Audio Nuggets: Mining For Gold

We are BACK in the cypher! What does it mean to fight for Black families in a system designed to annihilate them? And who must we become in the cracks, in the rupture, and in the struggle? In this episode of Audio Nuggets, we welcome back movement lawyer Miriam Mack to the cypher, now in her role with Movement for Family Power. Miriam brings us into her own self-inquiry about what it means to show up as a movement lawyer within the ecosystem working to abolish family policing. Together, this conversation wrestles with what it means to build power—power rooted in history, values and Black Chicano liberation movements.

We are here about the civil death penalty— termination of parental rights—and we confront the racialized narratives that determine whose knowledge is valued, whose truth is contaminated, and whose humanity is made disposable. We examine what it means for a lawyer to breach the racial contract by challenging the very narratives the legal system relies upon to justify family separation. This conversation calls us to reckon with this country's long lineage of attempting to sever Black families from their histories, their people, and their bonds. Drawing on Bryan Stevenson's position that the state's power to punish must be challenged regardless of innocence, we ask what it means to defend a parent's right to family. Full stop.

What would it look like to enter a termination trial prepared to put everything on the line? What conditions make radical defense possible, and what must attorneys be willing to endure, embody, and sacrifice to practice it?

This is a conversation about movement lawyering, yes, but even more about who we are willing to be in the struggle. 

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

We are back in the cypher. And this is Black August. Black August calls us into remembrance, study, discipline, resistance, and the ongoing struggle for freedom. It asks us to remember those who fought for liberation, and to reckon with what freedom requires of us now.  This season on Audio Nuggets, we have been excavating True Narratives—and during Black August, that excavation takes us deeper. We are tracing the lineage of racialized assault that is patterned through kidnapping, terror, segregation, and incarceration. 

Tasha Patterson is back in the cypher forTrue Narratives: Part II Kidnapped, Terrorized, and Still Coming. Tasha invites us to confront the parallels between enslavement and family policing—including the terror that occurs when Black children are separated from their families and placed into the custody and control of the state. We ask what it means when a system can remove a child, regulate the parent-child relationship, change a child’s legal status, and ultimately declare them to a civil death. 

Assata Shakur reminds us: “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win.” We must love and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains." Her words are remembrance. Her words are instruction. Let's build glue and build a bigger WE. To learn more about True Narratives, visit us at TRUE NARRATIVES - MINING FOR GOLD

To donate to Movement For Family Power for Black August, you can visit, Donate.

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

We are back in the cypher! Welcome to Audio Nuggets. This season, we are excavating True Narratives. Truth requires presence, witness, and it requires us to grow and BE BIG.

We are joined by Tasha Patterson for this episode; True Narratives: Kidnapped, Terrorized, and Still Coming. In this episode, we engage with the true narratives of kidnapping, terror, and the moment of rupture. 

Tasha Patterson is a mother, an advocate, and the force behind Patterson's Law- landmark legislation effective on July 1, 2026. This law was named because the state kidnappers won't acknowledge that they got it wrong. Her fight now enlarges the stage for more families to stand in solidarity for freedom.  

The invitation is to build a bigger US. To learn more about True Narratives, visit us at TRUE NARRATIVES - MINING FOR GOLD

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

Welcome back to Audio Nuggets. To proclaim and honor June as Stolen Children’s Month, we gather to tell the truth about what has survived. This season, we are inside True Narratives — a call to listen differently, to witness more deeply, and to make room for the messiness that is necessary for solidarity and liberation.

We are joined by Ashley Albert, Tanesha Grant, and Courtney Dowe for this episode; True Narratives: The Kind of Love Termination Can’t Destroy!

In this episode, we enter a sacred conversation about the collective cost of termination of parental rights — the civil death penalty — and what happens when the state uses violence and power to rupture families and then asks people to heal from what was never attempted to be repaired. This conversation is about collective mourning, grief, and love. The kind of mourning that lives in the body. The kind that shakes without warning. The kind that moves through generations. The kind that sits underneath survival, underneath art, underneath testimony, underneath the love that never disappeared.

