Episodes 38 - 27 |  Episodes 26 - 14  |  Episodes 13 - 1  
 
Release Date: September 18, 2017
Length: 44:38 
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Episode 26: Exile and Pride
with Alison Kopit

​First published in 1999, Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation by Eli Clare is a groundbreaking book in the political realm of disability politics, and essential reading for anyone wanting to understand the intersections of queerness, disability, environmentalism, class, race, and more.

​Monica and Page sat down with Alison Kopit, a queer and disabled artist and doctoral candidate in Disability Studies at UIC, to talk about Exile and Pride. She is also the co-creator of The Not Sorry Project and on the editorial board of Monstering, a literary magazine for disabled women and non-binary folks.

Key Questions: What is disability justice? Why does the author use the word ‘exile’ when talking about disability justice? What is the medicalization of disability? What does it mean to make an event space “accessible?”
 
Release Date: September 11, 2017
Length: 48:35
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Episode 25: Steel Barrio
with Corina Pedraza Palominos 

When we think of Mexican communities, we think of Pilsen, Little Village, and in recent years, Albany Park. But who talks about the neighborhood of South Chicago? Monica and Page chat with powerful Mijente member, immigrants rights activist, baseball mom, and vital member of our Chicago organizing community, Corina Pedraza Palominos!

Steel Barrio: The Great Mexican Migration to South Chicago from 1915-1940 by Michael Innis-Jiménez is a beautiful documentation Mexican migration, arguing that the Mexican immigrants who came to South Chicago created physical and imagined community not only to defend against the ever-present social, political, and economic harassment and discrimination, but to grow in a foreign, polluted environment. 

Key Questions: How do public spaces, such as parks and libraries, play a role in community building and resistance? How did policing affect Mexican immigrants in South Chicago?
 
Release Date: August 28, 2017
Length: 58:50 
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Episode 24: Medical Apartheid
with Martine Caverl

In this episode, Page talks with UMedics organizer and co-founder Martine Caverl, who breaks down the essential Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present by Harriet Washington. 

The book brings together almost two decades of research, revealing the deep roots of America's racialized health inequity, as well as facilitating a greater understanding of why so many Black people view the medical establishment with distrust.

​Key Questions: In what ways has the medical field historically engaged in anti-Black racism? How have the civil rights movement and other Black liberation struggles addressed and improved the medical fields (mis)treatment racism? 
 
Release Date: August 21, 2017
Length: 54:27
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Episode 23: Ready for Revolution
with Kofi Ademola

Despite some audio issues, and the occasional soothing sound of Kofi's fish tank, Episode 23 is here! Pro-tip: Grab some headphones and tune in.

Most of us know Stokely Carmichael as the charismatic leader in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during the 1960's and as the person who coined the term "Black Power," but what else was behind the life of Stokely Carmichael, aka Kwame Ture? 

​Monica and Page chatted with Black Lives Matter-Chicago co-founder Kofi Ademola about Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael, a posthumous autobiography that traces Stokely's life from Guinea to the Bronx to the Delta South and then back to Guinea where he passed in 1998.

Key Questions: What part of Stokely's life sparked his organizing work? What was Stokely's leadership style?
 
Release Date: August 14, 2017
Length: 50:27
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Episode 22: Black-On-Black Violence
with Jasmine Adams

In his book, Black-On-Black Violence, Amos Wilson argues that "the criminalization of the Black American male is a psycho-politically engineered process designed to maintain the dependency and relative powerlessness" of Black people. Originally published in 1994, the book is still deeply relevant to reflect on today.

In this episode, Page sits down with teacher and organizer, Jasmine Adams, to discuss the lessons from this book.

Key Questions: What is at the root of community and interpersonal violence? How is Black-on-Black violence related to White supremacy? What is necessary to stop the cycles of violence? How can organizers, parents, teachers, etc help address violence and build alternative processes for accountability?
 
Release Date: August 7, 2017
Length: 1:07:53
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Episode 21: Invisible No More
by and with author Andrea Ritchie
​
Page and Monica sit with their dear friend, researcher, writer, advocate, activist, and organizer, Andrea Ritchie, to talk about her brand new book, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color.

Placing stories of individual women—such as Sandra Bland, Rekia Boyd, Dajerria Becton, Monica Jones, and Mya Hall—in the broader context of the twin epidemics of police violence and mass incarceration, this book documents the evolution of movements centering women’s experiences of policing, and demands a radical rethinking of our visions of safety—and the means we devote to achieving it.

Key Questions: ​What happened in the 1980’s and 1990’s to Black women and women of color who were victims of police violence? What came before #SayHerName? How is policing racially gendered?
 
Episode 20: Seven Books
with Fannie Rushing

​In this very special five-part episode, Page sat down with SNCC freedom fighter and Chicago-native, Fannie Rushing, for an extended conversation about her organizing experiences, and the seven books that have helped to define them. Not wanting to cut a single word, the interview is broken up into five parts. Take your time to listen, but take the time. It is a gift to all engaged in the struggle to build a better world.

