Release Date: May 16, 2022
Length: 1:12:34 
Production: Benji Russelburg
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Episode 64: Evicted 
with Maya Dukmasova

“We can’t have a conversation about affordable housing without having a conversation about landlord profit.” If you were mad about landlords before, just wait until you listen to this conversation. The mainstream narrative on affordable housing has revolved largely around public housing, but a glaring absence is a much larger demographic: low-income renters. To close out our season, we talked with Maya Dukmasova, former Chicago Reader reporter, current senior reporter at Injustice Watch, about Matthew Desmond’s book Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City. Maya brilliantly breaks down Desmond’s objective that eviction is not just a symptom of poverty, but a cause of poverty, and her own reporting on the eviction crisis in Chicago. 

​Key Questions: 
  1. How do evictions cause poverty? 
  2. How do landlords capitalize on late rent? 
  3. What are the pros and cons of housing vouchers? How does Desmond reimagine the housing voucher system? 
  4. What can we do to expose landlords’ exploitative profit off of low-income people?
  5. Why do we not have rent control in Chicago?
  6. How are trailer parks exploitative? 
  7. Who is Pangea, and how do they profit off of evictions in Chicago?
  8. How are Chicago tenants fighting back?
 
Release Date: May 2, 2022
Length: 1:00:38
Production: Benji Russelburg
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Episode 63: The Question
with Bernardine Dohrn 

The Question by Henri Alleg is a short book with a lifelong impact on today’s special guest. The legendary radical activist and movement lawyer, Bernardine Dohrn, first read this anti-war, anti-colonial, anti-racist pamphlet from 1958 as a student in high school. The Question recounts French journalist Henri Alleg’s experience of thirty days of torture in Algeria during the War for Independence. Though it would be years before Bernardine began organizing and taking revolutionary direct action, this class assignment marked a radicalizing moment in her life. We were honored to have a conversation with this fierce feminist powerhouse about the roles that witnessing and storytelling play in ending the practice of torture.
​
Listener’s note: This episode contains descriptions of torture and violence. Please listen with care.
Key Questions: 
  1. What is the relationship of torture to power and empire?
  2. How can storytelling be powerful?
  3. What does it mean to put yourself “proximate to the problem?”
  4. How can we sustain life-long commitment to struggle and learning?
 
Release Date: April 25, 2022
Length: 1:02:28
Production: Benji Russelburg
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Episode 62: Care Work
with Heena Sharma 
​
There are no shortcuts to disability justice. Access is a process, not a list that can be checked off in organizing work. Part-manifesto, part guide, part-memoir, and so many more parts, Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice by Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha is a necessary intervention in our largely ableist movements and world. In this episode, we chatted with Heena Sharma, a queer South Asian organizer with the New York chapter of Survived & Punished. Together, we discussed disability justice, survivorhood, sustainability, recognizing wholeness, and so much more. We invite you to join us with some tea and cookies (or whatever makes you cozy) and tune in to this necessary conversation. 

Referenced in this episode: The work of Aurora Levins Morales, Cyree Jarelle Johnson, Elliot Fukui, Kai Cheng Thom, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Leroy Moore, Mia Mingus, Patty Berne, Sick of It! A Disability Inside/Outside Project, and Stacey Milbern. 
Key Questions: 
  1. What is disability justice, and how does it intersect in our organizing work?
  2. What does disability justice look like in practice?
  3. What does ableism look like inside of schools?
  4. What are some differences between practices and principles of disability justice?
  5. What does it mean to share knowledge?
 
Release Date: April 18, 2022
Length: 53:57
Production: Benji Russelburg
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Episode 61: Zami
with K Agbebiyi 

​Audre Lorde is revered for her poetry and writings, rightfully so! Her works are fundamental to the development of Black Feminism. But what did she have to say about her own life? What were the themes and lessons she learned from her experiences? How does Audre, the person, differ from Audre "the icon" that many of us know? As Audre insisted: “If I didn't define myself for myself, I would be crunched into other peoples’ fantasies for me and eaten alive.” 

