The Lit Review Podcast

“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. See our key questions from this episode and transcript at thelitreview.org.

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. See our transcript and key questions at thelitreview.org.

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. Transcript, key questions, and references to resources mentioned in the episode can be found at thelitreview.org.

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. Transcript and key questions explored can be found at thelitreview.org.

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. Transcript and key questions explored can be found at thelitreview.org!

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. Transcript and key questions explored in this episode can be found at thelitreview.org.

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 bell hooks' Ain't I A Woman: Black Women and Feminism. 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. Transcript and key questions explored can be found at thelitreview.org!

It's a wrap for Season 3! In 8 episodes, we went deep on topics including colonization and land justice, civil rights history, and movement and organizing fundamentals. And in the midst of the pandemic, uprising, and elections, we did our best to highlight the amazing resistance work happening in Chicago. There's no special guest on this season finale- just your favorite co-hosts chopping it up to share their highlights and lingering questions. We also have updates about what to expect for Season 4 and how you can help us make it the best season of The Lit Review yet! We'll be back with new episodes this Summer. Until then, check out any of our past episodes, recommend us to a friend, and KEEP READING! See links to action items, book shoutouts, and transcription at thelitreview.org

To close out the season, Monica and Page talk with Juliana Pino Alcaraz, Policy Director at the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization, about From the Ground Up: Environmental Racism and the Rise of the Environmental Justice Movement by Luke Cole & Sheila Foster. This short but dense book focuses on the history of the Environmental Justice movement leading up to the signing of the 1994 Executive Order on Environmental Justice by President Clinton, and then outlines several examples of community efforts to resist environmental racism in the 1990s. Juliana breaks down frameworks, structures, tactics, and campaign strategies, in addition to addressing what's missing. This is a longer episode because we just couldn't cut any of this brilliance. Grab a notebook and get settled in!

​Despite some truly 2020-style audio recording issues, our second to last episode of the season is here! Groundwork: Local Black Freedom Movements in America, edited by Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, and Charles Payne, unearths the buried stories of the people, places, and struggles that laid the foundation for the Civil Rights movement. Monica and Page talk with Christian Snow of Assata's Daughters and the People's Law Office, who shares her love and key takeaways from the book.

Fannie Lou Hamer is increasingly recognized for her leadership with the Mississippi Democratic Freedom Party, but did you know about the 600-acre Freedom Farm Cooperative she started? This is one of many examples of Black farmers organizing for power and self-determination highlighted in Monica White's Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement. Monica and Page talk with Vivi Moreno, food justice organizer and urban farmer with Catatumbo Cooperative Farm and part of the Farmers for Chicago program hosted by Urban Growers Collective. ​Vivi helps us understand the long history of agricultural resistance and applies it to the ongoing struggles we still face today for healthy, sustainable, and self-determining communities.

​This was a hard book to talk about, but we're so glad that we did. The late Gloria Anzaldúa's book Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza is beloved to many and considered a fundamental text in Chicana and Latinx studies. With gorgeous prose, she richly captures the unique experiences of those who inhabit the borderlands; of place, gender, class, and identity. Anzaldúa's book offers a poetic description of what it's like to be caught between worlds. At the same time, this work is rightly called-out for those that it erases: Black, Indigenous, and trans people —all also existing and resisting in the borderlands. Monica and Page talk with Trina Reynolds-Tyler of the Invisible Institute about the ongoing influence this book has had on her as a Black woman living on the borderlands of Chicago's south side.

Originally published in 1950, Discourse on Colonialism by Aimé Césaire directly and dramatically influenced the liberation struggles happening in Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. A blazing collection of thoughts that affirms Black identity and culture, embraces surrealism as revolt, and demands decolonization movements that “decolonize our minds, our inner life, at the same time that we decolonize society.” ​Monica and Page talk with their long-time comrade Asha Ransby-Sporn ​of the Black Abolitionist Network (BAN) and Dissenters. to learn more about what Césaire challenges readers to think through and how we might apply its lessons to today's ongoing struggles against empire.