Fannie's Seven Books: 
  • Ella Baker & the Black Freedom Movement by Barbara Ransby
  • Capitalism and Slavery by Eric Williams
  • Discourse on Colonialism by Aime Cesaire
  • This Little Light of Mine by Kay Mills
  • Unbowed by Wangari Maathai
  • I am Malala by Malala Yousafzai
  • Earth Democracy by Vandana Shiva
Release Date: July 31, 2017 

Part 1: Fannie discusses her friend and mentor, Ella Baker
Length: 30:13 | Transcript coming soon | Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Soundcloud

Part 2: Fannie talks Capitalism, Racism, Colonialism, and Haiti 
Length: 36:34 | Transcript coming soon | Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Soundcloud
​
Part 3: Fannie Rushing on Fannie Lou Hamer 
Length: 28:56 | Transcript coming soon | Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Soundcloud 

Part 4: Fannie Answers: What is organizing?
Length: 32:24 | Transcript coming soon | Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Soundcloud

Part 5: Connecting the dots from Civil Rights to Ecofeminism 
​Length: 35:42 | Transcript coming soon | Listen on Apple Podcasts | Listen on Spotify | Listen on Soundcloud 
 
Release Date: July 24, 2017 
Length: 46:17
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Episode 19: The Boundaries of Blackness
by and with Cathy Cohen

Why, when faced with a disease that was threatening significant numbers of Black people, did Black leaders and dominant institutions fail to take action? In her book, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics, Cathy Cohen systematically examines the roles that politics, racism, and marginalization played in limiting the resources allocated to fighting AIDS in Black communities.

Page got the chance to talk directly with author and activist Cathy Cohen about her research for this book. 

Key Questions: How and why did dominant institutions fail those impacted by the HIV/AIDS crisis? Why must we center our movements around those at the margins of society? How is science constructed through race, class, and sexuality?
 
Release Date: July 17, 2017
Length: 51:29
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Episode 18: Emergent Strategy
with Hannah Baptiste

Inspired by Octavia Butler's explorations of our human relationship to change, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds is a radical self-help, society-help, and planet-help book designed to shape the futures we want to live. As brown argues, change is constant. The world is in a continual state of flux. It is a stream of ever-mutating, emergent patterns.

Page and Monica sat down with activist Hannah Baptiste to chat about adrienne maree brown's newest book.

Key Questions: What is the strategy of emergence? What is the role of the organizer in shaping change? What can our movements learn from nature and how it organizes itself? brown says "all organizing is science fiction," what does this mean?
 
Release Date: July 10, 2017
Length: 38:39 
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Episode 17: The Next American Revolution
with Sarah Lu

An inspiration to many activists, community organizers, and revolutionaries for decades upon decades and beyond, Grace Lee Boggs was a feminist, organizer, philosopher, and author, committed to Civil Rights and Black Power activism and organizing in Detroit, MI. 

Monica sat down with activist Sarah Lu to talk about The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the 21st Century, co-written with Scott Kurashige. In this deeply humanistic book, Boggs shows us how to create the radical social change we need to confront new realities. Special and brief appearance from Debbie Southorn. 

Key Questions: What does Grace mean by "reinventing culture?" What is visionary organizing? What is a humanist? What, according to Boggs, are the "qualifications" of a movement activist?
 
Release Date: June 26, 2017
Length: 52:54 
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Episode 16: Queer (In)Justice
by and with Joey Mogul

Monica and Page sit down with Joey Mogul to talk about Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, a book that she co-wrote with Andrea Ritchie and Kay Whitlock in 2011. Joey is an attorney with the People's Law Office, initiated and co-founded Chicago Torture Justice Memorials and represented Jon Burge torture survivors demanding reparations from the city of Chicago, and won!

Drawing on years of research, on-the-ground activism, and legal advocacy, their book examines queer & trans historical experiences-as “suspects,” defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime, and unpacks queer criminal archetypes-like “gleeful gay killers,” “lethal lesbians,” “disease spreaders,” and “deceptive gender benders“-to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed.

And because it's Pride season, we also got into some conversation around Joey's amazing direct action experiences with disrupting Chicago Pride in the 90's with Queer to the Left, so basically, you should tune in now!

Key Questions: How does this book talk about policing and LGBTQ spaces, including Pride? Does an abolitionist have to think through and expand our ideas around gender & sexuality? How did Queer to the Left handle backlash for challenging corporate Pride?
 
Release Date: June 19, 2017 
Length: 56:26
Transcript coming soon
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Episode 15: The Terror Factory
with Muhammed Sankari

​Former FBI Director James Comey's recent assertion that "the FBI is honest, the FBI is strong," outraged all of us familiar with COINTELPRO. In this episode, Page sits down with Muhammad Sankari, a youth organizer with the Arab American Action Network, to learn more about the current evolution (and dishonesty) of the FBI since 9/11.

Muhammad discusses The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on Terrorism, a 2014 book by Trevor Aaronson. Through investigative journalism, Aaronson exposes how the FBI has built a massive network of informants whose primary purpose is to infiltrate Muslim communities to create and facilitate phony terrorist plots so that the Bureau can then claim it is winning the war on terror.

Key Questions: How do we push back against the use of informants by the government? What was COINTELPRO? What are the real reasons for the existence of informants?
 
Release Date: June 12, 2017
Length: 42:23
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Episode 14: Black is a Country
with Charles Preston

The end of racism & anti-Blackness is not yet in sight. In this week's episode, Black is a Country, Nikhil Pal Singh asks what happened to the international & radical visions of equality that existed with Black intellectual activists from W. E. B. Du Bois in the 1930s to Martin Luther King, Jr. in the 1960s. In so doing, he constructs an alternative history of civil rights in the twentieth century in which radical hopes and global dreams are recognized as central to the history of black struggle.

Page chats with southside Chicago activist and host of Church on the 9, Charles Preston, about Black is a Country, discussing inclusion versus accommodation, and what exactly self-determination might look like.

Key Questions: What does self-determination look like? Why does international and radical organizing work often get overshadowed by mainstream Civil Rights history? What does this book offer for organizers today?
Episodes 38 - 27 |  Episodes 26 - 14  |  Episodes 13 - 1 >>   ​