Audio Interference

In this episode, we’re speaking with activists, organizers, musicians and artists who are a part of The Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. The movement is building on the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968, a national movement led by Reverend Dr Martin Luther King Junior to unite the poor. We focus our conversation on the role music and art plays, and has played, in this movement.

A huge thank you to Ciara Taylor, Pauline PIsano, and Charon Hribrar for speaking with for this episode.

To learn more about the Poor People’s Campaign, visit their website at https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/.

To download a copy of the songbook, produced by the Poor People’s Campaign with artwork by Justseeds collective: https://www.poorpeoplescampaign.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/SON001_Songbook.pdf

This episode coincides with the exhibition at Interference Archive Everybody’s Got A Right To Live: The Poor People’s Campaign 1968 & Now: http://interferencearchive.org/everybodys-got-a-right-to-live-the-poor-peoples-campaign-1968-now/

This is the last episode of spring 2019 Audio Interference season. We’re taking a break for the summer, but we’ll be back again in the fall with a brand new season that explores the culture of social movements globally. While we’re off enjoying the summer sun, we’d love to hear from you with feedback about our episodes so far, and about what you’re interested in listening to in the future! Please fill out this survey to tell us why you love audio interference, and what topics you would like us to cover in the year ahead: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1QUf3nPwdo7ewDaymPsgW73biPu-42iWwlF4Z-FI3QoE/viewform?edit_requested=true

Thanks, and have a nice summer!

Music you heard today is by:

50 Years After MLK’s Poor People’s Campaign, 2,500+ Arrested Over 6 Weeks Calling for Moral Revival, Democracy Now, June 25, 2018

Audio recordings from an action at Wall Street in March 2018, with help by Lu Aya from the Peace Poets and the Rude Mechanical Orchestra.

Ciara and Paulina sing “I want to Lift My People Up” by Vi Rose.

The Library Freedom Project is an organization that’s making an impact in local communities, helping reduce the harm that people face online from hackers, law enforcement and major corporations.

In the past few weeks, regular listeners to the podcast have heard an episode on community internet, and another celebrating libraries. This week, we’ll combine the best of both worlds.

Today, we'll chat with Alison Macrina, Founder and Executive Director of the Library Freedom Project, an organization that’s making an impact in local communities, helping reduce the harm that people face online from hackers, law enforcement and major corporations. We’ll learn of the organization's showdown with the Department of Homeland Security and hear of its efforts to scale up to a library near you.

To learn more about Library Freedom Project and Library Freedom Institute, visit www.libraryfreedom.org.

Music in this episode (“Dusting,” “Stilt,” “Borough” & “Hickory Interlude”) by Blue Dot Sessions - www.sessions.blue

Produced by Interference Archive.

In today’s episode, we’ll learn about community networks around the world, including NYC Mesh, FunkFeuer, and Rhizomatica. Community Networks offer local communities the opportunity to own and control their communication infrastructure.

We’re back to continue our series on radical, community libraries! In this episode, we chat with Ola Ronke Akinmowo of the Free Black Women’s Library, Dev Aujla of Sorted Library, and Jen Hoyer and Daniel Pecoraro from our own Interference Archive library.

This episode features an interview with artist and collector Alison Alder, recorded last summer when Alison visited New York. Alison Alder is a visual artist whose work blurs the line between studio, community and social/political art practice. Her formative years as an artist were spent working in the screen-printing workshops of Megalo (Canberra) and Redback Graphix (Wollongong/Sydney) where she was co-director from 1985–1993. The next major period of her art practice was spent working within Indigenous organisations in the Northern Territory, primarily for Julalikari Council in Tennant Creek. Alder received an International Year of Tolerance Fellowship from the Australia Council in recognition of her work toward social justice and equity through art practice. Alder is currently Head of the Printmedia and Drawing Workshop at the Australian National University School of Art.

Alison is also the organizer of Interference Archive's current exhibition, Hi-Viz: Australian Political Posters 1979-2019. Hi-Viz, an exhibition of screen-printed posters that provide a visual commentary of politics and life in Australia over the last four decades, is on display through April 14.

Here's an image of the Redback Graphix poster Alison refers to:

https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/85.1983/

Music: "Amends" by Mere Women.

Produced by Interference Archive.

This episode features an interview with artist and collector Alison Alder, a visual artist whose work blurs the line between studio, community and social/political art practice.

The Professional Staff Congress, the union of the faculty and staff at the City University of New York, is currently bargaining a contract which includes a flagship demand of seven thousand dollars per course for adjunct faculty — which would finally earn many adjuncts a living wage and push forward a national conversation about funding for public education.

Various adjunct organizers are trying to push the union towards a strike in order to win the demand, but they have faced resistance from union leadership, as striking is illegal for public sector workers in New York State and comes with tremendous risks. Organizers in favor of a strike have united under a campaign they have called, "7K or Strike!" In this episode, we hear from various union members about how they believe they will win this demand. To learn more about the 7K demand itself and the daily reality for adjuncts at CUNY, you can listen to episode 51, titled: "Adjunctification at CUNY".

Music:

La Fatigue et l'Insupportable Bonheur du Prochain by Bernard Grancher

New York Town by Woody Guthrie

Produced by the Interference Archive

"We don't believe that big gains and big transformations to unjust systems happen by just asking nicely. It happens by, as we've seen in all of the inspiring teacher's strikes across the country - change happens by people really coming out and being disruptive. This is how folks throughout American history have gotten the things that they asked for, by going on strike. It's really not some kind of radical theory."

In this episode, Keith Brooks and Phil Brown share their experiences in the critical psychology movement that was a part of the revolutionary environment at Alternate U.