The Lit Review Podcast

We’re back with one of our favorites! It’s Black Reconstruction - Part 2. On today’s episode, we’re talking with life long organizer 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. Key Questions: 1. What were Black people trying to do during this time? What were they fighting for?
 2. How did anti-blackness evolve during Reconstruction?
 3. Why is this so important for organizers?
 4. What is communism? SPECIAL FEATURES: We asked Frank, "What is Communism?" He did not disappoint. Read his reflections here http://bit.do/eanMo

In this episode, we bring you the Lit Review LIVE from Hairpin Arts Center, the current site of For the People Artists Collective’s exhibition Do Not Resist? 100 Years of Chicago Police Violence. We 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 true organizer fashion, our schedules and cities didn't quite match up, and two out of four of us were late, but we magically made this episode work, and its fantastic! We sat down with Dan Berger via Skype and Toussaint Losier for the minute he was in Chicago to chat about their latest book, Rethinking the American Prison Movement. Rethinking the American Prison Movement provides a short, accessible overview of the transformational and ongoing struggles against America’s prison system. Dan Berger and Toussaint Losier show that prisoners have used strikes, lawsuits, uprisings, writings, and diverse coalitions with free-world allies to challenge prison conditions and other kinds of inequality. From the forced labor camps of the nineteenth century to the rebellious protests of the 1960s and 1970s to the rise of mass incarceration and its discontents, Rethinking the American Prison Movement is invaluable to anyone interested in the history of American prisons and the struggles for justice still echoing in the present day.

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.

We made it through 2017! In our final episode of the year, we recap and flashback to some of our favorite episodes with brilliant activists like Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, Fannie Rushing, and many more. We also make a surprise phone call to a very dear abolitionist friend and mentor who recently moved to New York City, and we ask her to reflect on the podcast's significance with us. Find out what's in store for the Lit Review in 2018!

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 all evening 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. Utilizing personal narratives and Cobb’s experiences in the civil rights movement, he delivers a critical, invisible, and long history of Black people taking up arms to defend themselves against white supremacist violence. We sat down with educator and social justice activist, Mia Henry! Mia is one of the many founders of the Chicago Freedom School, and currently the Executive Director of the Arcus Center for Social Justice Leadership. Mia also runs Freedom Lifted, a small social enterprise that hosts Civil Rights Movement tours in the deep South. Key Questions: 1. What is the significance of armed self-defense during the Civil Rights movement? 2. What is nonviolence? What is it not? 3. During the civil rights movement, how does Charles talk about the difference between community organizing and direct action? Abbreviations used in this episode: CORE - Congress of Racial Equality SNCC - Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee Hosts: Monica Trinidad & Page May Guest: Mia Henry Date: December 11, 2017 Length: 1:02:04

The day-to-day is a grind, especially for working-class people, Black people, people of color, and organizers. When and how do we find time and space to exercise our radical imaginations? What IS a radical imagination? And what does fiction have to do with it? 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. According to them, whenever we envision a world without war, without prisons, without capitalism, we are using our radical imaginations and producing speculative fiction. The anthology encapsulates stories by cultural workers, sci-fi writers, political prisoners, organizers, and much more, many of whom had never before written fiction stories, yet alone sci-fi, before this book. For this episode, we sat down with Chicago-based playwright, dramaturge, and ceramic artist Tanuja Jagernauth to discuss one of her favorite books. She gives us all the perfect words for why this book is critical for organizers to read. Key Questions: 1. What is visionary fiction? 2. Who are the authors in this anthology? 3. What is the “radical imagination” that we so often refer to? How do you see this radical imagination practiced in Chicago? 4. What are stories and themes that come up in this book? 5. How can we look towards non-organizers, like Octavia Butler, for guidance to utilize in our organizing spaces? 6. How do we facilitate radical imagination? Hosts: Monica Trinidad and Page May Guest: Tanuja Jagernauth Date: December 4, 2017 Length: 43:00

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. We 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. Popularly, Pedagogy is referenced because Freire calls traditional pedagogy the “banking model of education” because it treats the students as empty vessels to be filled with knowledge, like a piggy bank. However, Paulo argues for a new pedagogy, treating the learners as co-creators of knowledge. ​In this episode, we dive deeper into this influential book with Pilsen-based youth worker Hilda Franco!

