Strange Fruit

Kennedy Odede, age 29 of Kenya, received the Dedication honor for his Work with Shining Hope for Communities. Kennedy is the president and CEO of Shining Hope for Communities (SHOFCO). SHOFCO’s current programming comprises a school for girls, a free health clinic, a micro-loan and micro-savings program, sanitation and clean water services, and a program to combat gender‐based violence and promote sexual health of young people in the community. Kennedy founded SHOFCO with nothing more than a soccer ball and his “faith in people’s abilities to change their own lives.” Talia Leman, age 19 from Iowa, USA was honored with the Giving Award for her role with RandomKid. As the CEO and a Founder of RandomKid, Talia develops ideas, strategies and networks between kids internationally to increase their impact. She also leads "power" assemblies, doles out seed funds to help jumpstart philanthropic ventures, organizes web-conferences between youth across the globe, and mentors her peers in success strategies for achieving their goals to benefit others. Having been appointed UNICEF's first known National Youth Ambassador, Talia has worked with kids from 20 countries and together these kids have reported close to 11 million dollars through RandomKid-guided initiatives. Mastura Rashid, age 24 of Malaysia, was honored with the SpiritualityAward. Rashid is the founder and project manager of the Nasi Lemak Project, a community service project she initiated in 2011. The Nasi Lemak Project is a young, independent and effective movement to counter urban poverty in Malaysia. The Nasi Lemak Project gained traction and momentum when Rashid was one of the few who received funding from the office of Special Representative of Muslim Communities under their Generation Change Grant. The Nasi Lemak Project mechanism in eradicating urban poverty is done through these three main areas: feeding program, education, and rendering assistance.

It's been a star-studded week for Team Strange Fruit! We spent some time recently on the red carpet at the 2nd Annual Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Awards, where we got to chat with celebrities and honorees about the Champ's civil rights legacy. Ali famously refused service in the US Army when he was drafted during the Vietnam War, claiming conscientious objector status. The Army denied his claim, and Ali was found guilty of refusing induction, stripped of his World Boxing Association Championship title, and banned from the sport for nearly four years—at what would seem to be the peak of his athletic career. This week on the show you'll hear us check in with Susan Sarandon, who was honored with the Muhammad Ali Humanitarian Award for Global Citizenship. She pointed out the significance of Ali's actions. "You just do not see celebrities or athletes putting themselves on the line the way that he did," she explained. "If you look at the context in which he came forward, it was so heavy and so brave of him to take the stance that he did, when the country was on fire with so much racism, and the Vietnam War was so divisive." We also chatted with The Today Show's Matt Lauer, and were completely charmed by Kid President. (We didn't have room for all our red carpet interviews in the main show this week, so keep an eye on our soundcloud, where we'll be posting interviews with Holly Robinson Peet, Jim Brown, William Mapother, and more, as bonus fruit!) For our feature interview, we speak to the Electric Lady herself, Miss Janelle Monáe, who was in Louisville for the Idea Festival. She and some of of her compatriots from the Wondaland Arts Society spoke to a group of young people in a session devoted to improving the world by the year 2035. She has famously avoided questions about her sexual orientation, preferring instead to eschew labels. We caught up with her in the green room before her presentation, and asked her why. "First of all, I think it's boring," she said. "Although I wear black and white, I know that my life is not black and white. We're complex beings." She also explained her use of alter-ego Cindi Mayweather as a metaphor for oppressed peoples, and gave us one of our favorite quotes ever, on the subject of women: "We come in peace, but we mean business." And finally, for this week's Juicy Fruit, we were joined in the Strange Fruit Studios by the WWE star Damien Sandow (That's his character name, but he graciously started off the segment with, "I'm off today, so you can call me Aaron if you want."). We asked for his take on the recent attention on athletes and domestic violence. "When you're on television, when you play for a sports team, you're gonna have people—especially children—that look up to you, whether you like it or not. And that is a responsibility, in my opinion." Speaking of children, Aaron spends a lot of his time in schools, talking with kids about making good choices and helping each other. He was also at the Ali Awards and made a donation to the center after attending. "It's a history lesson," he says about the center. "And also it's a testament to the man. And that man has inspired so many people." We know the phrase "gentle giant" is clichéd, but it does come to mind when you meet Aaron—at least outside the ring. We're glad he's making Louisville his home, and can't wait to see what he might do next!