Have you ever heard of the term “Alinsky-style organizing” and the rules that are involved? For example, “A tactic that drags on too long is a drag” and “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Here in Chicago, Saul Alinsky is often mentioned both for what his analysis is missing, as well as for the helpful basics his tradition offers. Monica and Page talk with Maira Khwaja of the Invisible Institute about Rules for Radicals: A Pragramtic Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky. Tune in for highlights, lessons learned, and ways we might incorporate Alinsky's approach as community organizers committed to abolition.

Ready to learn and get in your feelings? In this episode, Monica and Page connect with Stephanie Skora, Associate Executive Director of Brave Space Alliance and author of the Girl, I Guess Voter Guide. Stephanie shares her love and learnings from S. Bear Bergman's Blood, Marriage, Wine & Glitter, a book of personal essays about their queer and trans experiences of family. This is a moving conversation about joy, resilience, memory, love, and softness, sprinkled with some timely conversation about the complexities of voting.

There's importance in collaboration and experimentation when it comes to organizing. But what does that work look like in a community you're not from? ​Monica and Page chat with Bettina Johnson, co-founder of Liberation Library and member of Chicago Afrosocialists & Socialists of Color of the DSA, about Hammer & Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression by Robin D.G. Kelly.

INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence hands us a sharp critique of the toxic role that the non-profit industrial complex can play in managing our movements in The Revolution Will Not Be Funded, published in 2007. ​Monica and Page talk with Joy Messinger, a queer disabled femme organizer, former Program Officer at Third Wave Fund, and currently the Director of Training and Leadership at Funders for Justice.

​In the U.S., it's becoming increasingly trendier to “go green” and become more environmentally-conscious in our daily lives under capitalism. However, there's a whole other movement of eco-consciousness and activism that is being heavily criminalized and repressed. In his debut book, Green Is the New Red: An Insider's Account of a Social Movement under Siege, independent journalist Will Potter provides detailed accounts of the targeting of environmental and animal rights activists across the country. Our guest on today's show is Brad Thomson, a local radical lawyer at the People's Law Office, which has a history steeped in defending the rights of Fred Hampton and the Black Panther Party. Brad focuses on repping people whose civil rights are violated by the police and other state actors, and people criminalized based on their political identity and organizing affiliation. We explore Green is the New Red and how the people that have been involved in the most militant parts of these movements have been attacked and criminalized, how industry and government have characterized these militant actions in order to tarnish the entire movement, and use scare tactics to make it so that anybody who is part of these movements is fearful. Tune in now. Hosts: Monica Trinidad & Page May Guest: Brad Thomson Release Date: February 4, 2019 Length: 51:00 Key Questions: 1. What was the Red Scare? And the new Green Scare? 2. Who is the author and how does his background inform writing this book? 3. Who is the Animal Liberation Front (ALF)? 4. Who was Stop Huntington Animal Cruelty (SHAC)? 5. Who is the Earth Liberation Front (ELF)? 6. How was the word “terrorism” weaponized in the Green scare? 7. How did corporations and lobbyists create this hysteria for governments and law enforcement to target eco/animal rights activists? 8. What does the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) have to do with criminalizing protest? 9. Why should organizers read this book?

What does fascism look like today in the U.S.? Where does the alt-right fit into this? How can it be fought?! ​Monica and Page sat down with Chicago-based Native abolitionist organizer, co-founder of Lifted Voice, podcast host of Movement Memos, and Truthout writer Kelly Hayes to discuss Shane Burley's Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It.

Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in Chicago 1940-1960 by Arnold Hirsch is considered a premier text on the subjects of housing and displacement. However, at about 382 dense & jargon-filled pages, it can be a bit intimidating. Here to offer a helpful summary is life-long Chicagoan, writer, co-founder of Transportation Equity Network, and neighborhood organizer Lynda Lopez.

