Radical Imagination: Recent Episodes
Angela Glover Blackwell
Racism, toxic inequality, persistent poverty, climate change: these are big serious problems, and if you believe they require big audacious solutions, then this is the podcast for you. Hosted by Angela Glover Blackwell, Founder-in-Residence at PolicyLink, Radical Imagination focuses on radical solutions to our society’s most pressing problems. It features conversations with thinkers and changemakers from multiple fields working to deliver equity wins at scale.Tune in to Radical Imagination, for stories and solutions that are fueling change.
"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 rely on how much we can transform our values to provide broad scale and equitable access to housing opportunities for all.”
In this episode, Angela talks to PolicyLink Housing Director Rasheedah Phillips — Afrofuturist, attorney, tenant organizer, policy advocate, and interdisciplinary artist. Listen in as Angela and Rasheedah discuss how time can be created, reclaimed, resourced, and redeemed; and the ways that we, collectively, must operate from a place of temporal abundance versus temporal scarcity.
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 Brandon Anderson, an abolitionist and founder of the police reporting network Raheem and Arturo Carrillo, an emergency mental health clinician in Chicago, who is pushing for a more robust mental health support system.
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," and welcomes back Saru Jayaraman, founder of One Fair Wage.
The history of the Transatlantic 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 public art project in the United Kingdom that explores the history & legacy of the transatlantic trade of enslaved Africans; and presents a forward-looking approach to reframing history as an essential element toward solidarity and greater inclusion.
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 Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Kavon Ward – poet, activist, and the founder of 'Where is My Land?'. Kavon has been a leader in today's fight for reparations; helping win a landmark victory around justice for Bruce's Beach in Southern California. Kavon Ward's courageous work is a reminder of how important the times are for achieving justice.
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 aside for agriculture and recreation. We’ll also hear from Jeff Darlington, the director of the Placer Land Trust, about the partnership that made it possible for the tribe to take back their land and restore it through traditional cultural and ecological knowledge.
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 nation's future.
We hear from two Black women -- Renee Neblett the Founding Director of the Kokrobitey Institute and Tonya C. Saafir-Ankomah, Esq. (aka Sista Yaa) Founder of the SankofaRepatriation Assistance Program and African Diaspora 126+, -- who repatriated to Ghana to start better lives for themselves and help pave the road for others in the Diaspora wishing to do the same.
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 Embodiment Institute, about the revolutionary idea of collective trauma and how it can help us heal our selves, our relationships, our communities, and our society.
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!
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.
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 Institute and a consulting partner on LA County's Youth Justice Reimagined Planning Team.
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 nobody had access to the Covid vaccine last spring, when the virus began tearing through the country. The idea behind patents is to allow companies to protect the time and money they invest in developing drugs and vaccines. In reality, companies profit astronomically while people die because they can’t afford or obtain treatment. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with lawyer and activist Priti Krishtel, a leader of a global movement to change the patent system and ensure access to medicine for all. We also hear from Leena Menghaney, South Asia head of the Doctors Without Borders Access Campaign.
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, activist, and computer scientist Rediet Abebe. We also hear the story of Terrence Wilkerson, who was unjustly trapped in the criminal legal system by questionable AI technology.
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 us for a conversation about finding love, delight, and pleasure for ourselves, those closest to us, our communities, and the world we hope to build.
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 Black and immigrant women —we trust to care for the people we love. Host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with Chicago caregiver and community advocate Michelle Morton about the challenges of caring for her parents and children throughout the pandemic. We also hear from Ai-jen Poo, the visionary leader of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, about #CareCantWait, a campaign to make universal access to child care, paid family and medical leave, and home and community-based services a centerpiece of economic recovery.
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, president of One Fair Wage and director of the Food Labor Research Center at UC Berkeley, about the fight to raise the minimum wage for all workers and end subminimum wages. We also hear from USC Sociology Professor Manuel Pastor about solidarity economics, a radical but commonsense concept that challenges us to reimagine our economy and how it can prioritize the needs and interests of all people.
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 Black Wall Street part of Oklahoma’s K-12 school curricula. Join us and probe the question: How can reframing history impact the future?
