Student Power Radio

We'll be speaking with Nicholas DaSilva, a community organizer and former VCU student who will be explaining the logistics of VCUPD and their policies. As a candidate for the 5th district, DaSilva will inform listeners about the reality of over-policing in RVA and the importance of VCU students engaging the community. The hosts of Student Power will be guiding a dialogue about what “care” looks like and how communities can keep each other safe. We'll explore what a radical new world would look like and why all narratives should be included in carving out this new world. Lastly, we'll be navigating the disparities and similarities between “defunding” and “abolishing”, specifically focused around VCUPD and RPD. Music by SoundSmiths.

Student Power Radio will sit down with Taylor Maloney and Angelica Credle, two organizers and organization presidents at VCU, to get into the nitty-gritty of what goes down beneath the public eye. Our roundtable of speakers will be discussing VCU's COVID-19 Response and their proposed “new public safety model” as well as issues of transparency and accountability that VCU has failed to offer. We'll be unpacking the nature of the institution's unsafe spaces for marginalized communities and most-affected folx and how VCUPD works in tandem with creating dangerous environments for BIPOC. Lastly, we'll express to listeners the true nature of violence that is occurring every day in Richmond by state-sanctioned violence and how to navigate that reality as both a student and Richmonder.

We'll be speaking with Kalia Harris, an organizer from Virginia Student Power Network about what work they've been doing in the community and how they've been guiding our chapter of Student Power for the past two years. We will also be discussing the process of decolonization and what it means to “decolonize your mind”. Additionally, the history of VCU's oppression, gentrification, and performative inclusion will be expressed as well as the history of organizational activism at this institution by student and community organizers. Finally, we'll be engaging listeners with a discussion about why supporting community demands are necessary and the obligation of VCU students to support their Richmond community. Resources from today include: They Were Her Property by Stephanie Jones-Rogers, The Black Power, Sister Citizen by Melissa Harris-Perry, The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale, Mixtape Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde, Richmond Tenants Union, Justice and Reformation, Leaders of the New South, From Columbus to Castro by Eric Williams, and everything Angela Davis.

Welcome to Student Power Radio! This podcast is a resource for you to decolonize your ideas about education, community, and life in general. Each week we will be hearing from guests in the community and on campus on various topics. We hope that this podcast can help bridge the gap between the information we may see online and applying it to the work we must do within ourselves to uproot notions of white supremacy and oppression. Tune in with us every week to get to the root of issues at VCU and in the Richmond community. Plant the seeds to your radical garden.