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A radio show, podcast, and radical media hub showcasing culture workers reshaping Chicago for the more equitable and creative. Listen to longform humanizing conversations with artists, organizers, performers, comedians, scholars, and more who are reimagining Chicago and beyond toward liberation. Hosted by Damon Williams and Daniel Kisslinger.
A little love from AirGo resident DJ Kiss aka DJ Empathy, who brings you this amorous mix full of serenades, laments, soul sharing, and bops. Fun fact: this mix is named for the "love tapes" that his dad used to make for his mom when they were dating. Fall in love with this soundtrack! Music in this mix: Donnie Outthaway - Smino Ea'alah - Spillage Village x JID x Earthgang Sandstorm - Mereba x JID Black Treasure - Zara McFarlane Superficial - CJ Run x Yourbeautifulruin Ooh Nah Nah - SiR x Masego Long Nights - 6lack Darlin' - Tobi Lou Manifesto Remix - Melo Makes Music x Kota the Friend Jane - Southpaw Swade Love - Kendrick Lamar x Zacari Shea Butter Baby - Ari Lennox x J. Cole Mushroom Chocolate - QUIN x 6lack Wild Irish Roses - Smino Borderline (An Ode to Self-Care) -Solange x Q-Tip Got 'Til It's Gone - Janet Jackson x Q-Tip x Joni Mitchell
Unelectable is an live podcast event series that engages electoral politics through the filter of radical imagination. Come chop it up with us, imagine new worlds, and help us build our Unelectable platform! AirGo and Black Youth Project are using the 2020 election cycle to have tangible conversations about impactful issues dismissed as being too big or unrealistic by mainstream political media. We want to expose the tensions that come from engaging electoral work as a liberatory pathway, reconciling complex contradictions within our movements and communities. The third and final event in the series, taking place just a few days before the 2020 election, focuses on the liberatory potential of Abolition Democracy, and how the seeds of this future are being sowed today. The conversation is cohosted by brilliant organizer Asha Ransby-Sporn, and features State Senator Robert Peters, community builder Jay Travis (formerly of KOCO), and EAT Chicago founder Rich Wallace. SHOW NOTES DefundCPD campaign - https://www.instagram.com/defundcpd/ Abolition Democracy by Angela Davis - https://www.akpress.org/abolitiondemocracy.html Ruth Wilson Gilmore - https://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/core-bios/ruth-wilson-gilmore W.E.B. Du Bois - https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois Breathe Act - https://breatheact.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/The-BREATHE-Act-V.16_.pdf Tanya Watkins of SOUL - https://www.soulinchicago.org/
On October 21st, Lori Lightfoot addressed Chicago and let us know where her priorities lie. She ignored 87% of Chicagoans that took the budget survey and instead advocated for increased police spending and ensured she allocated plenty of $ for her 13 press aides. After the CPD Budget Hearing on 10/29, join #DefundCPD organizers Kennedy (@uwfillinois) and Damon Williams (@damon_af) to break down all of Lori's budget tricks, learn about budget processes, and talk through how we collectively move forward during this budget cycle. NOTE: This is audio of an IG Live from 10/30/20 between Damon and Kennedy Bartley, the Legislative Director of United Working Families. Learn more about Kennedy here: https://www.unitedworkingfamilies.org/news/2019/8/25/meet-kennedy Join the #DefundCPD campaign: https://actionnetwork.org/forms/sign-on-to-demand-defunding-of-the-chicago-police-department?source=direct_link&
Each month this year, we're going to revisit an episode from the 260+ episodes in the AirGo Archives and bring that conversation back to the forefront. This week, we're heading back to 2015 to talk with one of the best singers of we've ever heard. When 16 year-old Ravyn Lenae came up to the WHPK studio, she had recently released her first EP Moon Shoes, and it was becoming clear that she had an absurdly bright future that was becoming closer and closer. Since then, she's released multiple acclaimed projects, relocated to LA, signed to Atlantic Records, and toured the world. And she's still really nice to us, which we appreciate. SHOW NOTES Listen to her EP Crush here: https://www.ravynlenae.com/ Make a tax-deductible donation today and become an AirGo Amplifier: airgoradio.com/donate
Climate Changemakers is a podcast series showcasing and celebrating leaders in equity work and climate action across Illinois, presented in celebration of the 20th anniversary of nonprofit organization Elevate Energy. On this penultimate episode of Climate Changemakers, Damon and Daniel talk with artist, community builder, and Chicago gem Tonika Lewis Johnson. A lifelong Englewood resident, she helped co-found the Resident Association of Greater Englewood (R.A.G.E), whose mission is to “mobilize people and resources to force positive change in Englewood through solution-based approaches." She is also a lead co-founder of the Englewood Arts Collective, established in 2017 to help artistically “reframe the narrative” of Englewood. Her Folded Map Project, which brings together "map twins" from opposite sides of the city, has been widely acclaimed as both an artistic project and a flashpoint in the fight against structural racism. She talks about the ways that the project has evolved, what she's learned from it about our collective relationships to land, what she imagines in the demolished spaces across her neighborhood, and much more. SHOW NOTES Cooked Survival by Zip Code - www.pbs.org/independentlens/vid…rvival-by-zip-code/ Open Lands Tree Stewardship project - www.openlands.org/trees/ Go Green on Racine - gogreenonracine.com/ Folded Map Action Kit - www.foldedmapproject.com/submit