A hyper-local conversation: Who knew that the Chicago neighborhood 'Old Town' was actually part of Lincoln Park? Who knew it was a site of transformation, displacement, resistance, gentrification, AND urban renewal? ​Monica and Page sat down with author and policy analyst Daniel Kay Hertz to talk about his new book, The Battle of Lincoln Park: Urban Renewal and Gentrification in Chicago, published by Belt.

Monica has a phone conversation with dear friend, poet and incarcerated activist, Patrice Lumumba Daniels, currently serving life without parole in IDOC for a crime he committed at 18 years old. Patrice and Monica talk about one of his favorite books, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. Banned from prisons in North Carolina and Florida, The New Jim Crow book dives deep into the ways that the U.S. Government has created a new, contemporary system of racial control through the prison system.

Monica and Page revisit Black Reconstruction in America by W.E.B. Du Bois, this time with community organizer, Executive Director of the National Alliance Against Racism and Political Repression, and former political prisoner, Frank Chapman. Tune in to hear Frank's take on Du Bois and the social, economic and political changes that were taking place leading up to and through Reconstruction. And in case you missed it, you can check out Page's conversation on Black Reconstruction in America with Chicago-based organizers Nathan Ryan and Debbie Southorn in Season 1, Episode 2.

In this episode, Monica and Page bring you the Lit Review LIVE from Hairpin Arts Center, the site of For the People Artists Collective's first city-wide exhibition, Do Not Resist? 100 Years of Chicago Police Violence. Monica and Page chatted with Simon Balto and Toussaint Losier, two radical authors and professors, about Simon's upcoming book, Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power, coming out in the fall of 2018. ​In this history of Chicago from 1919 to Black Power in the 1960s and 1970s, Simon breaks down the racially repressive policing that occurred in Black neighborhoods as well as how Black citizen-activists challenged that repression.

Monica and Page sat down with Dan Berger via Skype and Toussaint Losier in Chicago to chat about their latest book, Rethinking the American Prison Movement, which provides a short and accessible overview of the transformational and ongoing struggles against America's prison system. From forced labor camps of the 19th century, to rebellious protests of the 1960's, to the rise of mass incarceration, this book is for anyone interested in the history of American prisons and the struggles for justice still echoing today.

So often we hear anarchy equated with chaos and collapse: a complete breakdown of society. This hour, we're rejecting that. We sat down with Jason Lydon to help us understand what anarchy is and isn't. We define terms, talk through principles, and take seriously the anarchist vision for collective liberation. To help us ground our conversation, we talked about Kuwasi Balagoon: A Soldier's Story. Kuwasi was one of the Panther 21 that the State tried to frame in 1969. Subsequently a member of the Black Liberation Army, he escaped prison twice prior to being arrested following a failed Brink's expropriation in 1981. He died in prison of AIDS-related pneumonia in 1986. A Soldier's Story is the first ever collection of his writings.

In the final episode of the first season, Monica and Page reflect on a year of the Lit Review podcast! They share some of their favorite episode excerpts from conversations in Season 1 with Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, Bill Ayers, and Debbie Southorn. They also make a surprise phone call to a very dear abolitionist friend and mentor, Mariame Kaba, who recently moved to New York City. Together, they reflect on the podcast's significance.

When we are taught about the civil rights movement, the narratives of communities trained up in armed self-defense and grandmas with guns sitting on their porch are definitely left out. In Charles E. Cobbs Jr.'s book, This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, we are face-to-face with the vital role that armed self-defense played in the liberation and survival of Black communities. Monica and Page sat down with educator and social justice activist, Mia Henry. Mia is one of the many founders of the Chicago Freedom School and also runs Freedom Lifted, a small social enterprise that hosts Civil Rights Movement tours in the deep South.

In Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements, co-edited by adrienne maree brown and Walidah Imarisha, we are gifted twenty short stories exploring the connections between radical speculative fiction and movements for social change. ​For this episode, Monica and Page sat down with Chicago-based playwright, dramaturge, and ceramic artist Tanuja Jagernauth to discuss one of her favorite books.

