AirGo

You're invited to an AirGo Listening Party with old friend, vocalist, and stellar human theMIND! A Philly native and longtime Chicagoan, he just dropped a gorgeous and soul-enriching new project entitled Don't Let It Go To Your Head. In the first edition of our new Listening Party series, we go through a few tracks on the album together and talk about his creative process, what he's wrestled with in his artistry and personal growth, and much more.

Listen to the album: https://cinqreleas.es/yourhead

SHOW NOTES

Busy/Sirens by Saba x theMIND - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhE-fQU6P9U

Revolution and Evolution in the 20th Century by James and Grace Lee Boggs - https://www.google.com/books/edition/Revolution_and_Evolution/M6WSDwAAQBAJ

Rate and review AirGo on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/airgo/id1016530091

Support AirGo with a monthly or one-time donation - https://airgoradio.com/donate

📸 by ANF Chicago

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 eighth and final episode of Climate Changemakers, Dame and Daniel are joined by Olga Bautista of the Chicago Southeast Side Coalition to Ban Petcoke. In response to decades of pollution and environmental destruction by industry in her home neighborhood on the Southeast side of the city, Olga banded together with other community members to fight for environmental protections from and cleanup of Petcoke, a toxic byproduct of oil refinement that was poisoning the air she and her family were breathing. The coalition successfully fought the Koch brothers, who were forced to dispose of the petcoke in a less destructive manner. She talks about the devastation of industrial pollution, learning to collect the necessary data herself, the unique challenges of having a set at the redevelopment table during a pandemic, and much more.

SHOW NOTES

Exit Zero - www.goodreads.com/book/show/24898568-exit-zero

COPD - www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-condit…es/syc-20353679

NRDC - www.nrdc.org/

Nancy Loeb - www.law.northwestern.edu/faculty/prof…s/NancyLoeb/

Invest South/West - www.chicago.gov/city/en/sites/invest_sw/home.html

Great Cities Institute - greatcities.uic.edu

Poor People's Campaign - www.poorpeoplescampaign.org

In the midst of a pandemic, Mayor Lightfoot is threatening to punish aldermen and the communities they represent if they do not vote for her racist and regressive budget. There is a lot to unpack, from Lori increasing the share of funding for the police department to her telling the Black Caucus that voting against her budget means they shouldn’t expect investment from the city for their wards, and so much more… and that ain't right!

Listen to the audio from a Facebook Live conversation on Saturday, November 21st at 12pm between Kennedy from @uwfillinois, Damon from @letusbreathe773, Ald. Rossana Rodriguez, CTU's Stacy Davis Gates, Amika "Big Tree" Tendaji, and organizers from Good Kids Mad City spill the tea on Lori’s fake progressive, anti-Black budget. Stay tuned this week as we share more info on the folks who will be joining the conversation and ways to demand alderpeople vote no and #BootTheBudget!

Sign up to phonebank or textbank to help #DefundCPD at bit.ly/2020Chibudget.

#SpillTheTea #BootTheBudget #TakeBackTheBudget #DefundCPD

On this bonus episode, we're partnering with our good friends over at the Chicago Community Bond Fund to share a collage of audio from a series of virtual townhalls hosted by the Coalition to End Money Bond. Recorded this fall, the conversations explored the different imperatives for ending money bail, and connected elected representatives with lawyers, organizers, and advocates who are leading the fight.

SHOW NOTES

Plug into the fight at http://endmoneybond.org

Send a letter to you legislator in support of the Pretrial Fairness Act: bit.ly/pretrialfairnessletter

Watch all three townhalls at the Coalition's Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/endmoneybond/videos/

Chicago Community Bond Fund: https://chicagobond.org/

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 month, we're revisiting one of the most impactful moments in modern social movement history–the encampment at Standing Rock in 2016. Kiss and a cohort of other Chicago folks brought supplies from Freedom Square in November, and had the privilege to spend a few days there. Upon their return, Kiss sat down with Kristiana Colon, who had been with him on the trip, to talk about the experience. The episode also features selections from the podcast Voices of Standing Rock, reproduced with the creator's permission.

SHOW NOTES:

Listen to all of Voices of Standing Rock: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/voices-of-standing-rock/id1173368814

Get connected to Oceti Sakowin, a group that formed during the encampment and has led the fight for indigenous sovereignty and environmental justice: https://www.facebook.com/OcetiSakowinCamp

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