August 1, 2018 • 30 mins
To be Black in America is to be constantly reminded of your oppression and Otherness. But that hasn't stopped us from healing and making our own damn lanes. Bridget and Yves talk to poet Sonya Renee Taylor and Dr. Ayanna Abrams about making space for ourselves in a country that gives us no room.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Every day black people are told that this world isn't
a place for us. My advice to you if you
don't like it here in America, brains leave every hour
from Tampa Airport, hold back to Africa. Go back to Africa.
That we're not welcome because of the color of our skin,
the shape of our bodies, the kink of our hair.
Charles Craddick was supposed to spend the summer working at
(00:21):
Cedar Point, a job he's been looking forward to four months,
but after a skype interview, orientation, and moving into the
dorms over the weekend, the twenty year old was told
at his training session that he had to cut his
dreadlocks off or go. We're constantly told we're unintelligent and different,
that our blackness somehow makes us inferior. A prosecutor in
(00:42):
the state of California is wondering why Maxine Waters hasn't
been shot yet. And I'm not kidding. This was literally
something he publicly posted on his own Facebook page. I'm
going to read you the exact quote. And by the way,
this is the deputy District Attorney in San Bernard Dino County, California.
He wrote, being a loudmouthed expletive in the ghetto. You
(01:06):
would think someone would have shot this bitch by now.
And that's the C word. Yeah. From the big things
like laws that keep us disadvantage, to the small ones
like sidways, glances White folks give Black faults when they're uncomfortable.
The world has to tell us that we don't belong.
A CBS manager coming under fire captured on cell phone
(01:26):
video calling on a black customer trying to use a coupon.
You can tell them her name is Camilla Hudson. I
have I D and we'll share it. The manager visibly
shaking while making the call. But we do belong. We
don't need to defend our blackness, and we don't need
to earn any oppressors approval or respect. We know that
this land is as much ours as it is anybody else's,
(01:48):
and that we have the right to exist here. That's
why we're reclaiming our space. I'm each deaf Coat and
I'm bridget Todd. You're listening to afro Punk Solution Sessions.
Afro punk is a safe place, a blank space to
freak out in, to construct a new reality, to live
our lives as we see fit while making sense of
(02:09):
the world around us. Here at afro Punk, we have
the conversations that matter to us, conversations that lead to solutions.
(02:32):
If you've ever been to an afro punk festival, you
know that it's all about black folks living our truths,
no holds barred. It's a celebration of our creativity, our intelligence,
our determination, our joy, a place where we feel free
to be ourselves and speak our minds. Our correspondent Corey
Oliver acts attendee Ashley Augustine about the space the afro
(02:54):
punk creates at Carnival of Consciousness in Atlanta. Your sens
on earlier that real stood out said that there's like
a level of consciousness your ap How important do you
think it is to have a space like that for
black folks? Um. I think it's super important, UM, because
I think sometimes there's a a level of isolation you
can feel, um having certain thoughts that are are pro
(03:17):
black or UM just even being conscious of things going
on in our community, because it's normally like generally frowned
upon as like polite conversation. I work like a nine
to five office job. I t we do like third
party work with law enforcement it's a very like even
if you see it in the news, it's not the
place to bring it up. So it's always nice to
(03:38):
have weekends like this where I can come and avide
with people who think the same thoughts, want to go
the same places, want to do the same things, are
interested in the same initiatives, UM, have the same goals
in mind for our community. UM that you can bounce
ideas off of and and talk to and just feel
safe expressing those ideas in a single space with so
(03:58):
many different people from so many different places. Festival attendees.
Shadran Smith also feels the conflict of sticking to her
values on black issues but also being part of America's
capitalists and corporate structures. I like to be very conscious
of black history and being black and walking in that
truth is very important to me. You want to have
a space to take all your ideas and all your
(04:20):
feelings right and and just let it out and have
someone say, I understand, I see what you're trying to say,
I see how you feel. I empathize, I sympathize. Let's
work on making it better. UM. And you can't always
write in your in your nine to five and your
persona that pays the bills. Right, I can't go into
my my job and be like, I'm really ticked off
about all this stuff going on, you know, politics, X
(04:44):
Y Z there and be like this is not the place,
and um, I completely understand that. That's you know, the
businesses you work for, the places you go to work at,
they have their own platforms, they have their own agendas.
It's a business, and that's the reality. Many of us
wake up every day to work jobs that either directly
or indirectly benefit anti black systems. We do it to survive.
(05:10):
I've stood at old slave auction sites now marked by
ornate fountains, driven through land where Cherokee Natives were interned
and forcibly removed. I see reminders of marginalized death constantly. Yeah,
the places we live, as tainted and corrupted as they
may be, are still our homes. And in those places
we cultivate spaces where we can express ourselves fully, where
(05:33):
we can interrogate the effects of that trauma and envision liberation.
We expand our horizons and imagine new possibilities in the
tradition of our ancestors, like Sister Song executive director Monica
Simpson told Corey at the festival, we live in a
system where white supremacity tells us that we can't live,
that we shouldn't live, that we shouldn't have a future.
To have these conversations, you know, in our own communities
(05:56):
with folks that look like us, that share our same experiences,
it's say right, it's a way for us to like
put our guard down. It's a way for us to
like connect with each other without having to like worry
about what could potentially happen because I'm opening myself up
and becoming vulnerable. We need those safe spaces to be
able to have those conversations. We needed a safe space
that was outside in the United States to hold certain conversations.
(06:19):
And I don't think that we can do that in
the United States. I think that we're suffering and suffocating
and just dyeing every single day trying to survive there.
But I think that it's important for people in the
United States, black and POC people to start forming their
own spaces there so Black people aren't trying to squeeze
ourselves into spaces that weren't made for us. We're making
(06:41):
room for each other so that we see and hear
those who are often invisible and silenced. So often decisions
are made for black people rather than with black people.
How can an official address the needs of the community
they've never even visited. How can someone who's never experienced
racism understand it completely? Metaphorically and literally. Oppressors have tried
(07:01):
to force black people into certain spaces think prison cells, ghettos,
caskets the like, and as writer Handed Drake points out
with her do not Move off the sidewalk challenge, white
people use the simple act of walking down the street
as an opportunity to claim space and entitlement. After all,
conquests is a pillar of white history. But on the
(07:21):
other hand, Black people have long tipped away at the
racism in America to carve out a place for our freedom.