We want to honor and thank everyone who helped shape this episode through their artistry, truth-telling, and creative offerings. Deep gratitude to Elijah Lee and Kazeem Coleman on drums, April Lee for her spoken word, Courtney Dowe for singing, Tanesha Grant for reading, Ashley Albert for storytelling, and Sarah Katz for helping set the context that grounds this conversation collective memory.

The invitation is to build a bigger US. To learn more about True Narratives, visit us at Mining For Gold – True Narratives

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

Welcome back to Audio Nuggets. As we approach Mother's Day 2026, we are grateful to be joined by Toia Potts for this episode, True Narratives- I Will Always Be Your Mother.

Toia Potts is a fierce activist and organizer in North Carolina. After being falsely accused of child abuse, she spent more than eight months in Durham County jail on an unattainable bond. She was later fully exonerated, with all charges dismissed. Today, she continues her healing and leadership as Co-founder of Carolina Parent Defenders, Founder of Thrive Tribe NC, and Family Advocate/Organizer with EmancipateNC, fighting alongside Black mothers experiencing forced family separation.

This episode brings forward a love story, a truth-telling, and a living record of motherhood that endures across every condition. Anchored by the love for her children, this conversation holds the depth of a mother’s love, the sacredness of family bonds, and the power of speaking truth in one’s own voice. Toia shares a lineage of connection, remembrance, and refusal to let her children’s story be disconnected from their people, their history, and their origin. At the heart of this episode is a declaration: I will always be your mother. That truth carries memory, belonging, devotion, and the enduring bond between parent and child. It offers listeners a powerful witness to love that lives in the body, in the spirit, and across time. 

For more information on True Narratives, visit us at TRUE NARRATIVES - MINING FOR GOLD

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

We are back in the cypher. We are grateful to be joined by Tanesha Grant for this episode, “True Narratives—Foreseeable Complexities.” Tanesha has been walking this journey with us. She is a mother of three, grandmother of four, and a Black woman whose life has been shaped by the family policing system since birth. She is the founder and Executive Director of Parents Supporting Parents NY and Moms United for Black Lives New York City, and she has been in deep support with MFG in the creation of the True Narratives campaign.

Today’s conversation lives in the tension of what is emerging—and what we must be honest about. Because with emergence comes complexity. One of those complexities is the idea of healing—how systems position “fixing” as care, shaping how we come to understand the brokenness of our collective being. And alongside that is another foreseeable complexity: unlearning all the bad teaching and relearning freedom.

This episode is where we practice fugitive discovery. When we talk about fugitivity, we are talking about discernment—the bravery to move outside the rules that were never built for our freedom. Underground is a network forming in the crack, building love, imagination, and possibility together. We are committed to the practice of being in the crack with one another—listening, churning, imagining, and unlearning together. Because before a movement can declare what it demands, it must first remember what it is fighting for. This is the work of emerging realities. Love taking form through the collective. Truth organizing how we return to center—and to each other.

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

We are back in the cypher! Audio Nuggets is where True Narratives calls us to listen more deeply. In this listening, we are tending to the meanwhile. True Narratives are the throughline — a living mosaic of resistance, love, creativity, and becoming. During Black Futures and beyond, we are asking ourselves: Who must we be for the future we say we want?
We welcome Courtney Dowe for this episode, “True Narratives: I Am Because She Is.” Courtney is a songwriter, a poet and a lover of art and self expression. Courtney has breathed life and music into places and spaces between subway stations and the Kennedy Center. In protest, prayer and houses of healing. Always guided by her mother’s musical spirit, Courtney has grown her voice into a vessel for human rights, dignity, and collective memory — naming brutality, confronting persecution, and fighting for justice.

