. 

Matt Peiken: Where did it take you before you came to Asheville? Talk about your winding path. 

Dewayne Barton: Oh man, it's all over the world. Just over the world, all over the world, having a variety of different experiences. Just 

Matt Peiken: traveling on your own? 

Dewayne Barton: No, I had to have a, I had to raise my hand at Uncle Sam to go die for a flag that painted me evil. That's what I had to go do. 

Matt Peiken: So you spent time in the military? Yeah. Were you in the army? Navy. Navy? Yeah. Okay. And how did that experience shape your future? 

Dewayne Barton: I think it was one of the most powerful things that could ever happen to me to find out Tarzan wasn't real. You know what I mean?

It was a big deal. It was one of the most impactful experiences that I ever had. And I still think traveling can be the most powerful educational thing that you can introduce to young people is to take them and let them see the world, let them interact with people. 

Matt Peiken: Traveling through the military is a lot different than traveling on your own though, isn't it?

Dewayne Barton: Yeah, most definitely. You gotta have a uniform on, you gotta be in, you gotta curfew. Yeah. Yeah, it's a different thing. That's why the goal for me before I moved back here was to travel. I wasn't planning on moving back to Asheville. The goal was to travel the world. And, but I came back here instead.

Matt Peiken: What brought you first to Asheville? What was the reason? 

Dewayne Barton: My mother, My mother. Okay. 

Matt Peiken: And, obviously you tell me about your experience when you lived here with your mother the first time. Your experience in Asheville. What was that like?

Dewayne Barton: I was a young dude. I don't remember too much. I remember when I was young, going through the woods and chilling out. And then I used to come down here for the summers, because sometimes D. C. was hectic. I was like, man, let's go down in the woods in the country and chill out for a little bit. So I used to come down here for the summer times.

Yeah. And chill out. 

Matt Peiken: After the military, why did you come back to Asheville? You could have gone anywhere. 

Dewayne Barton: Yeah, my moms called me on the phone and said, yo, I want you to come home. That's all it took. 

Matt Peiken: And you really made this your home. How long after you moved back here, did you start Green Opportunities?

Dewayne Barton: When did I start Green Opportunities? I co founded that was Dan Leroy. Ooh, 2008, yeah, so when I came back here, I was already in community development mode. I was under instruction with other leaders around the country. I was always under somebody who was doing some type of community work.

Either building a community center, you name it. When I was young, I hated it because it seemed like I had to do it. But as I got older, I couldn't escape it. So we went overseas, like to Puerto Rico, Africa. I would always find a community leader in that particular city or town or country. To hang out with and to just kick it, just to learn from them.

Matt Peiken: While you were in the military? Oh, most definitely. That's really interesting that you went out of your way, outside of your role of what was prescribed to you in the military. Oh, yeah. What do you owe that to? Very few people would ever do that. What do you owe that to, to step out into community, involve yourself in neighborhoods that aren't yours and work on community development. 

Dewayne Barton: I can't tell you what it's just in me to do. It's just in me. It was just in me to do. So I did it, and people used to think I was tripping. Man, what are you doing, man? You gotta go. You know, People used to think I was tripping, but Once I got engaged with it, it was just so much.

It's so much need. So if you're a person who would really want to see things improve, you want to go to the people who's actually trying to do it. Especially people on the ground, the real hustlers. And I was just fascinated to ride around their community and them showing me what they're doing and what they're working on.

It was just like a powerful experience. 

Matt Peiken: How did that experience stamp what you would go on to do with Green Opportunities? 

Dewayne Barton: Remember during that time, I was under instruction. I didn't really had a confidence. I wasn't somebody who was out there doing. I was just listening and learning not until I came to Asheville where I realized that it was me. That's one regret I had when I first moved here. I didn't want to be here. I wasn't planning on staying. So I wasn't really eager to make any connections with any local leaders here, and I had so much momentum and knowledge around it because I've been around all these people from all over the country.

I just was in hustle mode okay, let's make it happen. I know what to do. 

Matt Peiken: But you didn't even necessarily want to invest your time in Asheville. 

Dewayne Barton: Not necessarily, not initially, because I said, nah, I'm gonna stay here for about six months to a year, and then I'm gonna be out of here. You know what I mean?