Our guest today to discuss Audre Lorde’s Zami: A New Spelling of My Name is K Toyin Agbebiyi, a Black lesbian and disabled organizer, writer, and macro social worker from Georgia. K has created and participated in a number of campaigns and projects including 8 to Abolition, the No New Jails Campaign, Inside Outside collective, and Survived and Punished New York. This thoughtful conversation with K dives deep into questions around grief, love, and loss. And we get real about the challenges and teachings of relationships, and how it all relates to our organizing work.
Key Questions: 
  1. What is a biomythography?
  2. What aspects of Audre “The Person” are often left out of the Audre Lorde “Persona”? 
  3. What lessons can we glean about navigating love, loss, conflict, failure, and grief in our lives and movement spaces?
  4. What is the value of identity politics?
  5. What does romantic love have to do with Black feminism?​
 
Release Date: April 11, 2022
Length: 1:23:09
Production: Benji Russelburg 
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Episode 60: Capital 
with Angela Davis

​An epic book and an epic guest: Welcome to episode 60! Since the start of this podcast, the Lit Review has always wanted to feature Marx’s Capital with someone who could really help organizers dig into it. Published in 1867, this 1,000+ page text offers a thorough, interdisciplinary critique of capitalism. This book is rich with history, philosophy, and is a classic of political economy. It is also… extremely difficult to read. Notoriously long, full of jargon, and extremely dense, Capital is one of those books that you can read for years and still not understand. Don’t worry though, this episode has you covered, at least to start! 

Monica and Page invited radical activist, educator, author, and founder of Critical Resistance, Angela Davis—yes, THAT Angela Davis, to break down Marx’s (and Engels’!) key ideas with her professorial brilliance, and to explain the importance and ongoing relevance of what Marx had to say. ​
Key Questions:
  1. What does it mean that “capitalism is a product of history”? 
  2. What conditions and specific events led to the creation of capitalism?
  3. How is capitalism inherently exploitative?
  4. What is surplus value?
  5. What economic reforms are strategic for anti-capitalist organizers to engage; shorter work weeks, minimum wage, green capitalism?
 
​Release Date: March 27, 2022
Length: 59:19
Production: Benji Russelburg 
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Episode 59: Kindling 
with Shira Hassan 

​The healing justice movement is an intersectional and organized resistance to the state and state violence, but why is it so often misunderstood as simply an opposition to grind culture? In this episode, we discuss ableism, disability, healing justice, and the book Kindling by Aurora Levins Morales with one of our sheroes and teachers, Shira Hassan, co-founder of Just Practice and former Executive Director of the Young Women’s Empowerment Project. This is a rich episode with so many gems of wisdom and raw vulnerability. It’s one to listen to again and again (and again)!

Listener's Note: This conversation includes mentions of sexual violence and abuse. Please listen with care. 

This episode mentions the brilliance of the following people: Aurora Levins Morales, Cara Page, Kelly Hayes, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Ricardo Levins Morales, Tanuja Jagernauth, and Mia Mingus. Shoutouts to the Trauma Center Campaign,  Young Women’s Empowerment Project, and Georgia Detention Watch.
Key Questions: 
  1. What is (and isn’t) healing justice? 
  2. What connections can we make between healing justice and movements that center gender, racial, economic, environment, and abolition?
  3. How is disability and sexual trauma projected onto the body and what does it mean to hold and have those bodies?
  4. What might healthCARE look like and what alternatives already exist that we can learn from?
  5. Why is it important to dream up bigger ways of practicing collectivity beyond embodiment, collective breaths, or other practices that are troubling for many chronically ill folks?
 
​Release Date: March 20, 2022
Length: 58:17
Production: Benji Russelburg 
Transcript
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Episode 58: Ain't I A Woman
with Stacy Davis Gates 

bell hooks left us in this world with a literal STACK of wisdom and analysis about love, life, and feminism. Her work has transformed the thinking of many people we know in our organizing community. We couldn’t think of a better way to honor bell hooks’ legacy than starting off a new season with this virtual interview with Stacy Davis Gates, Vice President of the Chicago Teachers Union. 

Stacy shares the stories of her personal transformation and political awakening after reading Ain’t I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism by bell hooks. Monica and Page chat with Stacy about her struggles and lessons learned from finding affirmation through bell hooks' words to applying this information to her lifelong journey as a Black woman in building community power in coalition with Black men and non-Black people. 

We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did. 
bell, we thank you for everything. Ashe.
Key Questions: 
  1. What examples does bell hooks lift up about how Black women are systemically oppressed, even in Black liberation spaces? And how have Black women throughout history navigated and challenged this?
  2. How do non-Black people avoid erasing Black women’s labor? 
  3. For our Black women & femme listeners: What are some strategies we employ to navigate the many spaces that do not affirm us? What problematic “rules” were handed down to us by our elders that we need to question? What new practices have emerged among new generations?
  4. How might we build coalition around the humanity of Black women?
  5. When a book changes the ways we see ourselves and the injustice of the world, what are our responsibilities as readers and learners?

SEASON 4 TEAM 
​

Monica Trinidad (she/they), Co-Host 

Page May (she/her), Co-Host 

Benji Russelburg (they/them), Audio Production 

Alycia Kamil (she/they), Social Media 

H Kapp Klote (they/them), Public Relations 

Grae Rosa (they/he), Graphic Design