We’re back with another episode on Transgender History, this time, with the book’s author, Dr. Susan Stryker! With the 2nd edition just released last week, we thought it was a good time to revisit the book, see what’s changed, and touch on pieces we didn’t get to in Episode 4 with Benji Hart. Susan Stryker is an American professor, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality. Transgender History gives an introduction to transgender key terms and concepts, along with an overview of the history of transgenderism, transphobia, trans resistance, and trans liberation from the mid-19th century to the early 2000’s.

What is the destiny of human beings inside our current conditions? 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. Dubbed the Earthseed series, Octavia Butler’s books have been recently brought up in mainstream outlets as predicting our current Trump administration, due to the slogan “Make America Great Again” being used by Parables character Andrew Steele Jarret, a Texas senator, religious fanatic, and Presidential candidate running on that platform. ​WE know that Octavia Butler wasn’t just predicting the outcome of one, single administration, but what our futures will inevitably look like under the harmful conditions of capitalism. For this special live episode, we are joined by writer, facilitator, Octavia Butler-scholar, pleasure activist and doula adrienne maree brown. adrienne is the co-editor of the anthology, Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction for Social Justice Movements with Walidah Imarisha, published by AK Press in 2015. Her latest book is Emergent Strategy, a radical handbook heavily summarizing Octavia Butler’s wisdoms, designed to shape the futures we want to live. Get settled and tune in to our super long-form live episode with adrienne. Book: The Earthseed Series (Parable of the Sower & Parable of the Talents) by Octavia Butler Hosts: Monica Trinidad & Page May Guest: adrienne maree brown Date: November 6, 2017 Time: 1:22:32 Intro Song: Brujas by Princess Nokia Audio Tech: Sarah Lu

A former member of the Black Panther Party and political prisoner, Assata's words still bring hope & guidance to many in today's freedom struggle. This intensely personal and political autobiography has been and continues to be a landmark text in many young Black peoples' politicization. With incredible wit and poetry, Assata recounts her life growing up and the experiences that led her to a life of radical organizing. On this episode, we interview two young Black women about the ongoing lessons they have learned from Assata. Pat and Imani are organizers with Assata's Daughters. They are both members in Assata University, a year-long political education program for Black teens in & around Washington Park, and Patricia is a member of the Youth Leaders Circle where she and other teen leaders meet weekly to organize campaigns and projects.

In Episode 30, we turn to fiction as a way to more fully understand the stories and truths of immigration, war, and identity. The book highlighted in today's episode is Viet Thanh Nguyen's Pulitzer Prize winning novel The Sympathizer. The story follows a half-French, half-Vietnamese army captain and communist double agent who arranges to come to Los Angeles after the Fall of Saigon. The Sympathizer is a blistering exploration of identity and America, a gripping espionage novel, and a powerful story of love and friendship. ​To help us learn from the book, we say down with Van Huynh, an immigration attorney & community organizer here in Chicago

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. Drawing on over a decade of ethnographic and archival research, the findings in this book reveal how the Criminal Alien Program quietly set off a punitive turn in immigration enforcement that has fundamentally altered detention, deportation, and criminal prosecutions for immigration offenses. In this episode, we talk with our friend and organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations (OCAD), Arianna Salgado, about this history and its daily implications.

In an era defined by mass incarceration, endless war, economic crisis, catastrophic environmental destruction, and a political system offering more of the same, radical social transformation has never been more urgent—or seemed more remote. 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. In critiquing the world around us, insurgent educator and activist Bill Ayers uncovers cracks in that system, raising the horizons for radical change, and envisioning strategies for building the movement we need to make a world worth living in. Key Questions: 1. How do the questions we ask about problems impact the demands and solutions we imagine? 2. What does it mean to demand the impossible? 3. Who do we demand change from? 4. How can activists and organizers evaluate and template their work?