I wasn't, I was all in my mind, I'm going to wait till my mom's calmed down a little bit, then I'm out.

Matt Peiken: But when you developed Green Opportunities or co founded Green Opportunities, you couldn't get out because then you're in with both feet.

Dewayne Barton: By the time Green Opportunities came around, I was already locked in because my neighborhood was cracked out. Like I said, man, I remember this back when I was in middle school, elementary school and now it's still lingering in Asheville. I know how this story going to end.

People are going to die, go to jail, the neighborhood is going to flip, people are going to buy and come in and flip the houses, and everybody is going to be pushed out. So I knew when I came back, I was like, oh man, I know how this story is going to end. What can you do to change it? What can you do to prevent it?

What can you do to put people in positions so they won't become a victim of this? Because I've seen it in D. C. Hampton Roads. So I said, okay. So that really engaged me, knowing that really got me to really hunker down and try to do what I can to try to preserve, protect, and create opportunities in the neighborhood.

Matt Peiken: You were observing things in the Burton Street neighborhood specifically that you felt were unjust. Did you feel that there was active city neglect of Burton Street or were there more deliberate things? Yeah. 

Dewayne Barton: Hell yeah. Talk about that. What did you see? I mean they abandoned it.

I felt like the community was abandoned. I knew what crack looked like. I knew what my neighborhood, how rich my community was before crack cocaine. I feel like they abandoned it, I talk about it in the book, like the CAP book. I brought you a copy. I hope you brought your cash.

I brought you a copy and I want you to check it out because it has a lot of that specific history you're asking me about, about how I felt, what we had to do as a community to advocate for the interests of the neighborhood. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, were you talking with city leaders? You felt that there was active

Dewayne Barton: I wasn't talking to them. You weren't. No, I was on the ground, man. I'm a ground hustler. No, I wasn't even thinking about talking to them. I was always in my mind, what can we do? If nobody's coming to save us, what can we hustle to do together right now with what we have to transform our neighborhood, period. 

Matt Peiken: What feedback did you get from others on the ground? You were talking door to door and talking to your neighbors. 

Dewayne Barton: I wasn't talking to nobody, I was just doing it. Pick up these 5, 000 40 ounce bottles and crack pipes. Pick up the trash and then, remember it's a crack infested neighborhood, so you ain't gonna go to them dope boys and girls and say nothing to them.

So the safest thing to do was just to pick up the garbage. The place was trashed out. You know what I mean? Pick up the garbage and keep going from there. And then, eventually we said, okay, let's get the young cats in the neighborhood to help us do this so they won't get caught up in that whole pipeline of prison, drug fantasy.

And so let's do our part and then let's try to guide the next generation behind us to do their part. 

Matt Peiken: Is this what led to the development of the Peace Garden? 

Dewayne Barton: Of course, yeah. Because that's what we did with all the trash after we Collected all the trash, we kept collecting 40 ounces of crack pipes, and then we said okay, let's make a safe space in the neighborhood.

Remember, the goal is protect and grow and help monetize the neighborhood. That's the goal. 

Matt Peiken: That's a big, ambitious goal. It's one thing to clean up a neighborhood. It's another to get some help to clean up a neighborhood from the young people who could otherwise be turned elsewhere. And it's another to have Your neighbors take ownership and suddenly feel pride and then to monetize? That's a huge lift. So how did you connect those dots leading to monetization? 

Dewayne Barton: Practice. 

Matt Peiken: Tell me about that. 

Dewayne Barton: Doing it like, taking it one step at a time, doing the trash, creating the space, and then okay, wow. Growing food, Starting gardens. Oh, let's sell the food.

Oh, let's make sure we make boxes for the elders. And it just, it grew. It just grew. It wasn't something that was planned. It was just like, okay, we did this, then they created a pathway there, we took that path, and then it grew. But the whole basis of it was all in community. 

Matt Peiken: And almost to the exclusion of other communities, outside this community. It's within our community. 