Did you know that the first mass clemency won in 1990 for 25 domestic violence survivors incarcerated for self-defense happened because of incarcerated women organizing themselves on the inside? Or did you know that in the 1970's, a California women's prison cancelled a Christmas visit with incarcerated women & their children with no explanation. The women then broke windows, dragged Christmas trees outside into the yard, set them on fire, and refused to go back inside in protest! Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women provides much-needed documentation of collective organizing and the daily struggles inside women's prisons. For this episode, Monica and Page sat down with the author of this book, Victoria Law, and discussed her process in compiling these important, hidden stories of resistance and survival of incarcerated women in the U.S. ​​

​There is a role for people who know things that others don't, but how has our relationship with education and the teacher-student dynamic been shaped by colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy? In 1968, Brazilian educator Paulo Freire wrote Pedagogy of the Oppressed, proposing a new relationship between the teacher, the student, and society. ​ ​In this episode, Monica and Page dive deeper into this influential book with Pilsen-based youth worker Hilda Franco!

With the 2nd edition of Transgender History by Susan Stryker just released, it was a good time to revisit the book, see what's changed, and touch on parts that didn't get covered in an earlier conversation on this book in episode 4 with Benji Hart. Monica met up with professor, author, and filmmaker, Dr. Susan Stryker herself, to discuss the new edition of her book, which gives an introduction to transgender key terms and concepts, along with an overview of trans history, transphobia, trans resistance, and trans liberation.

Do you have your “go bag” ready? Are you ready to lose everything and everyone in order to get free? Aren't these intense questions?? These are just some of the themes that are explored in Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents, a two-book series of dystopian, science fiction novels by the late Octavia E. Butler, where society has collapsed due to climate change, capitalism, and Christianity, and people, many strangers, have to create community in order to survive. For this special live audience episode, Monica and Page are joined by writer, facilitator, Octavia Butler-scholar, pleasure activist and doula, adrienne maree brown. adrienne is the author of Emergent Strategy and co-editor of the anthology, Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction for Social Justice Movements.

A former member of the Black Panther Party and political prisoner, Assata Shakur's intensely personal and political autobiography continues to be a landmark text in many young Black peoples' politicization. For this episode, Page interviews two young Black women about the ongoing lessons they have learned from Assata. Pat Frazier and Imani Council are organizers with Assata's Daughters. At the time of the recording, they were both members in Assata University, a year-long political education program for Black teens in & around Washington Park.

For this episode, Page turns to fiction as a way to more fully understand the stories and truths of immigration, war, and identity. Page sat down with Van Huynh, an immigration attorney & community organizer in Chicago to discuss Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer, a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship.

From Deportation to Prison: The Politics of Immigration Enforcement in Post-Civil Rights America by Patrisia Macías-Rojas unpacks how the incarceration of over two million people in the United States gave impetus to a federal immigration initiative—The Criminal Alien Program (CAP)—designed to purge non-citizens from dangerously overcrowded jails and prisons. In this episode, Monica and Page talk with their friend and organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), Arianna Salgado, about this history and its daily implications.

A manifesto for movement-makers in extraordinary times, Demand the Impossible! urges us to imagine a world beyond what this rotten system would have us believe is possible. Monica and Page sat down with insurgent educator and activist Bill Ayers to talk about his book and envision strategies for building the movement we need to make a world worth living in.

​From 1915 to 1970, this exodus of almost six million people changed the face of America. In this epic, beautifully written masterwork, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Isabel Wilkerson chronicles one of the great untold stories of American history: the decades-long migration of Black citizens who fled the South for northern and western cities, in search of a better life. ​ In this episode, Page sits down with Walter May, her 84 year-old grandfather, to talk about one of his favorite books and how it relates to his own life and beginnings.

​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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

​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.

​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

​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

​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

​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

​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

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 Cathy about her research for this book.

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 Hannah Baptiste to chat about adrienne maree brown's newest book.