Show Notes – To Be and Do Podcast

Host: Philip Amerson | Guest: DeAmon Harges

In this transformative episode, host Philip Amerson welcomes DeAmon Harges—known as the “original roving listener” and a pioneering social banker—onto the To Be and Do podcast. DeAmon shares his experiences and insights on interdependence, social capital, and the power of community resources, shifting the conversation from scarcity to abundance.

DeAmon describes his work in Alberta, speaking at the Aging Alberta Summit about the vital importance of interconnectedness across generations and backgrounds. Drawing from his work in Indianapolis, especially on the city's west side, he unpacks his role as a social banker, an archetype rooted in building relationships, trust, and imagination within neighborhoods. The episode is a deep dive into practical community-building fueled by art, story, and celebration.

Here are three key takeaways from this inspiring discussion:

1. Social Capital is Built Through Relationships and Trust

DeAmon redefines the concept of currency, emphasizing that the most valuable resources in a community aren’t found in bank accounts—they’re found in relationships. The “social banker” archetype cultivates intangible assets like trust, networks, and imagination. These elements empower communities to identify and celebrate their gifts, building abundant, beloved communities.

2. Shifting from Scarcity to Abundance Mindsets

A recurring theme is how people are “schooled in scarcity”—often blind to their own talents and resources. DeAmon insists that true community transformation begins by recognizing neighbors as the biggest resource. He shares powerful examples from Indianapolis, where storytelling, art projects like the Doors Project, and neighborhood celebrations helped residents see themselves in a new, empowered light, control their narratives, and challenge external deficit-driven perspectives.

3. Celebrating Community Gifts Through Art and Storytelling

DeAmon explains that parties, storytelling, and the arts are crucial tools for nurturing social capital. Art projects and public celebrations aren’t just entertainment—they’re essential practices for making the invisible resources in a neighborhood visible, fostering pride and connection. Through these practices, his work has led to tangible achievements, like a resident-led live/work corridor featuring affordable housing, an art gallery, and a social credit union—all anchored in relationships and trust.

Don’t miss this episode if you’re interested in how interdependence, imagination, and celebration can transform neighborhoods. DeAmon’s stories and insights offer a refreshing antidote to scarcity thinking and a roadmap for building thriving, resilient communities.

Listen to more episodes and join the movement for abundant communities!

Greetings, everyone. This is Phil Amerson again with the To Be and Do podcast where we talk about the importance of interdependence and not just individualism and independence. And today I have the great honor of speaking with my friend Diamond Harges. And diamond is. You know, Diamond. Our friend Mike Mather and I used to talk about the genuine article, and you, my friend, are the genuine article. For those who don't know your work, diamond is, well, the original roving listener, and he brings real life and beauty to the whole notion of being a social banker and collecting up the gift skills and talents of people around social. So I hear you're in Alberta today, Diamond.

What you doing there?

Well, I'm talking, having a conversation around what does it mean to be interconnected? And it's at the Aging Alberta Summit. So I'm talking to folks why it is important for young people and old people, black people, white people, to live in an ecosystem together because they're humans. So. Yeah.

So tell us a little bit about. Well, we could talk a lot about your background and I'd like to hear about the learning tree. But first of all, what's it mean to be a social banker?

Well, you know, part of, I think for me, I mean, it's something that's been emerging in me when I started the idea of being a Rogan listener. I remember Mike Mather, when he met. I can see his brains, like dialing in. And I came up with the term because after the works had started finding people's gifts and talents, I started my own little thing. And I had a lot of success. And I was thinking, like, people in my neighborhood don't get to always have the success. A lot of people way smarter than I am. What and who was it that made this happen and what practices that followed that? And it was at a party one time, me and my neighbors were throwing some parties and my neighbors would say, dude, you know, the head of the Indianapolis foundation, you know, the head of the Century Indiana Community foundation, you know, you know, the, you know, you know, so many people that have, have some influence, and they said, why don't you bring them to the party? I didn't get it.

And later on I realized that my neighbors knew the value of social connections and social capital. So I started thinking about series of things like that that I was like, why would people want to come to something that I would do? And I would see other people. Like, Mike is a social banker. He would just invite people and people with trust. So I started thinking about, oh, this Social banker is not only a connector. They will intangible currencies like relationships, trust, imagination. Right. And gifts and networks.

