AirGo

From the isolation of our homes, AirGo is presenting a series called On the Line, which focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and the people putting their bodies on the line to help us all survive and heal. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hopping on the line with workers in the health care, educational, governmental, organizing, and prison abolition spheres to talk about what their work looks like right now, and what we can do to help as we isolate our physical bodies at home. This episode's guest is Asiaha Butler, the cofounder of the Resident Association of Greater Englewood, aka RAGE. Asiaha talks about the pandemic-related shift in the communal development of the mind RAGE does, how she's built a food distribution system for the seniors in Englewood, and how she creates communal development while fighting against displacement.

Big thanks to AirGo Alum Tonika Lewis Johnson for the connection!

Support the work of RAGE Englewood: https://ragenglewood.org/

Recorded 5/9/20 in Chicago

Music from this week's episode:

Park - Isaiah Rashad

From the isolation of our homes, AirGo is presenting a series called On the Line, which focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and the people putting their bodies on the line to help us all survive and heal. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hopping on the line with workers in the health care, educational, governmental, organizing, and prison abolition spheres to talk about what their work looks like right now, and what we can do to help as we isolate our physical bodies at home. This episode's guest is Pura of the Little Village Solidarity Network/Red de Solidaridad de La Villita. Pura and her comrades have led the fight to raise awareness and demand the shutdown of a series of immigrant youth detention facilities run by influential Chicago nonprofit Heartland Alliance, in which COVID-19 has been running rampant. Pura details the information they've gathered about the carceral conditions inside, how the dozens of documented COVID-19 cases have changed life inside these baby jails, the direct action tactics and strategies that LVSN takes, and how we can contribute to this urgent fight.

Learn more and support LVSN: https://www.facebook.com/LaVillitaSolidaridad/

Recorded 5/7/2020 in Chicago

Music from this week's episode:

Park - Isaiah Rashad

As the pandemic's stay-at-home orders have come under fire from conservatives and industrialists, a whole buncha whites have been descending on state capitol buildings, weapons in hand, to demand that these necessary communal rules be lifted. While waiting for a late guest, Dame and Kiss dove into a deep, loose, and pretty damn thorough exploration of what the hell is going on with white people, why, and what might help address this centuries-long crisis of consciousness.

Recorded 4/20/20 in Chicago

Music from this week's show:

No Vaseline - Ice Cube

photo courtesy of Rosie Fitz. Find her yts highlight at http://instagram.com/sensitiveplanttt

From the isolation of our homes, AirGo is presenting a series called On the Line, which focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and the people putting their bodies on the line to help us all survive and heal. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hopping on the line with workers in the health care, educational, governmental, organizing, and prison abolition spheres to talk about what their work looks like right now, and what we can do to help as we isolate our physical bodies at home. This episode's guest is Antonio Gutierrez, an architect, organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations, and a co-founder of the Autonomous Tenants Union. They delve into how ATU supports tenants as they fight against the violences of eviction and displacement, how this current crisis has both created enormous strife and brought many new renters into the conversation, the connections between the violence of eviction and that of deportation, and what a culture of de-commodified housing could look like.

Sign ATU's petition demanding a rent freeze in Chicago now!: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/rent-freeze-in-chicago-now

Get information about how you and your neighbors can exercise your rights as tenants: https://autonomoustenantsunion.org/covid19

Recorded 4/28/20 in Chicago

Music from this week's show:

Park - Isaiah Rashad

Each month this year, we're going to revisit an episode from the 200+ episodes in the AirGo Archives and bring that conversation back to the forefront. This month, we're revisiting our conversation with KAINA, a vocalist, songwriter, and community staple here in Chicago, from back in 2017. Since then, she has put out a dynamite full-length album called Next to the Sun and has toured with the likes of Sleater Kinney, of all people. She was slated to play this year's Pitchfork before the pandemic descended, and has been continuing to make great songs, work hard, and love her city.

Listen to Next to the Sun: http://smarturl.it/NextToTheSun

Recorded 4/27/2017 at WHPK 88.5FM in Chicago

Music from this week's episode:

The Circuit - Juju Exchange

Honey - KAINA

Petals - KAINA

Perspective - KAINA

Black Youth Project has joined forces with AirGo for a year-long #BYPSpotlight series, featuring our favorite Black academics and activists. This month’s #BYPSpotlight episode is with New Yorker columnist, professor, and organizer Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who hops on the line with us in the midst of this shelter-in-place period. We discuss the relationship between her writing and her organizing work in Chicago, understanding the ways that racism is at the core of COVID-19's destruction, the implications of pegging human needs to profit motives, and much more.