Think Greenwood, Oklahoma, famously known as Black Wall Street, where
a black business is boomed in the nineteen hundreds and
HBCUs and ball culture in Black Twitter. Who's up the
(07:54):
thing is, even though we've come so far in advancing
our rights and learning to embrace our history and blackness,
we're still suffering. When we get back from this break,
we'll talk to a clinical psychologist who seen firsthands the
way that black folks are struggling with our mental health.
(08:14):
So what happens oftentimes, particularly for black women, is that
we've cut off so many parts of ourselves in order
to kind of be in this world and in this space,
a workspace, a relationship, a family member, um, just in
the world. To make other people comfortable with us, We've
had to do all these things, whether it be about
our hair, our complexion, what we are wearing, our tone
of voice, all these ways. We have compartmentalized all these
(08:37):
aspects of ourselves so that other people, UM can accept us,
can love us, can treat us better. All the while
that fragments us. Right. So I work with tons of
black women and there's main themes where they have felt
they need to fragment themselves literally cut off parts of
themselves in order to be in this world and to
be regarded and accepted right. But the the irony of that,
UM is that you're only giving the world a piece
(08:57):
of you, right, which makes everyone else comfortab and makes
you know, everyone else feel catered to all the while
we're not getting our knees met right because we're not
able to be our whole selves. That's dr Iyana Abrams.
She goes by Dr Iyana. She's a licensed clinical psychologist
based in Atlanta. And those stigmas, stereotypes, and discrimination surrounding
blackness very tangibly affect black health. We are holding the
(09:22):
weight of again, all the isms, we're holding the weight
of all the transgressions right that the nation in the
world holes. And we've also been taught that we're not
allowed to require things of other people, right, So it
leads to this dynamic where we're doing all the work,
we're doing literally all of the heavy lifting, and there's
nothing replenishing us. Right. So that's why I'm fine with
women requiring other people to pause to listen to here,
(09:46):
or that we will leave these relationships, we will leave
these dynamics that don't serve us and don't allow us
to replenish ourselves. Black Americans have a higher rate of
death than our white counterparts. In fact, report from the
America Sociological Association showed that half of black youth surveyed
weren't even optimistic about living past, and Black people are
(10:08):
more likely to have serious mental health problems like major
depression and PTSD and the general population. Mental health is
clearly not just a white issue, but there's still shame
around black mental health issues in America, so these problems
often go unaddressed. We have to make room for reckoning, recovery,
and healing, and we have to stick a claim to
our personal space as much as we do with our
(10:30):
public space. I think Black people are becoming better at
acknowledging ourselves, valuing ourselves, loving ourselves, modeling what self love
looks like. And we've had to do a lot of
untraining and relearning of what the nation has taught us.
But the nation has a very, very long way to
go UM in terms of responding to respecting, valuing, and
(10:50):
embracing not just tolerating, but embracing blackness and the fullness
that it comes with, and how rich it is and
how vibrant it is and how resilient the culture is.
That won't happen until the nation takes full responsibility for
the role that's played UM and trying to erase blackness.
(11:14):
So until this nation is willing to recognize the privilege
that it holds UM and not be as defensive around it,
then that level of healing won't be able to take place,
which is why I think it's been very, very extremely
important imperative for Black people to take healing into our
own hands and to not depend on the majority for
our healing. That's why you're seeing many more spaces that
(11:34):
are filled with blackness and black self care and black
love and having to be exclusive to us. I think
we've we've recognized over time, and I think we're finally
UM sitting in that and basking in that that we
can't depend on the majority to take care of us.
Dr Yana is clear about how important self care is,
how in order for us to do better for the world,
(11:54):
we have to do better for ourselves. We discussed Audrey
Lord's famous declaration caring for myself is not self indulgence.
It is self preservation, and that is an act of
political warfare. And that's from our grey Lord. I'm snapping
over the place, absolutely positive. UM. Oftentimes self care gets
(12:18):
confused and kind of mixed in with selfishness, and it's
it's a problem that a lot of people struggle with
taking care of themselves because I should be taking care
of other people, are focusing on other people, or should
be embracing things and doing things for other There's a
value that's set in that UM and what gets in
the ways that people don't take enough time for themselves,
which means that that sleep, that is nutrition, that's work, stuff,
(12:40):
that's getting to their values and their goals. If so
much attention is focused on other people, you can't figure
out who you are and what you need. And as
a society, particular when it comes to people of color,
we've gotten so used to focusing on other people that
we're so disconnected from ourselves. So it makes it really
impossible to know ourselves and to take the best care
of ourselves. So it's a matter of self president ration. Um.
(13:01):
The only way that we can exist in this world
is knowing more about ourselves. I love that quote. And
when we learn to sit with ourselves, then we can
extend that peace to our communities. In my own meditation
and yoga practices, the time that I've spen listening to
and learning about myself and my body, it's tough. It's
not all just saying m sitting in lotus and doing
weird balancing poses. It's work. Sometimes it's the work of
(13:25):
rejecting the labels that society places on me and the
things that tells me I can't do. Sometimes it's me
acknowledging or confronting my fears. Sometimes it's letting all those
gut wrenching emotions come up, observing them and then letting
them pass. And sometimes it's the work of me just
taking the time to sit quietly for five minutes when
I least want to, and all that inner work that
(13:46):
I do turns into things that other people see two
more thoughtfulness, more compassion, less judgment. We have been filled
up with so much other people's stuff, other people's need
of us, other people's desires for us, other people's violations, trauma.
Right Oftentimes, sitting in that stillness, all these things that
(14:06):
are rushing in is not just a person or kind
of individualized trauma and discomfort. We're talking about years of
stuff that particularly black women carry in our bodies and
in our bones. Right, So stillness requires you to reconcile
all of those things, all this trauma that we hold
in our bodies. Right, we have not historically been allowed
to be still and to sit still. We've always had
(14:27):
work to do. Right, So, the the concept of stillness
is still very remarkably new when we work on addressing
the ways that navigating blackness, marginalization, and generational trauma has
affected our health and learned to love our blackness. We
all level up. The more that we do focus on
blackness and the wellness of black women, black man, black
(14:49):
families in particular, the whole country gets better. The nation
can rise right from that foundation because we're so much
a part of of everything right. And what's happened is
that the nation has has tried to ignore, pin down, compartmentalized,
kind of ostracized black and blackness. Um, but we see
it belieds everywhere, It belieds in very so it's actually
(15:10):
impossible to do that. Dr Ayana says she's seeing more
Black people speak up and take action around their mental health.