So that I realized that had became my role in the community. But alongside that, the social banker don't work alone. I realized that was just an archetype and there were several different archetypes. Mike Mather is doing something in Boulder right now with people without housing, and he's called them illuminators. That is an archetype. They hold things up. So I realized there were series of archetypes that pushed me along my way and I used my gifting community to figure out how to make those connections.

So one of the challenges is having people understand the resources that are around them. Not just the. Not just the. The. Those that have resources and want to say, no, no, no, you can't join our club because you don't have resources. But also people who don't have resources sometimes feel like they don't. They're blind to. To the gifts sometimes that they possess.

I remember reading A quote from Dr. The Great late Dr. Paul Farmer and one of his speeches, he said, we have been schooled in scarcity. And when we say that it is that our whole fabric is around what we don't have or what's not possible or what's wrong, those things can be true. But I think what the framework that I'm thinking about in the archetypes are people who look to cultivate an abundant community or beloved community. And so in that there are practices that we, I think that we are striving to reintroduced to community, like the fact that the biggest resource you got is your neighbor. And the way to find out what that resource and what God has put into that human being is the actor birth story. You know, that what is.

That's getting awfully.

What created their. Me.

Yeah, that's getting awfully close to the Christian gospel. I'm a little worried about you. You're not a preacher, are you?

No, not at all. I mean, but I, I like. I think when people think about Christianity in itself, it is far from what the fabric started. It was all about people seeing the abundance around the gospel itself. But even the Old Testament, you had to escape scarcity. You end scarcity for 40 years. And people that think scarcity couldn't go to the promised land. Right.

And it was that anyway. But along those, along those journeys and then those stories are currencies and nuggets of abundance. And I remember being Mike Mather was having breakfast with Peter Block and Walter and Walter Was talking about the exodus. Pain is an instrument of imagination. And it just struck me, right, that through all of this I feel like that's what Jesus really did with, you know, with the lane and the blind. And we ain't talking about the people without limbs.

Yeah, yeah.

We're talking about folks who had power.

The snowflakes.

That was. Yes. Yeah. Anyway. But I think that's why it started. I've been thinking in the frame of a beloved community and I think we're all looking to figure out what that means for us.

So tell us. There's so many things. But tell us about what you're doing in the neighborhood on the west side of Indianapolis right now.

Yeah. So we're developing a corridor which means a live workspace. Looking at totally affordable resident led development. Which means this first phase of the work. Right now we are into our first 24 units which would include an art gallery on the bottom, grocery store and a. The world's first social credit union.

Wow.

And will be. It'll be housed with social community social bankers. So that's the first phase of that. But we also have a bar and lounge. We hope to totally have 101 units when it's said and done. Now let me just say that this sounds really good, but you really understand scarcity when you start getting brick and mortar. Not only the thing you. That rang true.

What you said was really about not only the institutions as scarcity, but now we realize how much more work we got to do. Social banking we have to do to cultivate the currency of trust. Because even the power dynamics of have and have not go through there. And we have been tricked to think that somebody else is better than somebody else. The whole game that we got. So a lot. So what does that look like for us? How do we throw more parties? Right. Celebrations and naming the gifts of the humans in our place.

So that's big thing. The other thing you also realize we used to. You know, about eight years ago, Riverside Northwest was. Had the largest vacancy rate in the city of.

Wow.

It was 40% of all the city's vacancy rates.

Oh my goodness.

So you understood there's not a lot of money. It also meant that the way people viewed us, we also viewed ourselves like that.

Yeah.

And when we started, me, a few of my neighbors, Wild Style Pasha, January York. At the time it was Amanda Wolf and a few other folks. We would commit to going through our neighborhood doing what we did at Broadway. And we were amazed at like what we were finding. I think we also needed therapy Right. Because how could we believe that nothing was there? And so that kind of led up to this way. One of the currencies we utilized is my neighbor while style a storyteller. That's his archetype.