Dewayne Barton: The thing was at first we initially started in the community, in the Burton Street community. But then I went to this thing called the State of Black Asheville at UNCA. And when I realized that it was happening all over the city, That's when it really opened my eyes and say, okay, because it was the state of Black Asheville that really made me want to do Green Opportunities.

It was like wow, this happened and this is not unique to Burton Street. It's happening all over the city. What can we do? So the communities need to connect the dots amongst themselves and take this on as An entire city, not as an individual community, is having the same challenges.

Matt Peiken: Right, that's really ambitious. Did you find other people who were taking the baton that you were offering to bring the entire community into this and join you in this effort? 

Dewayne Barton: See, that's what I'm saying when I first got here. My one thing I think I didn't do right. I didn't go check in and see who those leaders was before I started hustling.

I just came and started hustling. I learned them as I went. But I think if I would approach the different leaders in the different areas around the city and approach them and say, Hey, what's going on over here? What's going on over there? I was just so blown away about what was happening in Burton Street, I just stayed focused like boom, do that. But the state of Black Asheville opened that lens up to say, okay, it's happening all over. What can we do together to try to address this? And then, just keep hustling. 

Matt Peiken: You mention you wish you would have gone to the elders in these other communities first. By not doing that, do you think you alienated them? Did that kind of set you back on your heels and have to reset a little bit? 

Dewayne Barton: I don't know if it alienated them or me. I just think I learned from experience. If you come into any area And say you want to help, you need to check in and see what hustling was happening before you got there.

Because there was somebody doing something and it's better to leverage that and add capacity to what they was already doing than to come in and create a brand new script when you don't know what the script was before you got there. 

Matt Peiken: So Green Opportunities eventually reflected that outreach, right?

Dewayne Barton: Yes. Yeah. Definitely. Yeah. Because it was designed to go really all over the world. That was my mind. Okay, once we start here and we get this locked in, let's go across the country and let's take it around the world because I know what happened to our communities happened to them all over the world.

So And it was similar, it was a similar formula, so if we can create a formula that's designed to revitalize and repair these places, it's something that can be replicated. 

Matt Peiken: Did it ever get replicated? I know Green Opportunities obviously has had a deep impact on Asheville. Yeah. Did it get replicated elsewhere?

Dewayne Barton: I think it influenced other people elsewhere who was doing similar work, like as a group over in Knoxville. We knew each other, we went to visit each other, in fact I'm still talking to them today and they're still doing similar work today. So I think it had a powerful influence on others and individuals and organizations and definitely communities.

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Yeah. So did Hood Huggers Was that a spin off at all of Green Opportunities, or was that something else entirely that you just felt other people who are not part of our neighborhood need to come see our neighborhood and see what's on the ground happening here? 

Dewayne Barton: Hood Huggers, it came out of Green Opportunities, because what I noticed, I was like, hold on. Yo, man, these 18- to 24-year-olds, That's our focus area. But, nah. What happened to them before 18? So Hood Huggers came out, okay, how can we create this pipeline to catch these cats like we do sports? I don't know if you got kids or not. I don't. You don't have kids. How soon we give the kids the soccer, the baseball, the basketball, the football?

We don't wait till they're 18 or 24 years old to do that. We give it to them as soon as they come out of the womb, I think they can still be in the stomach. We already buy the basketball, football, wait for them to come out, and that's the first thing we throw in their hands. That's the same thing we need to do for this community development around our environment to protect our environment and business.

So our goal with Hood Huggers was to create that initial pipeline, the headwater. We feel the neighborhoods are the headwater and that's where we need to create the initial infrastructure to support what we want our community and our young people to do. It has to happen in the neighborhood.

Matt Peiken: What's really interesting to me is when you grew up, you were brought into this from very early in your life, whether you wanted it or not. And you're talking about Hood Huggers doing the same thing. Yes, exactly. So what did you want to impart to young people specifically that they would not have had introduced to them if not for Hood Huggers? How do you get young people to feel a sense of responsibility for the neighborhood when they'd rather be elsewhere?

Dewayne Barton: Pay 'em, you attract them with pay. Yeah. You attract them with fun trips. You attract them by valuing them and their opinion and their thoughts. Having them build something in their community that they could never imagine that they could play a part in building. And them being proud about it and confident.