Read Keeanga's excellent piece The Black Plague in the most recent New Yorker: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-black-plague

Recorded 4/24/20 remotely

Music from this week's show:

Park - Isaiah Rashad

From the isolation of our homes, AirGo is presenting a series called On the Line, which focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and the people putting their bodies on the line to help us all survive and heal. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hopping on the line with workers in the health care, educational, governmental, organizing, and prison abolition spheres to talk about what their work looks like right now, and what we can do to help as we isolate our physical bodies at home. This episode's guest is Zain Bullie, a high school teacher and mentor at Uplift High School, a social justice CPS school in Uptown. Bullie breaks down what the transition to online learning has been like, how he and his fellow teachers have adapted to be there for both their students and their students' families, some of the humanizing potential of this crisis, and more.

Check out Kuumba Lynx: https://www.kuumbalynx.com/

Learn about Uplift Community HS here: https://uplifths.cps.edu/

NOTE: AirGo has created the COVID Stimulus Redistribution Plan! Find some direct methods to redistribute your $1200 to those who are being denied the means needed to survive this crisis. See the resource list at http://airgoradio.com/covid

Recorded 4/20/20 in Chicago

Music from this week's episode:

Park - Isaiah Rashad

Climate Changemakers is a 5-part podcast series, showcasing and celebrating leaders in equity work and climate action across Illinois, presented by Elevate Energy. This episode's guest is Juliana Pino, the policy director at the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization (LVEJO) in Chicago. At LVEJO, Juliana analyzes, researches, and advocates for environmental justice, climate justice, and economic justice in local, state, and federal environmental policy. Recorded back in Early March, Juliana discusses the challenges that COVID exacerbates in Little Village and other environmentally unjust communities.

NOTE: This was recorded before the recent demolition of the HILCO smokestack in Little Village. Juliana discusses the site of the demolition, but the devastating demolition had not yet happened. To learn more about the demolition and it's effects, check out this recent episode of the Hoodoisie, featuring Juliana: https://www.facebook.com/thehoodoisie/videos/1122529154767343/

Learn about Elevate Energy and their 20th anniversary: www.elevateenergy.org/

Check out LVEJO:

www.lvejo.org

From the isolation of our homes, AirGo is presenting a series called On the Line, which focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and the people putting their bodies on the line to help us all survive and heal. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hopping on the line with workers in the health care, educational, governmental, organizing, and prison abolition spheres to talk about what their work looks like right now, and what we can do to help as we isolate our physical bodies at home. On this episode, the guys talk with Alice Kim and Timmy Châu of the Prison Neighborhood Arts Project. They share info on what's happening inside Stateville Prison, where they both teach, connect dots between this crisis moment and the prison industrial complex's decades-long destruction of parole and other types of prison release programs, and explore the particular dangers and opportunities of this moment in relation to organizing and militarism.

Help get people out of Illinois prisons: https://www.freethepeoplecoalition.org/

Learn more about PNAP, including their Mutual Aid effort for people behind bars: https://p-nap.org/

Recorded 4/17/20 in Chicago

Music in this show:

Park - Isaiah Rashad

From the isolation of our homes, AirGo is presenting a series called On the Line, which focuses on the COVID-19 pandemic and the people putting their bodies on the line to help us all survive and heal. Over the next few weeks, we'll be hopping on the line with workers in the health care, educational, governmental, organizing, and prison abolition spheres to talk about what their work looks like right now, and what we can do to help as we isolate our physical bodies at home. This episode features a series of conversations recorded with people currently detained at Cook County Jail, who describe the conditions they're experiencing. The interviews are conducted by the Invisible Institute's Maira Khwaja and produced by South Side Weekly Radio's Erisa Apantaku. The piece first ran on SSW Radio–thanks to both of them for allowing us to share their work!

Join the Bond Fund's Call-in Campaign: https://chicagobond.org/2020/04/09/call-the-city-of-chicago-to-demand-they-drop-their-opposition-to-release/

Collage by J Michael Eugenio/South Side Weekly.