July means summer, it means cookouts and the 4th of July. In this age of the quarantine, both are also symbols of freedom. But with that freedom comes a complicated relationship between the Black community and the supposed freedoms we celebrate.  In this episode of Beyond28 we examine that complicated history and ask what freedom means in 2021.

(6:22) Listen as host Marc Spears welcomes Supervisor Shamann Walton, San Francisco’s first Black President of the City’s Board of Supervisors as he discusses the need for reparations for its Black residents and how the city continues to erase its Black community through gentrification and what he’s doing to reverse that course.

(20:50) Derrick Johnson, President and CEO of the NAACP joins Beyond28 to discuss the fight to preserve African American voting rights currently under threat as a result of legislation created by the GOP in the wake of bogus voter fraud accusations. Plus, Johnson outlines how freedom from student debt would uplift an entire generation of Black students.

(34:38) In our Rewind section, Beyond28 travels back to the hot summer nights of 1969 to look at the legacy of Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers in Oakland. As the city roiled with conflict, the Panthers we’re building out a new modality of activism to help build and protect the whole community.