AirGo is excited to present The Education Suite, a collection of episodes focusing on the liberatory histories and futures of education. This suite is co-curated by AirGo fam and general genius Eve Ewing, a professor and poet whose work is at the forefront of public conversation around the ways our education system has harmed Black and Brown young people, and the ways that our school buildings connect to larger systems of inequity across the country. For the final episode of this suite, we check back in with Eve to discuss what we've learned. She brings some questions for the guys to make sure they were listening, shares some useful tips for your apocalypse knapsack, and fills us all with the warmth and introspection she is always sharing. SHOW NOTES Audre Lorde - https://alp.org/about/audre Parable of the Sower-inspired Go Bag - https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Hhrd4PO6Dr_N64AIe5BFzgz7jC782PnpF2r0QnV_CCk/edit?usp=sharing Pierre Bourdieu - https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=d_lp40IAAAAJ&hl=en WEB Dubois - https://hutchinscenter.fas.harvard.edu/web-dubois Paulo Freire - https://www.freire.org/paulo-freire/ Jimmy & Grace Lee Boggs - https://www.boggsschool.org/grace-and-jimmy Ella Baker - https://ellabakercenter.org/who-was-ella-baker/ Bob Moses - https://snccdigital.org/people/bob-moses/ Chezare Warren - https://www.chezarewarren.com/ Elizabeth Todd-Breland - https://hist.uic.edu/profiles/todd-breland-elizabeth/
Recently, the guys very carefully and joyously headed to an isolated house in Wisconsin for a planning and decompression weekend with movement stalwarts and wonderful spirits Trina Reynolds-Tyler and Maira Khwaja. We turned the mics on toward the end of the weekend to talk about the last time the four of us hung out, what we learned, and some of what we're wrestling with. Find out more about Trina and Maira's work at http://www.tmproductions.org/
AirGo is excited to present The Education Suite, a collection of episodes focusing on the liberatory histories and futures of education. This suite is co-curated by AirGo fam and general genius Eve Ewing, a professor and poet whose work is at the forefront of public conversation around the ways our education system has harmed Black and Brown young people, and the ways that our school buildings connect to larger systems of inequity across the country. This episode features Janie Pochel, the cofounder and guiding force behind Chi-Nations Youth Council. The Council is a community organization that create a supportive open environment for Native youth to raise awareness of cultural identity and promote a healthy lifestyle through arts, activism, and education. She breaks down the lessons learned through land and place-based education, the necessity of Black and Indigenous solidarity, how modern schooling has been a genocidal tool, and how she cares for the youth she serves. SHOW NOTES Support the work of Chi-Nations Youth Council - https://chinationsyouth.weebly.com/donate.html Good Kids Mad City - https://www.gkmcenglewood.com/donate Janie's interview in South Side Weekly - https://southsideweekly.com/chicago-native-american-organizer-intersection-black-lives-matter-decolonization/ Subscribe, rate, and review AirGo on Apple Podcasts -https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/airgo/id1016530091 📷 by Adam Sings in the Timber - https://singsinthetimber.com/
On the eve of Lori Lightfoot’s budget speech, Bella BAHHS (@bellabahhs) and Damon Williams (@damon_af) address the inherent violence within our political systems and discuss how defunding the police is a step toward getting our people and communities what they need. #DefundCPD #DefendBlackLives This audio is from an IG Live between Damon and Bella Bahhs. Follow her at http://instagram.com/bellabahhs. Plug into the campaign today! https://linktr.ee/defundcpd
AirGo is excited to present The Education Suite, a collection of episodes focusing on the liberatory histories and futures of education. This suite is co-curated by AirGo fam and general genius Eve Ewing, a professor and poet whose work is at the forefront of public conversation around the ways our education system has harmed Black and Brown young people, and the ways that our school buildings connect to larger systems of inequity across the country. This episode's guest is poet, translator, and transdisciplinary scholar SA Smythe. SA is a professor at UCLA, and is one of the organizers of the Cops Off Campus Campaign, which aims to remove police and policing from all University of California campuses by September 2021. They join the show to talk about the campaign, the challenges and unique potential of forging a truly public university, how the campaign connects to their study of Blackness in the Mediterranean, reaching toward diasporic power rather than national citizenship, and MUCH, MUCH more. Recorded 9/29/20 SHOW NOTES: Support the Cops Off Campus campaign - https://www.instagram.com/uc_ftp/ Nick Mitchell - https://cres.ucsc.edu/faculty/regular-faculty.php?uid=nmitchel Sarah Haley - https://afam.ucla.edu/faculty/sarah-haley/ Shana Redmond - https://schoolofmusic.ucla.edu/people/shana-redmond/ Ruthie Wilson Gilmore - https://www.gc.cuny.edu/faculty/core-bios/ruth-wilson-gilmore Dylan Rodriguez - https://twitter.com/dylanrodriguez?lang=en Sisters Uncut - http://www.sistersuncut.org/ Paul Gilroy - https://www.ucl.ac.uk/institute-of-advanced-studies/professor-paul-gilroy Gwendolyn Brooks - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/gwendolyn-brooks June Jordan - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/june-jordan Ashon Crawley - https://religiousstudies.as.virginia.edu/faculty/profile/atc8g Frantz Fanon - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frantz_Fanon
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