New Protests Reminiscent of His Childhood Experiences
Henderson has been keeping a close eye on protests in downtown Reno from his usual daytime spot at the Believe Plaza, watching protesters come and go. Having just had knee surgery, he says he prefers to just watch for now, but that recent events do bring back childhood memories.
“My mom and dad were some of the founders of the Black Panther party in the 1960s in Oakland, California, so I am a Black Panther progeny. I remember going to marches as a kid,” he said.
He says he likes the mix of colors he’s seen in Reno, which is reminiscent to his own childhood experiences. Like now, he says, it was also about a mix of issues.
“It was black, white, Chinese, Mexican, Korean, every nationality you could think of. And it was about equal housing, equal living standards. It was about equal schooling, and equal health benefits. It was based upon equal way of living as a citizen.”
He does see some progress, such as when police officers have taken a knee with others, something he says he never saw several decades ago.
“That is like so much improvement in itself. You know, you would never hear that, hear about that, a cop ever doing that,” he said with tears in his eyes.
Henderson, who has called Reno home for the past six years, says he uses his phones to work on his future projects, including trying to set up an organization for others to avoid his fate and “wasted time”.
A Knee Replacement for New Beginnings
“It has showed me happiness. It’s allowed me to grow spiritually and to become a person that is wanting to pay it forward to everyone in my neighborhood that needs it,” he says of his new approach to better reasoning in life.
“Addiction starts with the decisions that you make before you even start using drugs,” he explained. “So, you know, I'm choosing a new direction on how to make decisions, not subjectively, but objectively, not based upon emotions, but actual facts. And, that has taken my recovery to a whole new level.”
He recently had a total knee replacement, and he says he’s staying off pain medicine not to start a new addiction.
“My addiction was so bad that I've been walking on a knee that wasn't connected for about 10 years,” he said. “And so I finally, as I came out of my addiction, I went and finally got the knee surgery done.”
As a survivor, he now has advice for others. “Everyone has a different tolerance for pain to get a better understanding of what's going on in their life,” he said. “Take the time to, before you do something and act upon an emotion, give yourself 10 seconds to think about what's making you mad or whatever it is. Try not to self medicate, process your thinking and figure it out before it's too late. There's a lot of people out here right now that aren't here because they didn't take the time to really adjust to the situation at hand. I'm very fortunate at my age. I've been through so much.”
Henderson is taking his time in rehab to think of a future non-profit he would like to set up as soon as possible. He calls his idea The Core Project. “The idea is people would go into institutions such as drug rehabs, we go into some of the darkest places in America and we find out what went wrong. We want to find out what led to the decisions that people made that led them to a certain point. And I want to call it The Cote because it starts with core values. A lot of these value systems that we pride ourselves on aren't even our own. So if we can learn to adjust to them and change them or identify them because they're character defects, and if we can identify them and correct them, then hey man, we could change the world.”
Working Toward Work and Housing while Staying Sober
Besides his idea for a non-profit, Henderson has several other plans for himself.
“I'm getting a new lease on life,” he said. “I'm getting my CDL (Commercial Driving License), I'm going to school to get my heavy equipment operators license. Oh my God, there's no stopping me,” he said.
He said he is supposed to get housing end of June after graduating from the Crossroads program with another local program called “My Journey Home” but that now he is sleeping at the Reno Events Center, despite the risk of COVID-19 at a shelter. “I am eating humble pie right now,” he said, “but the most important thing is that I stay sober.”
“I can't even afford to even think about drugs right now. I can't even let that thought even enter my process of my thinking,” he said.