Episode 5 of the Resist + Renew podcast, where we interview Peninah from the Racial Justice Network (RJN).

“We have race at the core of the work and then see how it intersects with other other struggles or identities.”

- Peninah

Show notes, links

Racial Justice Network website + Twitter. A few slices of their work:

The Collective Conversations project

Stop the Scan

13th Recommendation on climate justice

Black and Brown community space

Unlearning Racism Collective

International solidarities with Brazil and Kenya

COVID Response

Transcript

Ali: This is Resist + Renew.

Kat: A UK-based podcast about social movements.

Sami: What we're fighting for, why, and how it all happens.

Ali: The hosts of the show are:

Kat: Me, Kat,

Sami: Me, Sami,

Ali: and me, Ali,

Sami: I'm recording this now baby

Ali: Shit it's a podcast.

*Laughter*

Ali: So welcome everybody. Welcome back to the Resist+Renew podcast. Sami and I are interviewing Peninah Wangari-Jones today from the Racial Justice Network. And we're really excited to have you. Thanks for joining us.

Peninah: Thank you for having me.

Ali: So a little bit about Peninah. Peninah Wangari-Jones is an anti racist activist organiser and director of the Racial Justice Network, and is currently undertaking a PhD at the University of Manchester, focusing on how coloniality shapes black activism. Peninah was born and raised in Kenya, her experiences of discrimination and racism, after migrating to the UK became a catalyst for fighting for racial and social justice. She is interested in race equity, intersectionality, migration, coloniality and internationalising social movements, what a great list of things to be interested in, like, so excited to see where we go from here. So thank you. Um, to kick us off, we would love to know a bit about the contexts you are organising. And so like, what do you see as like, the issues that are of, like, the most urgent or the most pressing things that you're focusing on right now? And how do you choose those things?

Peninah: Yeah, I think perhaps it just kind of fits all within the interest. And so yeah, race equity, race. Raising awareness, raising awareness about racism and stuff like that. It's kind of where we sit. And definitely the organisation, but I know the organisation has been informed by like it says there a bit of my own journey. And so part of it right now, I think, as we know, these would not just got COVID, we had the murder of George Floyd, which is kind of more recently just pushed a lot of things out there. But we also know, like, in terms of the treatment of black and brown people, is this kinda goes on centuries. And so the choice to kind of the question was around how do we tackle racism, because there's a sentiment that we kind of go into the spaces, and everybody's talking about equality and diversity, and that nobody's kind of really like bold or courageous enough to kind of go down the race route. And we felt a little bit of that was intentional, but the consequences of that, we will feeling those consequences. So the desire to push, race and colour, make race, like bit more mainstream, was something that we wanted, but also kind of, to build solidarities across. So sometimes, there's a feeling that if somebody is working on this just doing race, as opposed to race and other oppressions and struggles. So it felt right, and he felt fair to kind of really start to begin to connect these struggles in terms of who really interested in tilting or dismantling, they're not just the white supremacy structures, but imperialism, capitalism, and all of that stuff. We needed to kind of do the interconnectedness of race and class and, you know, a migration, gender, sexual orientation and all of those things. And so at the moment, that's kind of where we are. That's what we do. And it's not been easy for sure. And but we also, I think there was an another angle,