Radical Imagination

"If we have any hopes of fundamentally breaking away from the patterns of the past and rupturing the inadequate present, the future can no longer be envisioned only by those with the privilege of time and space to imagine. It can no longer be constructed within a bootstraps narrative of personal responsibility and self-determination that treats only some as deserving of a roof over their heads. Our measure of progress must rel...

Non-police emergency response remains an extremely relevant topic, even though we're seeing strong pushback against the Defund the Police movement -- including from those who were initially supportive.  Yet police, throughout the country, continue to remain at odds with the communities they are supposed to protect. In this episode, Angela discusses the potential of emergency triage that doesn’t involve police intervention with...

Since the pandemic, people have quit their jobs in record numbers, with around 47 million people leaving their jobs in 2021.  Many of these workers are Black and Latinx; many of them women.  

In this episode,  we examine what it means to have a healthy relationship with work, and we hear a radical new way to define the role of work in our lives. Angela speaks with Sarah Jaffe, the author of "Work Won't Love You Back,"...

The history of the trans-Atlantic trade of  enslaved Africans has been rewritten, sanitized, flat out misrepresented, and often obscured by the lens through which we observe history. 

As a society, when we need to get a more enlightened look at ourselves and the world around us, we turn to the vision of artists. 

This week’s guest Ashley Shaw Scott Adjaye is artistic director of the World Reimagined -- a national ...

While reparations and reparative justice are just a talking point for some people, there is a growing movement in our country to reconnect Black people with land and property that was illegally stolen from them or their ancestors. In this episode of Radical Imagination, we learn about the radical movement for land justice– a blueprint for policy change that could pave the way for reparations for Black families nationwide. Host Ange...

Today on Radical Imagination, Clyde Prout III, chairman of the Colfax Todd’s Valley Consolidated Tribe in California, tells the remarkable story of how his tribe reclaimed land stolen by the government nearly half a century ago. Native people were violently displaced from their ancestral homelands throughout US history, as land was stolen and sold to private owners, made “public” in the name of preserving natural resources, or set ...

Since becoming the first Sub-Saharan African country to win independence from a colonial power, Ghana has been an inspiration to Black Americans to return to Africa. For many, it's a brief journey. We're changed by what we learn about the culture and our collective past. And that informs our lives and our work when we return home. But other people stay. They make vital contributions to the culture, the economy, and the na...

Even today, when many of us are in pain because of systemic inequities, we tend to hold ourselves personally accountable for the trauma we bear.  And we think of healing as individual work. The season 4 debut of Radical Imagination upends these myths and frees us of the emotional burdens we shouldn't have to carry alone. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Prentis Hemphill, a writer, therapist, and the founder of the Embo...

Radical healing. Afro-futurism. Repatriation of stolen land. Housing justice. Black Americans returning to Ghana. Bold alternatives to work and policing. On Season 4 of Radical Imagination we transcend the borders of geography and policy to explore transformative ways of healing and repairing the sins of the past, and how they interconnect with the revolutionary work of creating a just, equitable future.

Coming this month!

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Debt continues to drown millions of young people, families, and retirees, especially Black and Brown communities who bear a disproportionate impact. In this episode of Radical Imagination, host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Astra Taylor, a filmmaker, activist and the director of the Debt Collective, a membership union who are calling for the cancellation of all types of debt.

Dive into all the Radical Imagination stories that ...

Last November Los Angeles County voted to dismantle the largest youth juvenile system in the country to create a new approach where care is prioritized over punishment. Radical Imagination host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with youth grassroots organizer Kent Mendoza. He was incarcerated as a youth and was involved in the reimagining of a new system. We also hear from James Bell, the founding president of the Haywood Burns Instit...

As Covid-19 continues to sweep the world and most countries, especially in the Global South, struggle to access vaccines, Radical Imagination takes a fresh look at how the US patent system keeps billions of people at home and abroad from obtaining life-saving medicines. Since our first episode on this topic, early in the pandemic, the situation has become more dire. In India, one of the world’s largest vaccine producers, almost nob...

Artificial intelligence and algorithms are increasingly used to make life-changing decisions in policing, lending, hiring, renting, health care, and many other realms. The technology has come under fire for encoding and intensifying racial bias. But what if AI could be transformed into a tool for fighting discrimination and inequality? Host Angela Glover Blackwell discusses this intriguing possibility with Black in AI co-founder, a...

Social justice activists tend to be so driven to fix tough systemic problems that we often overlook the obvious: We want to create a society filled with joy and satisfaction for all. In this episode of Radical Imagination, we celebrate pleasure and explore its importance in the work of societal transformation. Host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with adrienne maree brown, author Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good. Join ...

An economy that works for all depends on a robust system of caregiving. That has become all too clear during the pandemic, as 2.5 million women were pushed out of the workforce to care for family members. This episode of Radical Imagination looks at the growing movement to reimagine care across the lifespan, recognize it as essential infrastructure, invest in it, and improve wages and labor protections for the workers — mostly Blac...

What would our economy look like if it put people before profits? For one thing, nobody would have to accept the sub-minimum wage of $2.13, which many states allow for restaurant workers -- a legacy of slavery that marginalizes and impoverishes a wide swath of a workforce made up largely of people of color and immigrants. 

In this episode of Radical Imagination, host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Saru Jayaraman, pres...

Radical Imagination opens with a deep dive into the 1921 massacre of hundreds of Black people in the thriving business district of Tulsa, Oklahoma. We examine how history books erased that atrocity and distorted so much of Black history. Host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with Hannibal B. Johnson, historian and Education Chair for the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre Commission, about the radical effort to make the story of Tulsa's Bl...

San Francisco’s District Attorney Chesa Boudin was elected on the promise of bringing justice to the criminal "justice" system. He's part of a new wave of reform-minded prosecutors who are trying to change the system, eliminate the most harmful practices, and bring accountability to policing. Host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with Boudin about his efforts to bring fairness and compassion to a system that is oppressi...

In this episode of Radical Imagination we follow up on our coverage of police abolition. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with human rights lawyer and organizer Derecka Purnell, whose advocacy has led to the dismissal of thousands of cases based on unconstitutional policing practices. We first explored the abolition movement a year ago — before the police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Black people, spurred nation...