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 oppressive by design. Too often, reform from the inside simply perpetuates the status quo. Can Boudin do something different? Can reform, coupled with radical imagination, change mindsets, open new possibilities, and be a step on the path to transformation?
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 nationwide protests. Now we look at the changing political and cultural landscape that has transformed what seemed like an impossible idea — defunding and dismantling police — into a feasible solution now being considered by state and local officials.
Well before Covid-19, Black Americans struggled to access healthcare and had disproportionately high rates of chronic illness and death. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the Mississippi Delta, where Black people with diabetes are commonly treated by amputation and are three times more likely to die of the disease than their White counterparts. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Dr. Foluso Fakorede, who moved to the region to improve patient care and stop the unnecessary the loss of limbs. We also meet lawyer and activist Priti Krishtel. She's leading a movement to make sure lifesaving medicines are available and affordable for all by dismantling a patent system designed to enrich Big Pharma and keep drug prices high.
A group of women in Hawaii are showing the nation that post-pandemic economic recovery can be visionary, just, and transformative. They have crafted a plan that centers women, insists on gender equality, and advances deep cultural change. In this episode of Radical Imagination, host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Khara Jabola-Carolus, the executive director of Hawaii’s Commission on the Status of Women, which released the plan, titled “Building Bridges, Not Walking on Backs: A Feminist Recovery Plan for Covid-19.” And we hear from activist and midwife Tanya Smith-Johnson, who co-authored the plan and works to improve maternal and neonatal care in Hawaii’s rural areas.
More than two million Americans live without access to clean, running water or a working toilette at home. Millions more predominantly in places like Flint, Michigan, the Navajo Nation, and migrant farmworker communities in California’s Central Valley have been disproportionately affected by high levels of led and arsenic in the water. In this episode of Radical Imagination, host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with US Water Alliance CEO Radhika Fox about solutions to this national water crisis. We also hear from Susana De Anda, Co-executive Director of the Community Water Center, about the fight for clean water in California’s Central Valley.
Host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with writer, journalist and activist Tiq Milan about the the limiting and often toxic ways our society thinks about gender, and how we can do better. While the nation has come far in its inclusion of the LGBTQ community in recent decades, we have a long way to go. At least 25 transgender or gender-non-conforming people were reported murdered in 2019, and that’s an undercount, because most attacks go unreported. Join us as Milan describes his personal journey and the intersection of gender and race.
As Covid-19 sweeps the world, life feels too much like science fiction. On this episode of Radical Imagination, we explore an idea that’s tailor-made for this distressing moment. It’s called visionary fiction, and it uses sci-fi and fantasy to imagine not a dystopian future, but a better world — without poverty, prisons and inequality. It’s more than a literary genre; it’s a movement of people of color working to create the change they write about. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with writer, artist, educator and organizer Walidah Imarisha about the idea and the organizing it has inspired.
For many years, undocumented students who came to the US as minors have been excluded from getting federal funding like grants or loans for college. While 23 states grant undocumented students in-state tuition, three states - Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina - have a form of admissions ban against undocumented students. In 2010, the state banned undocumented students from applying to its top public universities and required them to pay out-of-state at the other public colleges. In response, a group of Georgia professors and undocumented students created an underground freedom school named Freedom University. It offers free college-level courses to the banned students, college application support and human rights leadership training. Many of the students have gone on to earn degrees at colleges and universities across the country.
Radical Imagination host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with Freedom University Executive Director and Professor of Human Rights, Dr. Laura Emiko Soltis. We also hear from Freedom University alumnus Rafael Aragon, who is a full scholarship recipient at Oglethorpe University and now serves as a part-time staff member at Freedom University.
We kick off season two of the Radical Imagination podcast with the story of two mothers who were experiencing homelessness. They moved into a house owned by an investment firm but sitting vacant for nearly two years. That courageous act, in Oakland, California, brought national attention to the housing crisis. Host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with Dominique Walker about why she occupied the house and about the collective she co-founded, Moms4Housing. The group is demanding the human right to housing and taking on investors who treat housing as a commodity they can buy and flip for profit, while a half-million Americans experience homelessness and millions more struggle with skyrocketing rents. We also hear from Tara Raghuveer, the Housing Campaign Director for People’s Action, about the Homes Guarantee, an ambitious proposal to rebuild and reimagine housing.