When Bridget and I talked to Black Lives Matter co
founder Portrit Colors for the episode on activism, she told
us that she spends time and nature to distress and
turns her phone off at night, and just weeks ago,
singer and mental health advocate Michelle Williams publicly says she
(15:32):
was taking her own advice and getting help from mental
health professionals. And it's empowering to see black folks taking
back our power in this way. It shakes up the
entire system right, The system has been so used to um,
Black women being quiet and being silence and then being
able to use the angry black women trope right against
us to silence us in all the spaces. So not
only self care, but us being loud and kind of
(15:54):
loud and proud about self care. Hey, no, I'm taking
time to do this. I'm gonna say no to this.
I am gonna be angry about this. It does. It
shakes people up. They don't expect that. So when we
begin speaking up for ourselves again, it makes everybody take
a pause. And I'm I support that pause because we've
been pausing for everybody right our entire lives. So creating
space for our healing and transformation is important work. But
(16:17):
it's not easy or pretty work all the time. I
do think that there's been a trend I think that's
been further by social media that says that self care
looks super super positive and like I said, it's getting
your nails on its spaus a kind of all these
things that are connected to being care free and not
thinking about anything else, not thinking about our stressors. Um,
and those things are all well and good and fine, right,
(16:38):
those those breaks, those kind of shifts can be really
really important. But when I view self care also viewed
as more accountability and responsibility for yourself. Right, I view
self care as you know, making sure you are physically
taking care of yourself. So self care looks like getting
more sleep. And now I have clients who will come
in and say, like, yeah, I get about five hours
of sleep, and that's that's always been the case. That's
not why I'm here, And I'm just like, you get
(16:58):
five hours of sleep a night, like for years, Like,
do you know what that is doing to your body?
That is literally taking years off of your life. Right,
That's what I'm talking about in terms of self care.
I'm talking about responsibility in terms of your financial health, right,
paying that bill that's now got you know third notice. Right,
those are things that allow you to maintain your homeostasis.
That's what I'm talking about. Take care of your body. UM,
(17:21):
eat more nutritiously kind of again, figure out kind of
where your finances are, being good to people like those
things are, and being good to yourself actually, um, even
before you are good to other people. Those things that
are the things that I'm looking at in terms of
self care. Doctor Hayana kind of mentions a lot of
the little things that we can do to take care
of ourselves that I think a lot of the time
(17:43):
we don't think about, like eating more nutritionally, cleaning, you know,
taking care of your hygiene are all things that I
think can also help us create space for ourselves and
really help us get ourselves in the right mental state. Yeah.
I often get a little bit annoyed with the whole
self care conversation because I think that we've transformed it
(18:03):
to be about bath bombs and getting your hair done
and getting a pedicure, and those things can be self
care too. But you know, self care doesn't always look
glamorous on Instagram. Sometimes self care is going to therapy.
Sometimes self care is you know, taking your med. Sometimes
self care looks like taking a shower when you haven't
had the energy to shower for a week because you've
been depressed. Um. I like conversations that remind folks that
(18:27):
self care looks different for everybody, and taking care of
yourself looks different for everybody. It doesn't have to be
something that looks very chic and glamorous, right. I like
that you bring that up, because I think a lot
of time people feel like self care is something that's
forced upon them, which is counterintuitive. Like self care is
for yourself. It's not like it's what somebody else is
doing to you or what somebody else is doing for you. Also,
(18:50):
I think a lot of the time self care doesn't
have to involve anything material. It doesn't have to involve
some kind of outside for us. It can be things
as simple as like journaling. Um. Yeah, if anyone is
listening to this podcast right now and you're at work,
have you had a glass of water? Have you eaten?
Have you stood up? Have you walked around? You know,
like those little things that take five minutes that don't
(19:11):
cost a thing, remember to do them to take care
of yourself. Do you have any personal self care practices
that you really like to turn to? Bridget I'm a
bit of a self care hypocrite, I am. I mean
I talk a big game about self care, but the
reality is, for some folks sometimes you can't take time away.
You can't you don't have that option. So mine are
(19:33):
always things that are quick and cheap, you know, taking
a walk with headphones. Um. You know, maybe I don't
have the bandwidth to take two days off from email
and from work, but I can take five minutes and
listen to a song that comes me down and take
a walk around the block and come back and finish
my work. I love that Black people claiming our rightful
(19:53):
place in our societies and communities is an assertion of
our existence and our power. It means lifting up all
our identity, ease, and not alienating any saying that they
should all be valued, cared for, and loved. After the break,
we talked about cultivating self love and spaces that tell
us we shouldn't. Yes, we are all sluts. You're a slut.
(20:21):
All these dudes behind you with sluts. Your cameraman is
a slut, your pa is a slut, and your mike's
a slut. And what made you a slut? Because I
owned my body. My body is not a political playground.
It's not a place for legislation. It's mine. It's my future.
And how old are you grown? In this video, taken
(20:42):
at a seventeen slot walk, Samiraheim is declaring ownership of
her own existence and expression and claiming her space. Don't
you sleep around with a lot of men? Now? Actually
I'm a virgin virgin. Yeah, you're not a slut. Yes
you can be a slut because the slut is not
what you made, and Jesse, a slut is what I
may boss getting money, taking the mic, turning life around.
(21:04):
But let's be real, for black folks, sometimes existing in
this world is triggering and traumatic. It's hard to say
I matter, I'm here and I deserve to be when
the world screams to opposite bully. Taking up space can
be scary, difficult territory. Would your parents be happy to know?
My parents will be happy to know that I'm a
(21:24):
free woman on the billboard in time Square and soho
for every real because we take back the woman more
and we ain't lame doing like Jessie words striped shirts.
So to to even try to create space for ourselves
within these systems becomes really really hard. Um So understanding
the bind that any person of color faces when we
are entrenched in systems that were not designed for us,
(21:46):
and that as a result of us being in them,
we are forced to try to create spaces for ourselves
within these systems. Right, So the work there in terms
of our healing is getting together right with others to
create space for us. I was talking to my clients
about I need you to take up our space, take
up space in the bed, take up space in the house,
take up space and meetings, say things that you want
to say. Create space for yourself because nobody will create
(22:07):
it for you. The other thing we can do, she says,
is to get uncomfortable. What I always try to share
with people is that anytime you're going to do something different,
it's risk right now. And we're in a culture who's
who is very, very risk averse, which is why I
think we don't sit in the stillness it feels uncomfortable.