The same thing I got before crack cocaine. See, all this is a repeat. Before crack cocaine came to my neighborhood, that's what I got from my neighborhood, but I got it from a variety of people. My whole neighborhood was locked in supporting the young people. Everybody, you can walk down the street, everybody checking in with you.

Everybody's support. You can make money in the neighborhood by taking out people's trash and running to the store doing ads. That's what I'm repeating. That's all I'm doing is repeating what happened to me when I was young and I know It was good because what I'm doing it works And so what we're doing is just trying to repeat the pattern. That's all. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah the Hood Huggers tours Specifically was that because you felt white Asheville needed to see what was happening in the core of Black Asheville? 

Dewayne Barton: Nah, I named it Hood Tools because I was trying to attract Black folks to look back at our history and know how rich and deep and resilient it is.

Period. In fact, when I first wanted to name it Hood Tools, people were like, nah, you probably shouldn't name it that because it has The hood. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Negative connotation. 

Dewayne Barton: Yeah, yeah, yeah, Yeah. I'm like, nah. Cause I'm trying to attract a certain demographic because what was so crazy about Burton Street, when I first moved back there, I didn't know the history of the place.

The crack cocaine was too deep, and deep, and I was like, man. But when I learned the history, I was just blown away. I said, this is amazing. And then I realized man. If we know the richness of the history, to know the richness of the culture, to creating a way out of no way, it should be inspiring us to to achieve far beyond our own imaginations.

Matt Peiken: One of the things that's really illuminating about how you shaped this is that you're not running from the history, you're not shying from the darkness of the history, the crack epidemic. You're using it and wrapping that in to show what was taken from the neighborhood, but also what the potential of the neighborhood is.

Dewayne Barton: Oh, yeah, man. Crack cocaine is what inspired me to do this work. It chased me in the military. And now it's motivating me to push, listen, there was, after the war on drugs and crack cocaine, there was never a recovery period. So I'm still in the recovery period from crack cocaine.

It's what is, how are we going to repair these neighborhoods? That was just crushed. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. And at the same time, our epidemics have evolved and moved on to now it's fentanyl and opioids.

Dewayne Barton: And you see what's happening. Yeah. And it was like. We never solved it the first time, so of course it's going to escalate and get even worse. And it's our time what are we waiting for? 

Matt Peiken: Yeah, I asked you about where white Asheville comes into this because it seems in my interactions with you over the years, you seem at least in part motivated to educate white Asheville and also break down a lot of the stereotypes that you think white Asheville might have of Black Asheville and particularly Burton street and some other neighborhoods. Am I wrong in that? 

Dewayne Barton: For me, I want to educate everybody. I want to educate first the communities that we're trying to protect and support, and then anybody else who want to come around and learn even more. I don't have a particular target, but I definitely want to educate everybody. I wanna catch everybody. 

Matt Peiken: Now when did you step away from Green Opportunities and why? This was such a big, personal project of yours and it must have been hard to step away. When and why? 

Dewayne Barton: That's a real tough question because that was like a heartbreak. We put a lot into creating that from scratch, from the dirt in the mud and the potential of it is a powerful thing. I think it was around 2012 and it's not something that I wanted to do. But yeah, so that's all I want to say about that. It was a very painful time for me. Cause like I say, this goes back to high school for me, to actually create it. So one thing Green Opportunities did show for me is if you believe in something and you dream and you really want to make it happen, it's going to happen. It may not happen when you want it to happen, but it's going to happen. And that puts something in me that means The sky's the limit. Whatever I want to happen is going to happen. And so that was a great thing. I had to transition, but I transitioned into that to make Hood Huggers, hood tours, Hood Huggers International.

Now we got the Blue Note Junction project. 

Matt Peiken: Yeah. Talk about the Blue Note Junction project. What is that? 

Dewayne Barton: That's a health and business incubator. And it's designed to add capacity to historically marginalized communities. You know, I say monetize. Yeah, we want to pick up the trash. Yeah, we want people to wave at each other.

But we also want the community to get the bag. And we know in a lot of historically African American neighborhoods prior to urban renewal and other things, they were self sufficient. They had the businesses, they had the infrastructure in there to, for them to do what they can do in spite of Jim Crow segregation.

