Freedom Dreams

Latest Episodes:

Season 2 of Freedom Dreams! Feb 17, 2023

Show notes

This season on Freedom Dreams we're amplifying community-led solutions to violence and harm. We called on some of the boldest people we know to learn lessons from what they're building. And of course, we asked them what their freedom dreams are. Our new season begins on February 22nd.

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Learn more about the work of the Detroit Justice Center

Fear of Black Consciousness Jun 09, 2022

Show notes

The Freedom Dreams team is hard at work on a new season of the show. It’ll come to you this fall. But in the meantime, we want to share a conversation Amanda recently had with the incredibly brilliant and tender-hearted philosopher, Lewis Gordon. Their talk was hosted by Source Booksellers in Detroit’s Cass Corridor this past winter.

Gordon's new book is Fear of Black Consciousnessand in it he peaks precisely to the moment that we're in. He helps us to understand the COVID 19 pandemic, police violence, and this latest wave of social movements and repression, in the context of the past five years and the past five centuries–and longer. His book weaves in history, linguistics, film interpretation (with an incredible reading of Jordan Peele’s Get Out), music, memory, mythology, and more.

His sources and frameworks are so wide-ranging because his task is so ambitious: to understand the contours of society and how we make meaning, to tell the history of anti-black racism, and, always, to orient us toward liberation. In that orientation, his book belongs to the radical visionary organizing tradition, which James Boggs furthered so powerfully in his lifetime.

Gordon offers us tools to ask better questions of ourselves, like ‘how might we become agents of change?’ ‘How can we expand our options,’ and, as he puts it, ‘build productive and life-affirming institutions of empowerment?” If Lewis Gordon isn’t a Freedom Dreamer, we don’t know who is!

How Do We Grow Our Own Food on Our Own Land? Feb 09, 2022

Show notes

“For anti-colonial movements in the past and still today, regaining access to land that you and your people were displaced from is a core part of what it means to be free.”

In this final episode of the first season of Freedom Dreams, our guests take on black liberation through land ownership and food sovereignty. Tepfirah Rushdan and Erin Bevel talk about co-founding the Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund to help local growers navigate purchasing land. Natalie Baszile, author of We Are Each Other’s Harvest, discusses the history of Black farmland loss and the recent Black Farmers Act. And, Lynelle Herndon shows us how Home Ec Detroit builds community gardens on abandoned Detroit lots.

You can contribute the The Detroit Black Farmer Land Fund here and check out Natalie Baszile’s book here.

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TRANSCRIPT

How Do We Create Health Care that Meets our Needs? Dec 29, 2021

Show notes

In our penultimate episode of the season, we’re talking about radical solutions in health care. We look at the historical example of the 1970 Lincoln Hospital Takeover in the Bronx with former Black Panther and Young Lord Cleo Silvers. Casey also goes down the history rabbit hole discussing their MA thesis. We also sit down with Fiyah Angel and Rachel Thompson from the Radical Well-Being Center in Southfield, MI to talk about their work in the field of mental health and decolonized healing practices.

Want to learn more about the Lincoln Hospital takeover? We recommend two excellent recent documentaries: Emma Francis-Snyder’s Takeover and Mia Donovan’s Dope Is Death.

To learn more about the Detroit Justice Center and support our work, go here.

How Can We Heal and Reimagine Safe Communities? Dec 15, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we explore the building blocks of community safety—namely knowing your community and working together to keep each other safe. We talk to Sirrita Darby, and Bri and Kris, two youth organizers with Detroit Heals Detroit about the work they do to host healing circles for youth in Detroit, and the importance of collective healing. We also sat down with Curtis Renee, a powerful organizer with Detroit Safety Team (and an excellent chef) to talk about the work they’re doing to encourage Detroiters to find alternatives to safety that don’t involve calling police.

Want to find out more about community safety initiatives where you live?

We recommend checking out:

One Million Experiments

Transform Harm

Firework Foundation

Don’t Call The Police

How Do We Make School Ourselves? Dec 01, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we explore place-based education (PBE)—the pedagogy behind it, and how it works in practice. We talk to Ethan Lowenstein, Director of the SE Michigan Stewardship Coalition about the impact being rooted in place can have on a child's education. We also speak to Julia Putnam, Amanda Rosman, and Marisol Teachworth of The James and Grace Lee Boggs School, a K-8 school on Detroit's east side that "immerses students in local heritage, cultures, landscapes, opportunities, and experiences, using these as a foundation for the study of language arts, mathematics, social studies, science and other subjects across the curriculum." And in the plot twist of the season, we learn that Casey taught art at the Boggs School for a year.

Want to learn more about James & Grace Lee Boggs? This article from Yes! Magazine featuring Julia Putnam & The Boggs Center are excellent starting points.

How Do We Ensure our City Budgets Reflect Our Priorities? Nov 17, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we dig into participatory budgeting with Shari Davis, Co-Executive Director of the Participatory Budgeting Project to better understand how an expansion of the democratic process can benefit communities. We also speak with Angelica Chazaro, an organizer with Decriminalize Seattle to discuss Seattle's movement to defund police, as well as PG Watkins, Director of Detroit's Black Bottom Archives, and community organizer about the durational fight for a people's budget in Detroit.

Want to learn more about how to organize around defunding police and investing in communities?

Interrupting Criminalization's The Demand Is Still Defund report: an excellent resource on how to run #defund budget fights.

How Can Cooperative Economics Help Us Build Collective Power? Nov 03, 2021

Show notes

In this episode we speak to DJC staff attorney Whitley Granberry and Jerry Hebron who runs Oakland Avenue Urban Farm in Detroit’s North End. Our guests deliver a powerful summary of what cooperative economics are, and how they serve to shore up equity for future generations. We’ll also talk to Jerry about ancestral recipes and how her farm's delicious Afro-Jam came about.

TRANSCRIPT

To learn more about and support our work, visit detroitjustice.org/donate.

RELEVANT LINKS

Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice by Jessica Gordon Nembhard

Non-profit urban farm in Detroit still helping amid COVID-19 outbreak

How Can You Shut Down Your City Jail? Oct 20, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, we speak to Marilyn Winn and Xochitl Bervera, two lead organizers in the fight to close the Atlanta City Jail. Our guests lead us through the fight to get laws stricken from the books, ensuring that the jails population would dwindle or “starving the beast” as they call it. Learn more about their campaign and about the Center for Wellness and Freedom, the community wellness hub they intend to replace the jail.

TRANSCRIPT

To learn more about and support our work at the Detroit Justice Center, visit detroitjustice.org/donate.

RELEVANT LINKS

The End of Policing by Alex S. Vitale

'Starving The Beast': The Women Working To Close a Misused Atlanta Jail

Why Freedom Dreams? Oct 05, 2021

Show notes

Welcome to Freedom Dreams! The show that exploresthe many paths to building a truly just future for everyone. Centered in abolitionist thinking, this podcast, produced by the Detroit Justice Center, expands beyond the realm of criminal justice into conversations around what we could be building and prioritizing instead of punishment and further harm to make our communities genuinely safe. Hosted by Amanda Alexander, Founding Executive Director of DJC & Casey Rocheteau, Communications Manager of DJC, each episode seeks to answer a question that faces our present moment.

TRANSCRIPT

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