In this two-part interview, Gayle “Asali” Dickson shares with Kakoli Mitra why she was moved to become a minister after she left the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the mid-1970s. She talks about how she believes that crack cocaine was deliberately introduced to African-Americans in the early 1980s to bring about the demise of the black community. Asali felt that the system was coming to an end, and that it needed to change. But she wondered whether it would change to one where we would care for each other, mimicking how living beings in nature care for each other. That is what Asali learned from the BPP and what all the black civil rights leaders were talking about, what Jesus was talking about. So, she heard the call to go to seminary; it was a great learning experience and affirmed what she had learned at the BPP, but at a higher level of understanding. Asali frames it as: “serving people body and soul, caring for people.” So, when she had a church, she preached community. She believes that in community we can bring about change, based in mutual caring. Asali explains the importance of the church as an institution for black people, and how the ministry (the teachings of Jesus) allowed her to help reconnect people to each other and to the land and our ecology.