Radical Imagination returns with host Angela Glover Blackwell in conversation with thinkers and changemakers on issues ranging from reimagining gender and visionary fiction, to housing as a human right and changing the criminal-legal system.
Get ready to be enlightened, inspired, and moved to think in radically new ways.
Imagine an America free of urban gun violence. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Devone Boggan, CEO of Advance Peace in Richmond, California, a visionary program that offers young men with a history of gun offenses life-changing opportunities to work as community peacemakers. In this episode, the season one finale, we also hear from James Houston, who served 18 years in prison for shooting and killing a man. Houston is now a change agent in Richmond — and proof that investment in people, not in more police, can end the devastating cycle of neighborhood violence.
A federal job guarantee is an old idea making its way back this election cycle. It’s controversial and considered radical—but what makes more sense than making sure that everyone who needs a job can get one? A job guarantee would bring financial stability to millions of families. And it would put people to work doing things the nation needs, such as building affordable housing and caring for children. In this episode, Angela Glover Blackwell explores the tantalizing possibilities—and the feasibility—of a federal job guarantee with one of its leading advocates, Darrick Hamilton, Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University.
Climate change will displace more than 180 million people around the world by the end of this century. Along the Gulf Coast of the United States, rising seas are already threatening historic Black and indigenous communities. In Louisiana, for example, a piece of land the size of a football disappears into the water every hour-and-a-half. In this episode, Radical Imagination host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with Colette Pichon Battle, executive director at the Gulf Coast Center for Law and Policy, about what’s being done to address the crisis in some of the most vulnerable communities in America. We also hear from Houma Nation Chief August Creppel, who is racing against time to figure out solutions for his people.
No major institution in America has wrestled more deeply with the question of reparations for African Americans than Georgetown University. Five years ago, a student discovered that Maryland Jesuits sold 272 slaves in 1838 to save the school from financial ruin. That forgotten history sparked an anguished conversation about Georgetown’s complicity in slavery and the school’s responsibility to the descendants of the 272 enslaved people.
In this episode of Radical Imagination, Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with one of the descendants, Melisande Short-Colomb, who is now a a student at Georgetown. We also hear from Howard University history professor Ana Lucia Araujo about what it will take for our nation to finally reckon with and atone for slavery and its legacy.
In this episode of Radical Imagination we visit Stockton, California. It was known as the nation’s foreclosure capital during the 2008 recession. Today, it’s the first city in the country to try universal basic income as a strategy to reduce inequality and boost economic security. This bold experiment gives residents a minimum monthly salary regardless of income or employment status. Angela Glover Blackwell sits down with Stockton Mayor Michael Tubbs, who became the first black mayor in the city’s history at age 26, to talk about his income initiative and what lessons holds for the nation.
As cases of police abuse and misconduct gain attention, activists have moved beyond calls for reform to advocate for the abolition of police. It’s a controversial and widely misunderstood idea. How would police abolition work, exactly? How would we protect public safety? Radical Imagination host Angela Glover Blackwell explores these questions with humanitarian hip-hop artist Jessica Disu, a.k.a. FM Supreme, who has publicly called for police abolition. And we hear from Rachel Herzing, co-director of the Center for Political Education in Oakland, California, about the racialized history of policing and innovative community-driven alternatives for public safety.
The United States once had open borders. Migrants from all over the world would arrive fleeing war, escaping poverty and seeking opportunity. Open borders made our country strong. But many Americans today are horrified — or frightened — by the idea of “open borders.” Harsh new immigration policies are making it more difficult than ever to come to the U.S. or even ask for asylum. Nevertheless, violence, oppression, poverty, desperation, and hope continue to drive migrants to our borders. Last year, more than 1,000 migrants from Central America gathered near the border of Guatemala and Mexico to travel north in search of asylum. Radical Imagination host Angela Glover Blackwell sits down with Roberto Corona, founder of People Without Borders, an organization that assisted this refugee caravan. We also hear from New York Times Columnist Farhad Manjoo, who has called for open borders.
A podcast focused on stories and solutions that are fueling change.
Features conversations with thinkers and changemakers from multiple fields who are wielding instruments of influence — academia, activism, media, government — to deliver equity wins at scale.