We try to avoid tolerating a certain level of distress. Right. So,
my my practice in the community UM as well as
(22:29):
in my practice with clients, is to give yourself the
opportunity to tolerate distress. Oftentimes we're stronger than we think,
so we don't give ourselves room to try something different
because we don't know what will happen next, Right, So
it's more rooted in kind of control and anxiety that, hey,
this is too uncomfortable for me to talk about. UM.
What I usually noticed on the other side of people
talking about stuff and kind of sharing their narrative is
(22:50):
that they can feel a sense of relief, They can
feel a sense of empowerment. UM, they're able to kind
of connect with people in a way that they weren't
able to before because again, the way in which humans
connect is at the deepest level of emotion, your powers
into your discomfort you. Have you ever seen that? Um,
it's like a Venn diagram that has like you and
your comfort zone and like growth, growth is outside of
(23:13):
your comfort zone. And there are difference I forgot there's
different zones. There's um comfort zone, there's your growth zone,
and there's like your panic zone. You don't want to
do too much to where you're getting into your state
of panic, but you want to feel uncomfortable. It's a
difference between like pain and injury. Right, So when you're
working out, you want to experience some kind of pain
and kind of soreness, but there's a gap between pain
and soreness versus when you're about to break something and
(23:36):
then connecting with others, we have to have empathy. I
would love people to practice empathy skills. A lot of
people assume that empathy is something that we like come
with in these ways, but it's it's literally kind of
just practicing allowing people to be in whatever space they
are in UM and just being much more responsive to
people and really focusing on not controlling people, but continuing
(23:56):
to be kind, continuing to be compassionate u to yourself,
to other people. And if you don't know what that
is or kind of what that means, there are books,
they're resources on how to be compassionate, how to be empathic.
But I think again, as as we treat ourselves better
and treat other people better, we will see less likelihood
of mental illness and mental distress. But don't be apologetic
about finding spaces that suits you and that value you
(24:19):
and that embrace you. Don't be apologetic about spaces where
you feel good about yourself. We have to proclaim our
space in this world unapologetically. In your silence, people get
to make your narrative essentially right in your silence. People
get to then say that this is what you experience,
this is what you like, this is what you didn't like.
So in these spaces that weren't designed for us, UM,
(24:40):
the options are to forcibly create space for yourself or
to accept that those spaces aren't designed for you and
create other spaces for yourself. That's why, in terms of
the wellness retreats and kind of things that are very
exclusive to black women and black people and black conferences.
Create a space for yourself where you know that you
will be well taken care of, where you know that
you will be valued. You know that you can be
(25:00):
around like minded people who are all here focused on
our growth, our wellness and embracing all the different kind
of facets of blackness. Begin creating your own spaces. For me,
part of my radical self love practice is to be
nuanced like that is what radical self love is is
to stop having these one sided, all or nothing relationships
(25:23):
with ourselves and to like embrace the multiplicity of who
we are. That's Sonya and a Taylor, founder of the
movement The Body Is Not an apology and author of
a book of the same name. On the cover of
the book, Sania lives nude in a bed of flowers,
energetic lines radiating from her body. Before she started her
group discussion that Cares Books in Atlanta in early Sonya
(25:46):
took a moment to honor indigenous folks in the history
of the space, so she's no stranger to being in
conversation with spaces she inhabits. After her talk, I spoke
with her about practicing radical self care. So the thing
that I was thinking about in the talk tonight UM
personally was the feeling of being wanted and unwanted at
(26:08):
the same time. I was wondering if you have any
thoughts on that, UM, specifically as being a black person
in America as well UM being spectacle in the positive
way and also in a negative way. And that's something
that goes back through history as well. Absolutely no display
for various reasons. Can you tell me how radical self
(26:28):
love maybe relates to that idea of feeling wanted and
unwanted at the same time. Yeah, So when you ask
me that question, it makes me think of sort of
the function of being both hyper visible and invisible at
the same time. And I think what radical self love
does for me in that space is it situates that
(26:50):
experience as outside of me. And it makes it very
clear that the ways in which the world will either
um take bits and pieces of me and either magnify
them for its own purpose or try to erase parts
of me is not a function of some failure of mine,
That it's not some function of a lack of my
(27:10):
own personal value or worth in the world. That it
is a function of a system that profits off of
making me hyper visible when it serves them, and also
profits off of erasing me when it serves them. And
so it really is about like just not taking on
the blame for that, but also at the same time
advocating for myself in the ways that I need to.
(27:33):
If one way we reclaim our space is by not
being silent, then Sonia is doing just that. She's a
queer black author, poet, and spoken word artists advocating for
bodies that look like hers, and she shared her work
with me an excerpt from a piece called Bodies of Resistance.
Even as they attempted to gavel our silence, nevertheless we persisted,
each of us a link in the human chain. Your
(27:55):
shame has not slain even the lowliest of beasts, but
are collective transformation has delivered us intrepid to Capital City streets,
three million grains of sand, forged under the heat of
oppression until we were fine as keen edged glass, a
beatrice of bodies, unafraid to ask why black lives would
not matter. As we saw no they and we knew
(28:17):
solidarity was a word that must spring forever, like water
beside a standing rock. The clock of justice will not
terry while you question whether you are worthy of the fight.
Regardless of all you've been told. Resistance is an everyday act,
the work of excavating each tiny artifact of the oppressor
that lives in you. Your call to be a balm
(28:38):
to every self inflicted wound is the way movements are birthed,
and the land content to bid you endless slumber. Waking
unrepentant in your own skin is a hero's journey and
the only way we collectively prevail. And only then can
we say, in the words of the famous poet Lucille Clifton,
(29:00):
won't you celebrate with me that every day something has
tried to kill us and has failed, and has failed
and will fail. Say it with me? All we are here.
So what's the solution? Bridget practice self care and self love?
What else is the solution? Bridget take up space unapologetically.
(29:23):
What's another solution? Bridget find power in your discomfort? Any
other solutions? Bridget embrace blackness fully and always. Afropunk Solution
Sessions is a co production between Afro Punk and How
(29:43):
Stuff Works. Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve Jeff Cope,
Executive Co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan
latif Hill. Dylan Fagin is supervising producer, and Kathleen Cuillian
is audio engineer. Chandler Maze was our audio editor this week.
Many many thanks to Casey Pegram and Antie Reese for
their production and editorial oversight, and many thanks to Are
(30:06):
on the Ground Atlanta crew, Ben Bowling, Corey Oliver and
Noel Brown. The Underside of Power is performed by Algiers.
Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at apro
punk
Every day black people are told that this world isn't
a place for us. My advice to you if you
don't like it here in America, brains leave every hour
from Tampa Airport, hold back to Africa. Go back to Africa.
That we're not welcome because of the color of our skin,
the shape of our bodies, the kink of our hair.
Charles Craddick was supposed to spend the summer working at
(00:21):
Cedar Point, a job he's been looking forward to four months,
but after a skype interview, orientation, and moving into the
dorms over the weekend, the twenty year old was told
at his training session that he had to cut his
dreadlocks off or go. We're constantly told we're unintelligent and different,
that our blackness somehow makes us inferior. A prosecutor in
(00:42):
the state of California is wondering why Maxine Waters hasn't
been shot yet. And I'm not kidding. This was literally
something he publicly posted on his own Facebook page. I'm
going to read you the exact quote. And by the way,
this is the deputy District Attorney in San Bernard Dino County, California.
He wrote, being a loudmouthed expletive in the ghetto. You
(01:06):
would think someone would have shot this bitch by now.
And that's the C word. Yeah. From the big things
like laws that keep us disadvantage, to the small ones
like sidways, glances White folks give Black faults when they're uncomfortable.
The world has to tell us that we don't belong.
A CBS manager coming under fire captured on cell phone
(01:26):
video calling on a black customer trying to use a coupon.
You can tell them her name is Camilla Hudson. I
have I D and we'll share it. The manager visibly
shaking while making the call. But we do belong. We
don't need to defend our blackness, and we don't need
to earn any oppressors approval or respect. We know that
this land is as much ours as it is anybody else's,
(01:48):
and that we have the right to exist here. That's
why we're reclaiming our space. I'm each deaf Coat and
I'm bridget Todd. You're listening to afro Punk Solution Sessions.
Afro punk is a safe place, a blank space to
freak out in, to construct a new reality, to live
our lives as we see fit while making sense of
(02:09):
the world around us. Here at afro Punk, we have
the conversations that matter to us, conversations that lead to solutions.
(02:32):
If you've ever been to an afro punk festival, you
know that it's all about black folks living our truths,
no holds barred. It's a celebration of our creativity, our intelligence,
our determination, our joy, a place where we feel free
to be ourselves and speak our minds. Our correspondent Corey
Oliver acts attendee Ashley Augustine about the space the afro
(02:54):
punk creates at Carnival of Consciousness in Atlanta. Your sens
on earlier that real stood out said that there's like
a level of consciousness your ap How important do you
think it is to have a space like that for
black folks? Um. I think it's super important, UM, because
I think sometimes there's a a level of isolation you
can feel, um having certain thoughts that are are pro
(03:17):
black or UM just even being conscious of things going
on in our community, because it's normally like generally frowned
upon as like polite conversation. I work like a nine
to five office job. I t we do like third
party work with law enforcement it's a very like even
if you see it in the news, it's not the
place to bring it up. So it's always nice to
(03:38):
have weekends like this where I can come and avide
with people who think the same thoughts, want to go
the same places, want to do the same things, are
interested in the same initiatives, UM, have the same goals
in mind for our community. UM that you can bounce
ideas off of and and talk to and just feel
safe expressing those ideas in a single space with so
(03:58):
many different people from so many different places. Festival attendees.
Shadran Smith also feels the conflict of sticking to her
values on black issues but also being part of America's
capitalists and corporate structures. I like to be very conscious
of black history and being black and walking in that
truth is very important to me. You want to have
a space to take all your ideas and all your
(04:20):
feelings right and and just let it out and have
someone say, I understand, I see what you're trying to say,
I see how you feel. I empathize, I sympathize. Let's
work on making it better. UM. And you can't always
write in your in your nine to five and your
persona that pays the bills. Right, I can't go into
my my job and be like, I'm really ticked off
about all this stuff going on, you know, politics, X
(04:44):
Y Z there and be like this is not the place,
and um, I completely understand that. That's you know, the
businesses you work for, the places you go to work at,
they have their own platforms, they have their own agendas.
It's a business, and that's the reality. Many of us
wake up every day to work jobs that either directly
or indirectly benefit anti black systems. We do it to survive.
(05:10):
I've stood at old slave auction sites now marked by
ornate fountains, driven through land where Cherokee Natives were interned
and forcibly removed. I see reminders of marginalized death constantly. Yeah,
the places we live, as tainted and corrupted as they
may be, are still our homes. And in those places
we cultivate spaces where we can express ourselves fully, where
(05:33):
we can interrogate the effects of that trauma and envision liberation.
We expand our horizons and imagine new possibilities in the
tradition of our ancestors, like Sister Song executive director Monica
Simpson told Corey at the festival, we live in a
system where white supremacity tells us that we can't live,
that we shouldn't live, that we shouldn't have a future.
To have these conversations, you know, in our own communities
(05:56):
with folks that look like us, that share our same experiences,
it's say right, it's a way for us to like
put our guard down. It's a way for us to
like connect with each other without having to like worry
about what could potentially happen because I'm opening myself up
and becoming vulnerable. We need those safe spaces to be
able to have those conversations. We needed a safe space
that was outside in the United States to hold certain conversations.
(06:19):
And I don't think that we can do that in
the United States. I think that we're suffering and suffocating
and just dyeing every single day trying to survive there.
But I think that it's important for people in the
United States, black and POC people to start forming their
own spaces there so Black people aren't trying to squeeze
ourselves into spaces that weren't made for us. We're making
(06:41):
room for each other so that we see and hear
those who are often invisible and silenced. So often decisions
are made for black people rather than with black people.
How can an official address the needs of the community
they've never even visited. How can someone who's never experienced
racism understand it completely? Metaphorically and literally. Oppressors have tried
(07:01):
to force black people into certain spaces think prison cells, ghettos,
caskets the like, and as writer Handed Drake points out
with her do not Move off the sidewalk challenge, white
people use the simple act of walking down the street
as an opportunity to claim space and entitlement. After all,
conquests is a pillar of white history. But on the
(07:21):
other hand, Black people have long tipped away at the
racism in America to carve out a place for our freedom.
Think Greenwood, Oklahoma, famously known as Black Wall Street, where
a black business is boomed in the nineteen hundreds and
HBCUs and ball culture in Black Twitter. Who's up the
(07:54):
thing is, even though we've come so far in advancing
our rights and learning to embrace our history and blackness,
we're still suffering. When we get back from this break,
we'll talk to a clinical psychologist who seen firsthands the
way that black folks are struggling with our mental health.