But when he started taking photographs and finding telling stories about people in our neighborhood, not only did we see ourselves different, we started to really control our narrative. That currency started to lead to people coming to our parties. You know, that's when Brian Payne, who me and Mike had for 10 years have been having deep conversations with about extreme capitalism versus relational currency. And it took Brian that long to come to the space and he started to bring his friend. That's really those two antidotes. We brought together a series of parties. That's how we actually brought that bought that property. It was about $2.1 million of property overall.

Okay, you want to. You want to hear this? The loan is at 1% over 15 years. And the land was bought on the auspices that we didn't need to come up with a plan because the act of reparation means that they trust that you discover it.

So.

So yeah, that's a. So I want to say that's the most important part.

So you've taught me the importance of art, the importance of story and narrative and the importance of party. Those are all things that help build social capital. I mean, we didn't go into your background, but you're an artist. You've taught. You've brought it to the neighborhood. I think of the Doors project.

That project. That is a cool. I get to talk about that today as a way that we utilize to engage people. Two things was true is that we were deprived of people listening to us. We had. We were rich in those stories. And what we did is we just. We knew that people wanted to share and this was a way they saw themselves bigger that.

No, they knew my neighbors knew they were bigger than some. Bigger than who they were. They were part of something bigger. They wanted the world to know that their gifts were in Their stories are needed. That was kind of the. It was easy.

They're often the most important stories, the hidden stories that make everything else move.

Yeah. And you know, here's what's abundant is those stories, but here's the act of scarcity. We think they just appear. We have to go get off our couch and go look for.

Right.

That whole. Well, that's notion.

They're nowhere.

If we build it, they come.

Right. But stories. I don't think I've ever seen any bank mortgage form say tell Me your story.

No, no.

Tell me your problems. Tell me your scarcity. Tell me how much you don't have.

I got a story about the tip in it as deputy mayor.

Yeah.

Now I'm going to tell you, an act of scarcity for me is that I've been knowing Jeff a long time, since the time of Broadway, and he was part of the development. And I had despised him. And he would say, probably for some good reasons, he's a good guy. Let me just say that and preface that. And I wouldn't talk to him and my neighbor whilst I was like, talked about. Man, you the social banker. You the person that need to be taking walks with him. Nothing's going to change.

And anyway, Jeff would. I would just turn my back on him, and every time we're talking, he would just give me a compliment. Really gracious person. When I think about it. I started taking walks because Wilson had became friends and he was deputy mayor at the time. This was right when we started to work with Indianapolis foundation around the community ambassadors. And we were in charge of thinking about how services. Shawna was a big part of this, too, how services were released and how do you not make people feel like scum because they're poor? And so partly we realized what you said about those questions, and, man, we gave jet.

We gave really hard time. And I remember Shawna sitting back. Shauna was no hoes bar, but he was there and he listened to the truth. The. He went back and a few. We worked on a few iterations, and Shauna, myself and the rest of the ambassadors came up with three questions on the form. And what brings you joy? What's one of those?

What brings you joy?

The other is what are your. What. What are your gifts and talents? Yeah, I think you're familiar with some of those.

Yeah.

So we. He went back and he says, all right, we could do this. And we took these and used them through the eviction courts. But he gave us money to do mutual aid. And here's the example of what I said, Jeff, why'd you. Why did you do this? Why did you give us. Trust us to give this money? He says, because government don't have the currency of imagination. It's like, what I notice is that you all are figuring out ways and so you get what I mean? And so that.

That right there is like. It isn't that the idea was good. It was that relationship with. Was nurtured enough to build the courage and to listen to folks you would never normally listen to.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, we're going to we're going to stop here. As you can tell those of you that are listening or watching, when you start talking with diamond, you get deep and the currency of imagination is just a thought for us to finish on today. But I want to go back and say part of what diamond has referenced several times are is Broadway Church is in Indianapolis and is Shawna Murphy, who's now the executive director of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and is Wild Style Pascal, who is a great storyteller, photographer, artist in his own right and a lot of people in power, either in community foundations or in the city who, let's just be blunt, who hadn't ever known about the currency of imagination. And so we're going to stop there and we're going to pick up in the next episode with I ought to make him the Reverend doctor, but I'll just call him the great artist, roving listener Diamond Hargis. Thank you, Diamond.

This is Phil Amerson with the below.

Thank you, Phil.