So we want to build that back. 

Matt Peiken: And so what would Blue Note Junction do?

Dewayne Barton: It will provide the infrastructure for businesses and different people to heal and build at the same time. We're supposed to have a, hot tubs and saunas, supposed to have a greenhouse to grow food, a theater, a barbershop, a market for people to sell their products.

Just infrastructure that's been Destroyed loss. So how do you build back an infrastructure that can build back the business ecosystem. 

Matt Peiken: So it sounds like it's a part education, part support and nurturing of new and existing businesses.

Dewayne Barton: Yes. Yes. And how do you get the young people in the neighborhood to build it. I think communities gotta build their confidence back. That they can dream and they can come true. We definitely want young people to help build this joint. 

Matt Peiken: The last thing I want to ask you about is your own art. When you had an art show several years ago at the YMI, yeah, I was going to buy a piece and I, I couldn't round up the cash.

I really wanted to buy it. You, you're, I think you're a tremendous artist using a lot of found materials. Talk about your Genesis as an artist and what's important to you in your art making. And are you still making art? Yeah, 

Dewayne Barton: I'm still making art. And my art really came out of being an environmentalist.

Just seeing the destruction of the planet and our consumption and how much we throw away and waste. So I wanted to Take that waste and repurpose it and create a message about a particular thing that we need to improve on as human beings. It can be social justice, anything, water quality, you name it.

We still make it art. We don't make it as much as we'd like to be trying to get back to it. And it was all therapy for me, art is therapy. So it was like a way for me to express myself without punching people in the face. And it worked. And I want to just turn that on to other young people.

So we won't always have to use violence as a way of expressing ourselves, which led to the Peace Garden, like the Peace Garden was there because that war in Iraq and the war on drugs, and so it's like, how do we create a culture of peace? You know what I mean? How do we do that? We got to practice.

Matt Peiken: Yeah, and I was just going to connect your art making to the Peace Garden. Yeah. And that's still happening, right? Yeah, that's still happening. Who's caretaking of the Peace Garden? 

Dewayne Barton: Yeah, we're still doing it. That's my own personal therapy. In fact, today's Wednesday. This is where, the day I'm supposed to be out there doing something in the garden.

And the young people that we got coming up under us, they help protect it. We had about 200 volunteers on MLK Day that came out to put a lot of love and energy in. That was very powerful. That always starts us off a good year when we have that MLK Day. And all the people that come out and they bring their kids, no matter the temperature and rain and work so hard.

So it really is a shot, it's like a boost. The first of the year to start the maintenance of the Peace Garden. 

Matt Peiken: Now, is there anything we haven't talked about that you think is important for people to know about what you're doing now or you've got your eyes on down the road?

Dewayne Barton: The thing right now is the book is like when you talk about did Green Opportunities replicate itself? I think in this CAP book, the community accountability plan is designed to help guide communities or leaders like myself to say, okay, run this play. If you at this point in. Run this play and this is the outcome.

And it's all based on experience. So the goal is to go out, preach the gospel of the CAP book and see what people we can connect with. Especially here. Because if I can't do it here, I can't go outside of Asheville. Preach something. And they say, what's happening in your hometown?

And ain't nobody running the plays with me. So what we trying to do now is find people to run plays with. That's probably why I did this interview with you. I really didn't want to do it. But I was like, damn, I got to do what I said in this book. I got to connect the dots. I got to get the word out. Because I got burnt.

When you get burnt in a community 

Matt Peiken: How did you get burnt? What do you mean you got burnt? 

Dewayne Barton: I mean, Green Opportunities, a number of things that happen in this community doing this work that really make you want to go on your shell and not want to come out again, and that's another reason why we did the book.

Matt Peiken: Let's face it, Dwayne, anybody who wants to put themselves out in a big way in a community, especially like Asheville, where ambitions sometimes can be a little muted, and people who want to step out and really make change, people bristle at that. 

Dewayne Barton: Yeah. So with the book. I can always say, I'm running this play from page 7, second paragraph, if you want to get down and understand why I'm moving this way or how I'm moving this way, I got an instruction guide that I go by now.