(08:14):
So what happens oftentimes, particularly for black women, is that
we've cut off so many parts of ourselves in order
to kind of be in this world and in this space,
a workspace, a relationship, a family member, um, just in
the world. To make other people comfortable with us, We've
had to do all these things, whether it be about
our hair, our complexion, what we are wearing, our tone
of voice, all these ways. We have compartmentalized all these
(08:37):
aspects of ourselves so that other people, UM can accept us,
can love us, can treat us better. All the while
that fragments us. Right. So I work with tons of
black women and there's main themes where they have felt
they need to fragment themselves literally cut off parts of
themselves in order to be in this world and to
be regarded and accepted right. But the the irony of that,
UM is that you're only giving the world a piece
(08:57):
of you, right, which makes everyone else comfortab and makes
you know, everyone else feel catered to all the while
we're not getting our knees met right because we're not
able to be our whole selves. That's dr Iyana Abrams.
She goes by Dr Iyana. She's a licensed clinical psychologist
based in Atlanta. And those stigmas, stereotypes, and discrimination surrounding
blackness very tangibly affect black health. We are holding the
(09:22):
weight of again, all the isms, we're holding the weight
of all the transgressions right that the nation in the
world holes. And we've also been taught that we're not
allowed to require things of other people, right, So it
leads to this dynamic where we're doing all the work,
we're doing literally all of the heavy lifting, and there's
nothing replenishing us. Right. So that's why I'm fine with
women requiring other people to pause to listen to here,
(09:46):
or that we will leave these relationships, we will leave
these dynamics that don't serve us and don't allow us
to replenish ourselves. Black Americans have a higher rate of
death than our white counterparts. In fact, report from the
America Sociological Association showed that half of black youth surveyed
weren't even optimistic about living past, and Black people are
(10:08):
more likely to have serious mental health problems like major
depression and PTSD and the general population. Mental health is
clearly not just a white issue, but there's still shame
around black mental health issues in America, so these problems
often go unaddressed. We have to make room for reckoning, recovery,
and healing, and we have to stick a claim to
our personal space as much as we do with our
(10:30):
public space. I think Black people are becoming better at
acknowledging ourselves, valuing ourselves, loving ourselves, modeling what self love
looks like. And we've had to do a lot of
untraining and relearning of what the nation has taught us.
But the nation has a very, very long way to
go UM in terms of responding to respecting, valuing, and
(10:50):
embracing not just tolerating, but embracing blackness and the fullness
that it comes with, and how rich it is and
how vibrant it is and how resilient the culture is.
That won't happen until the nation takes full responsibility for
the role that's played UM and trying to erase blackness.
(11:14):
So until this nation is willing to recognize the privilege
that it holds UM and not be as defensive around it,
then that level of healing won't be able to take place,
which is why I think it's been very, very extremely
important imperative for Black people to take healing into our
own hands and to not depend on the majority for
our healing. That's why you're seeing many more spaces that
(11:34):
are filled with blackness and black self care and black
love and having to be exclusive to us. I think
we've we've recognized over time, and I think we're finally
UM sitting in that and basking in that that we
can't depend on the majority to take care of us.
Dr Yana is clear about how important self care is,
how in order for us to do better for the world,
(11:54):
we have to do better for ourselves. We discussed Audrey
Lord's famous declaration caring for myself is not self indulgence.
It is self preservation, and that is an act of
political warfare. And that's from our grey Lord. I'm snapping
over the place, absolutely positive. UM. Oftentimes self care gets
(12:18):
confused and kind of mixed in with selfishness, and it's
it's a problem that a lot of people struggle with
taking care of themselves because I should be taking care
of other people, are focusing on other people, or should
be embracing things and doing things for other There's a
value that's set in that UM and what gets in
the ways that people don't take enough time for themselves,
which means that that sleep, that is nutrition, that's work, stuff,
(12:40):
that's getting to their values and their goals. If so
much attention is focused on other people, you can't figure
out who you are and what you need. And as
a society, particular when it comes to people of color,
we've gotten so used to focusing on other people that
we're so disconnected from ourselves. So it makes it really
impossible to know ourselves and to take the best care
of ourselves. So it's a matter of self president ration. Um.
(13:01):
The only way that we can exist in this world
is knowing more about ourselves. I love that quote. And
when we learn to sit with ourselves, then we can
extend that peace to our communities. In my own meditation
and yoga practices, the time that I've spen listening to
and learning about myself and my body, it's tough. It's
not all just saying m sitting in lotus and doing
weird balancing poses. It's work. Sometimes it's the work of
(13:25):
rejecting the labels that society places on me and the
things that tells me I can't do. Sometimes it's me
acknowledging or confronting my fears. Sometimes it's letting all those
gut wrenching emotions come up, observing them and then letting
them pass. And sometimes it's the work of me just
taking the time to sit quietly for five minutes when
I least want to, and all that inner work that
(13:46):
I do turns into things that other people see two
more thoughtfulness, more compassion, less judgment. We have been filled
up with so much other people's stuff, other people's need
of us, other people's desires for us, other people's violations, trauma.
Right Oftentimes, sitting in that stillness, all these things that
(14:06):
are rushing in is not just a person or kind
of individualized trauma and discomfort. We're talking about years of
stuff that particularly black women carry in our bodies and
in our bones. Right, So stillness requires you to reconcile
all of those things, all this trauma that we hold
in our bodies. Right, we have not historically been allowed
to be still and to sit still. We've always had
(14:27):
work to do. Right, So, the the concept of stillness
is still very remarkably new when we work on addressing
the ways that navigating blackness, marginalization, and generational trauma has
affected our health and learned to love our blackness. We
all level up. The more that we do focus on
blackness and the wellness of black women, black man, black
(14:49):
families in particular, the whole country gets better. The nation
can rise right from that foundation because we're so much
a part of of everything right. And what's happened is
that the nation has has tried to ignore, pin down, compartmentalized,
kind of ostracized black and blackness. Um, but we see
it belieds everywhere, It belieds in very so it's actually
(15:10):
impossible to do that. Dr Ayana says she's seeing more
Black people speak up and take action around their mental health.
