Radical Imagination

Well before Covid-19, Black Americans struggled to access healthcare and had disproportionately high rates of chronic illness and death. Nowhere is this more glaring than in the Mississippi Delta, where Black people with diabetes are commonly treated by amputation and are three times more likely to die of the disease than their White counterparts. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Dr. Foluso Fakorede, who moved to the region to improve patient care and stop the unnecessary the loss of limbs. We also meet lawyer and activist Priti Krishtel. She's leading a movement to make sure lifesaving medicines are available and affordable for all by dismantling a patent system designed to enrich Big Pharma and keep drug prices high.

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

A group of women in Hawaii are showing the nation that post-pandemic economic recovery can be visionary, just, and transformative. They have crafted a plan that centers women, insists on gender equality, and advances deep cultural change. In this episode of Radical Imagination, host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Khara Jabola-Carolus, the executive director of Hawaii’s Commission on the Status of Women, which released the plan, titled “Building Bridges, Not Walking on Backs: A Feminist Recovery Plan for Covid-19.”  And we hear from activist and midwife Tanya Smith-Johnson, who co-authored the plan and works to improve maternal and neonatal care in Hawaii’s rural areas. 

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

More than two million Americans live without access to clean, running water or a working toilette at home. Millions more predominantly in places like Flint, Michigan, the Navajo Nation, and migrant farmworker communities in California’s Central Valley have been disproportionately affected by high levels of led and arsenic in the water. In this episode of Radical Imagination, host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with US Water Alliance CEO Radhika Fox about solutions to this national water crisis. We also hear from Susana De Anda, Co-executive Director of the Community Water Center, about the fight for clean water in California’s Central Valley.

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

Host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with writer, journalist and activist Tiq Milan about the the limiting and often toxic ways our society thinks about gender, and how we can do better. While the nation has come far in its inclusion of the LGBTQ community in recent decades, we have a long way to go. At least 25 transgender or gender-non-conforming people were reported murdered in 2019, and that’s an undercount, because most attacks go unreported. Join us as Milan describes his personal journey and the intersection of gender and race.

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

As Covid-19 sweeps the world, life feels too much like science fiction. On this episode of Radical Imagination, we explore an idea that’s tailor-made for this distressing moment. It’s called visionary fiction, and it uses sci-fi and fantasy to imagine not a dystopian future, but a better world — without poverty, prisons and inequality. It’s more than a literary genre; it’s a movement of people of color working to create the change they write about. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with writer, artist, educator and organizer Walidah Imarisha about the idea and the organizing it has inspired.

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

For many years, undocumented students who came to the US as minors have been excluded from getting federal funding like grants or loans for college. While 23 states grant undocumented students in-state tuition, three states - Georgia, Alabama, and South Carolina - have a form of admissions ban against undocumented students. In 2010, the state banned undocumented students from applying to its top public universities and required them to pay out-of-state at the other public colleges. In response, a group of Georgia professors and undocumented students created an underground freedom school named Freedom University. It offers free college-level courses to the banned students, college application support and human rights leadership training. Many of the students have gone on to earn degrees at colleges and universities across the country. 

​​​​​​​Radical Imagination host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with Freedom University Executive Director and Professor of Human Rights, Dr. Laura Emiko Soltis. We also hear from Freedom University alumnus Rafael Aragon, who is a full scholarship recipient at Oglethorpe University and now serves as a part-time staff member at Freedom University. 

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

We kick off season two of the Radical Imagination podcast with the story of two mothers who were experiencing homelessness. They moved into a house owned by an investment firm but sitting vacant for nearly two years. That courageous act, in Oakland, California, brought national attention to the housing crisis. Host Angela Glover Blackwell talks with Dominique Walker about why she occupied the house and about the collective she co-founded, Moms4Housing. The group is demanding the human right to housing and taking on investors who treat housing as a commodity they can buy and flip for profit, while a half-million Americans experience homelessness and millions more struggle with skyrocketing rents. We also hear from Tara Raghuveer, the Housing Campaign Director for People’s Action, about the Homes Guarantee, an ambitious proposal to rebuild and reimagine housing.

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

Radical Imagination returns with host Angela Glover Blackwell in conversation with thinkers and changemakers on issues ranging from reimagining gender and visionary fiction, to housing as a human right and changing the criminal-legal system. 

Get ready to be enlightened, inspired, and moved to think in radically new ways. 

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

Imagine an America free of urban gun violence. Host Angela Glover Blackwell speaks with Devone Boggan, CEO of Advance Peace in Richmond, California, a visionary program that offers young men with a history of gun offenses life-changing opportunities to work as community peacemakers. In this episode, the season one finale, we also hear from James Houston, who served 18 years in prison for shooting and killing a man. Houston is now a change agent in Richmond — and proof that investment in people, not in more police, can end the devastating cycle of neighborhood violence.

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us

A federal job guarantee is an old idea making its way back this election cycle. It’s controversial and considered radical—but what makes more sense than making sure that everyone who needs a job can get one? A job guarantee would bring financial stability to millions of families. And it would put people to work doing things the nation needs, such as building affordable housing and caring for children. In this episode, Angela Glover Blackwell explores the tantalizing possibilities—and the feasibility—of a federal job guarantee with one of its leading advocates, Darrick Hamilton, Executive Director of the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at the Ohio State University.

Tune into Radical Imagination as we dive into the stories and solutions that are fueling change. www.radicalimagination.us