Her liberation is practiced, embodied, and disciplined by love and sharpened by truth. Courtney reminds us that art is testimony, and despair will not have the last word. This conversation is an invitation. An offering. An invitation to recognize that our voices are not just expressions — they are responsibilities. We are building base. We are people who arrive whole — with joy, grief, humor and memory. We are a people who refuse to be contained by myths.

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

Welcome to the cypher in 2026. We are beginning this season of Audio Nuggets by slowing all the way down — not because the stakes are small, but because the stakes are everything. In 2026, True Narratives is the throughline — a mosaic of collective realities where each voice, each breath, each memory is a tile. This season is about the truth that has survived disappearance. Truth that has refused erasure. Truth that knows we have always had to fight — and that now, we finally know what we are fighting for.

To ground us, we welcome Stephanie Jeffcoat, for True Narratives: Beyond Termination. Stephanie is a leader, organizer, and truth-teller whose work embodies everything True Narratives stands for. As the founder of Families Inspiring Reentry and Reunification for Everyone, Stephanie has spent years building alongside people impacted by incarceration, family policing, homelessness, and systemic disappearance. Her leadership is not rooted in proximity to harm — it is rooted in lived knowing, collective wisdom, and an unshakable belief that those most impacted are not just witnesses to injustice, but theory holders, culture builders, and movement shapers.

This conversation is an invitation. An invitation to abolish the executioner within our own minds — the voice that says silence is safer, that disappearance is survival, that harm happened because we weren’t enough. This season is about building base — people who recognize themselves in each other, who arrive whole with grief and anger and love and questions, and are not punished for any of it. We are fighting for belonging without punishment. For accountability without annihilation. For memory. For continuity. For love that the state can never terminate. This is discourse that strategizes with history. This is imagination as infrastructure. This is where story meets strategy. This is where the mosaic continues to grow.

To share your true narrative, visit us at TRUE NARRATIVES - MINING FOR GOLD

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

Audio Nuggets is back in the cypher! 2025’s anchor episode, True Narratives: A Reflective Reveal, is both a pause and a pulse. Corey is here — solo — with our beloved community, reflecting on the last year we’ve lived together. The gold. The gifts. The love. The bravery. The glue we keep building. This episode is gratitude in motion — for every comrade who showed up, stayed close, told the truth, and kept choosing relationship. We are here because of you.

And now — we turn toward what’s next. 2026 is calling, and True Narratives is the road we’re taking to get there. This episode names the plan, the stretch, and the invitation: now is the time to get activated. We’re going BIG because the moment demands it. We’re going deep because the people matter. True Narratives isn’t just a project — it’s a collective move toward liberation. If you’ve been waiting for your cue, this is it! 

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org. 

Welcome to the cypher! Audio Nuggets is where you will find a symbiotic force; both the heaviness of the air to breathe, and the light of freedom of liberation. Where human consciousness is alive. Each voice has a moment to spotlight their IT; their shine; their journey; their truth; their gold. We are honored to be joined by Nathan Ross for this episode, Liberation On The Line!

Nathan Ross is a voice of deep bravery and clarity. Nathan was adopted as a teenager—and from that moment on, he made it his mission to make systems of care more humane and justice-centered. But sometimes the truth becomes too heavy to hold inside the walls of harm. Nathan reached a point where he could no longer stay silent about what he witnessed—the erosion and abandonment of racial justice as the throughline and the slow suffocation of hope from within.

Today, Nathan stands firmly in his liberation. He co-founded ApricityEQ, a social enterprise born from the belief that healing begins with self-awareness and that systems can only transform when people do. Their first offering, the PocketEQ app, helps users understand how their environments influence their emotional state—and how that awareness can nurture connection, not control.

This conversation is about that transformation. It’s about leaving systems that no longer serve our humanity, reclaiming our power, and choosing to build something rooted in love, justice, and wholeness. This conversation with Nathan reminds us that liberation is not a destination—it’s a daily practice. And in that practice, there is light, courage, and the possibility of something profoundly NEW.

This show is part of the SafeCamp Audio podcast network. Learn more at SafeCampAudio.org.