When Bridget and I talked to Black Lives Matter co
founder Portrit Colors for the episode on activism, she told
us that she spends time and nature to distress and
turns her phone off at night, and just weeks ago,
singer and mental health advocate Michelle Williams publicly says she
(15:32):
was taking her own advice and getting help from mental
health professionals. And it's empowering to see black folks taking
back our power in this way. It shakes up the
entire system right, The system has been so used to um,
Black women being quiet and being silence and then being
able to use the angry black women trope right against
us to silence us in all the spaces. So not
only self care, but us being loud and kind of
(15:54):
loud and proud about self care. Hey, no, I'm taking
time to do this. I'm gonna say no to this.
I am gonna be angry about this. It does. It
shakes people up. They don't expect that. So when we
begin speaking up for ourselves again, it makes everybody take
a pause. And I'm I support that pause because we've
been pausing for everybody right our entire lives. So creating
space for our healing and transformation is important work. But
(16:17):
it's not easy or pretty work all the time. I
do think that there's been a trend I think that's
been further by social media that says that self care
looks super super positive and like I said, it's getting
your nails on its spaus a kind of all these
things that are connected to being care free and not
thinking about anything else, not thinking about our stressors. Um,
and those things are all well and good and fine, right,
(16:38):
those those breaks, those kind of shifts can be really
really important. But when I view self care also viewed
as more accountability and responsibility for yourself. Right, I view
self care as you know, making sure you are physically
taking care of yourself. So self care looks like getting
more sleep. And now I have clients who will come
in and say, like, yeah, I get about five hours
of sleep, and that's that's always been the case. That's
not why I'm here, And I'm just like, you get
(16:58):
five hours of sleep a night, like for years, Like,
do you know what that is doing to your body?
That is literally taking years off of your life. Right,
That's what I'm talking about in terms of self care.
I'm talking about responsibility in terms of your financial health, right,
paying that bill that's now got you know third notice. Right,
those are things that allow you to maintain your homeostasis.
That's what I'm talking about. Take care of your body. UM,
(17:21):
eat more nutritiously kind of again, figure out kind of
where your finances are, being good to people like those
things are, and being good to yourself actually, um, even
before you are good to other people. Those things that
are the things that I'm looking at in terms of
self care. Doctor Hayana kind of mentions a lot of
the little things that we can do to take care
of ourselves that I think a lot of the time
(17:43):
we don't think about, like eating more nutritionally, cleaning, you know,
taking care of your hygiene are all things that I
think can also help us create space for ourselves and
really help us get ourselves in the right mental state. Yeah.
I often get a little bit annoyed with the whole
self care conversation because I think that we've transformed it
(18:03):
to be about bath bombs and getting your hair done
and getting a pedicure, and those things can be self
care too. But you know, self care doesn't always look
glamorous on Instagram. Sometimes self care is going to therapy.
Sometimes self care is you know, taking your med. Sometimes
self care looks like taking a shower when you haven't
had the energy to shower for a week because you've
been depressed. Um. I like conversations that remind folks that
(18:27):
self care looks different for everybody, and taking care of
yourself looks different for everybody. It doesn't have to be
something that looks very chic and glamorous, right. I like
that you bring that up, because I think a lot
of time people feel like self care is something that's
forced upon them, which is counterintuitive. Like self care is
for yourself. It's not like it's what somebody else is
doing to you or what somebody else is doing for you. Also,
(18:50):
I think a lot of the time self care doesn't
have to involve anything material. It doesn't have to involve
some kind of outside for us. It can be things
as simple as like journaling. Um. Yeah, if anyone is
listening to this podcast right now and you're at work,
have you had a glass of water? Have you eaten?
Have you stood up? Have you walked around? You know,
like those little things that take five minutes that don't
(19:11):
cost a thing, remember to do them to take care
of yourself. Do you have any personal self care practices
that you really like to turn to? Bridget I'm a
bit of a self care hypocrite, I am. I mean
I talk a big game about self care, but the
reality is, for some folks sometimes you can't take time away.
You can't you don't have that option. So mine are
(19:33):
always things that are quick and cheap, you know, taking
a walk with headphones. Um. You know, maybe I don't
have the bandwidth to take two days off from email
and from work, but I can take five minutes and
listen to a song that comes me down and take
a walk around the block and come back and finish
my work. I love that Black people claiming our rightful
(19:53):
place in our societies and communities is an assertion of
our existence and our power. It means lifting up all
our identity, ease, and not alienating any saying that they
should all be valued, cared for, and loved. After the break,
we talked about cultivating self love and spaces that tell
us we shouldn't. Yes, we are all sluts. You're a slut.
(20:21):
All these dudes behind you with sluts. Your cameraman is
a slut, your pa is a slut, and your mike's
a slut. And what made you a slut? Because I
owned my body. My body is not a political playground.
It's not a place for legislation. It's mine. It's my future.
And how old are you grown? In this video, taken
(20:42):
at a seventeen slot walk, Samiraheim is declaring ownership of
her own existence and expression and claiming her space. Don't
you sleep around with a lot of men? Now? Actually
I'm a virgin virgin. Yeah, you're not a slut. Yes
you can be a slut because the slut is not
what you made, and Jesse, a slut is what I
may boss getting money, taking the mic, turning life around.
(21:04):
But let's be real, for black folks, sometimes existing in
this world is triggering and traumatic. It's hard to say
I matter, I'm here and I deserve to be when
the world screams to opposite bully. Taking up space can
be scary, difficult territory. Would your parents be happy to know?
My parents will be happy to know that I'm a
(21:24):
free woman on the billboard in time Square and soho
for every real because we take back the woman more
and we ain't lame doing like Jessie words striped shirts.
So to to even try to create space for ourselves
within these systems becomes really really hard. Um So understanding
the bind that any person of color faces when we
are entrenched in systems that were not designed for us,
(21:46):
and that as a result of us being in them,
we are forced to try to create spaces for ourselves
within these systems. Right, So the work there in terms
of our healing is getting together right with others to
create space for us. I was talking to my clients
about I need you to take up our space, take
up space in the bed, take up space in the house,
take up space and meetings, say things that you want
to say. Create space for yourself because nobody will create
(22:07):
it for you. The other thing we can do, she says,
is to get uncomfortable. What I always try to share
with people is that anytime you're going to do something different,
it's risk right now. And we're in a culture who's
who is very, very risk averse, which is why I
think we don't sit in the stillness it feels uncomfortable.
We try to avoid tolerating a certain level of distress. Right. So,
my my practice in the community UM as well as
(22:29):
in my practice with clients, is to give yourself the
opportunity to tolerate distress. Oftentimes we're stronger than we think,
so we don't give ourselves room to try something different
because we don't know what will happen next, Right, So
it's more rooted in kind of control and anxiety that, hey,
this is too uncomfortable for me to talk about. UM.
What I usually noticed on the other side of people
talking about stuff and kind of sharing their narrative is
(22:50):
that they can feel a sense of relief, They can
feel a sense of empowerment. UM, they're able to kind
of connect with people in a way that they weren't
able to before because again, the way in which humans
connect is at the deepest level of emotion, your powers
into your discomfort you. Have you ever seen that? Um,
it's like a Venn diagram that has like you and
your comfort zone and like growth, growth is outside of
(23:13):
your comfort zone. And there are difference I forgot there's
different zones. There's um comfort zone, there's your growth zone,
and there's like your panic zone. You don't want to
do too much to where you're getting into your state
of panic, but you want to feel uncomfortable. It's a
difference between like pain and injury. Right, So when you're
working out, you want to experience some kind of pain
and kind of soreness, but there's a gap between pain
and soreness versus when you're about to break something and
(23:36):
then connecting with others, we have to have empathy. I
would love people to practice empathy skills. A lot of
people assume that empathy is something that we like come
with in these ways, but it's it's literally kind of
just practicing allowing people to be in whatever space they
are in UM and just being much more responsive to
people and really focusing on not controlling people, but continuing
(23:56):
to be kind, continuing to be compassionate u to yourself,
to other people. And if you don't know what that
is or kind of what that means, there are books,
they're resources on how to be compassionate, how to be empathic.
But I think again, as as we treat ourselves better
and treat other people better, we will see less likelihood
of mental illness and mental distress. But don't be apologetic
about finding spaces that suits you and that value you
(24:19):
and that embrace you. Don't be apologetic about spaces where
you feel good about yourself. We have to proclaim our
space in this world unapologetically. In your silence, people get
to make your narrative essentially right in your silence. People
get to then say that this is what you experience,
this is what you like, this is what you didn't like.
So in these spaces that weren't designed for us, UM,
(24:40):
the options are to forcibly create space for yourself or
to accept that those spaces aren't designed for you and
create other spaces for yourself. That's why, in terms of
the wellness retreats and kind of things that are very
exclusive to black women and black people and black conferences.
Create a space for yourself where you know that you
will be well taken care of, where you know that
you will be valued. You know that you can be
(25:00):
around like minded people who are all here focused on
our growth, our wellness and embracing all the different kind
of facets of blackness. Begin creating your own spaces. For me,
part of my radical self love practice is to be
nuanced like that is what radical self love is is
to stop having these one sided, all or nothing relationships
(25:23):
with ourselves and to like embrace the multiplicity of who
we are. That's Sonya and a Taylor, founder of the
movement The Body Is Not an apology and author of
a book of the same name. On the cover of
the book, Sania lives nude in a bed of flowers,
energetic lines radiating from her body. Before she started her
group discussion that Cares Books in Atlanta in early Sonya
(25:46):
took a moment to honor indigenous folks in the history
of the space, so she's no stranger to being in
conversation with spaces she inhabits. After her talk, I spoke
with her about practicing radical self care. So the thing
that I was thinking about in the talk tonight UM
personally was the feeling of being wanted and unwanted at
(26:08):
the same time. I was wondering if you have any
thoughts on that, UM, specifically as being a black person
in America as well UM being spectacle in the positive
way and also in a negative way. And that's something
that goes back through history as well. Absolutely no display
for various reasons. Can you tell me how radical self
(26:28):
love maybe relates to that idea of feeling wanted and
unwanted at the same time. Yeah, So when you ask
me that question, it makes me think of sort of
the function of being both hyper visible and invisible at
the same time. And I think what radical self love
does for me in that space is it situates that
(26:50):
experience as outside of me. And it makes it very
clear that the ways in which the world will either
um take bits and pieces of me and either magnify
them for its own purpose or try to erase parts
of me is not a function of some failure of mine,
That it's not some function of a lack of my
(27:10):
own personal value or worth in the world. That it
is a function of a system that profits off of
making me hyper visible when it serves them, and also
profits off of erasing me when it serves them. And
so it really is about like just not taking on
the blame for that, but also at the same time
advocating for myself in the ways that I need to.
(27:33):
If one way we reclaim our space is by not
being silent, then Sonia is doing just that. She's a
queer black author, poet, and spoken word artists advocating for
bodies that look like hers, and she shared her work
with me an excerpt from a piece called Bodies of Resistance.
Even as they attempted to gavel our silence, nevertheless we persisted,
each of us a link in the human chain. Your
(27:55):
shame has not slain even the lowliest of beasts, but
are collective transformation has delivered us intrepid to Capital City streets,
three million grains of sand, forged under the heat of
oppression until we were fine as keen edged glass, a
beatrice of bodies, unafraid to ask why black lives would
not matter. As we saw no they and we knew
(28:17):
solidarity was a word that must spring forever, like water
beside a standing rock. The clock of justice will not
terry while you question whether you are worthy of the fight.
Regardless of all you've been told. Resistance is an everyday act,
the work of excavating each tiny artifact of the oppressor
that lives in you. Your call to be a balm
(28:38):
to every self inflicted wound is the way movements are birthed,
and the land content to bid you endless slumber. Waking
unrepentant in your own skin is a hero's journey and
the only way we collectively prevail. And only then can
we say, in the words of the famous poet Lucille Clifton,
(29:00):
won't you celebrate with me that every day something has
tried to kill us and has failed, and has failed
and will fail. Say it with me? All we are here.
So what's the solution? Bridget practice self care and self love?
What else is the solution? Bridget take up space unapologetically.
(29:23):
What's another solution? Bridget find power in your discomfort? Any
other solutions? Bridget embrace blackness fully and always. Afropunk Solution
Sessions is a co production between Afro Punk and How
(29:43):
Stuff Works. Your hosts are Bridget Todd and Eve Jeff Cope,
Executive Co producers are Julie Douglas, Jocelyn Cooper, and Kuan
latif Hill. Dylan Fagin is supervising producer, and Kathleen Cuillian
is audio engineer. Chandler Maze was our audio editor this week.
Many many thanks to Casey Pegram and Antie Reese for
their production and editorial oversight, and many thanks to Are
(30:06):
on the Ground Atlanta crew, Ben Bowling, Corey Oliver and
Noel Brown. The Underside of Power is performed by Algiers.
Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at apro
punk
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