It's Idea Festival time in Louisville, and that means cool people who do cool things descend on our city to talk about the things they're doing! We chatted with one of those folks, Juan Williams Chàvez, this week about his work, and what it means to do social activist through art. One of Chàvez's big projects, the Pruitt-Igoe Bee Sanctuary, takes place on land that was once home to one of the country's most notoriously awful housing developments. Built in the mid-1950s, the 33-building, high-rise complex fell into almost immediate disrepair, and was described in a Missouri History book as "something out of a Charles Dickens novel." It was eventually demolished in the mid 1970s. Today, thanks to Chàvez, it is home to a bee sanctuary, where members of the community learn about urban agriculture. The decision on how to use the land wasn't incidental. "Bees function as a community," Chàvez explains. "Pruitt-Igoe was designed for community. I wanted it to kind of go back to community." In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we talk about the "angry black woman" stereotype that reared its head in a New York Times feature this week, pointed at television producer Shonda Rhimes. The backlash was righteous and overwhelming, and the Times ended up issuing an apology. We break down the stereotype and how it does and doesn't play out in pop culture. "And speaking of things that are hard for a lot of folks to understand," Jaison says, "it's Bisexual Awareness Week." We go dispell some of the most common misconceptions about our bi brothers and sisters.

It's a busy weekend in Louisville! The Louisville AIDS Walk takes place this Sunday on the Belvedere, and one of this year's special guests is fashion designer Mondo Guerra. Mondo came out as HIV positive when he was on season 8 of Project Runway (he came in second, but would later win the first Project Runway All-Star season). He's now part of Project I Design—a national campaign geared toward improving communication between HIV patients and their doctors. We speak with Mondo this week, who says that despite increased awareness, there's still stigma surrounding HIV. When he came out on TV, he hadn't told his family yet, waiting until just before the episode aired to have that conversation. "I was very self shaming, and I was very embarrassed, and I didn't feel like I could talk to my parents about this," he says. "Stigma has always played a role in this experience, this journey that I've had with HIV. But at the point that I'm at right now, living with HIV for 13 years and what I've been through, I really try to not use the word 'stigma' in my own personal vocabulary, because I feel like there's so much negativity attached to it." Find out more about the Louisville AIDS Walk here: http://www.kyaids.org/walk And more about Project I Design here: http://www.projectidesign.com/ Elsewhere in town this weekend, the National Jug Band Jubilee is celebrating its 10th anniversary on Saturday at Waterfront Park. Author Michael L. Jones is on the event's board, and hopes to broaden the appeal of jug bands to the descendants of those who pioneered it: African Americans. "When you think of the African slaves, when they came here, they didn't have instruments. They had to make their own instruments," he explains. "And so they turned household objects into musical instruments." Jones stopped by our studio this week to introduce us to some jug band greats, like Earl McDonald and Sara Martin, who made music history right here in Louisville. "This is something that originated in African origins, that African Americans are totally divorced from, because they think plantations, and banjos and stuff," Jones says. "[With] jug music, you see the first combination of European tunes and African rhythms," he says. "I tell people it's the secret history of rock and roll." Find out more about the National Jug Band Jubilee here: http://www.jugbandjubilee.com/ And about Michael's Book, "Louisville Jug Music: From Earl McDonald to the National Jubliee," here: http://www.carmichaelsbookstore.com/book/9781626194960

Labor historian Toni Gilpin will make two appearances in Louisville tomorrow to tell the little-known story of a local labor union that was ahead of its time. A local chapter of the United Farm Machinery workers organized at Louisville's International Harvester plant in the late 1940s, and began anti-racism activism both inside out outside of the plant. Their efforts would lead to an entire factory of mostly white workers walking off the job to protest the unfair treatment of their African American colleagues. Outside the factory walls, union members tried to desegregate the Brown Hotel and Cherokee Park—both whites-only at the time—and were met with violence and forcible removal by police. Gilpin spoke with Kaila Story of WFPL's Strange Fruit about the work of Local 236. She will appear tomorrow afternoon at the University of Louisville and tomorrow night at the National Association of Letter Carriers.

“There are black people in town who have the same last name as me, and I never thought about why that might be.” Author Chris Tomlinson says he hears that a lot while touring for his recent book, called Tomlinson Hill: The Remarkable Story of Two Families Who Share the Tomlinson Name—One White, One Black. In it, he traces his family’s history to a cotton plantation in Texas, and reaches out to another Tomlinson family whose ancestors were held as slaves there. Slavery is a topic that brings up strong feelings in Americans, because as Chris points out, it was part of our country’s economic and social as recently as five generations ago. But he says it wasn’t white guilt that motivated his work on the book. “I’m not asking forgiveness for what my great grandfather did,” he says. “On the other hand, I do have an obligation to recognize the privilege that I have because my ancestors oppressed people.” Chris says slavery, the Jim Crow era, and the institutionalized racism that has always been present in the United States have afforded white people unfair advantages, and it isn’t helpful to ignore that reality. “Until 1964, no white member of my family ever had to compete with a person of color to get a job or to get a privilege. And even today I can go places and I’m treated in a different way.” Tomlinson Hill is a fascinating look at how the remnants of slavery are still present in our every day lives—sometimes even our last names. In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we talk about Ray Rice, former running back for the Baltimore Ravens who was released from the team after TMZ posted video this week of him physically attacking his then-girlfriend in an elevator. The assault happened in March, but at the time, Rice received only a two-game suspension. Accounts differ about whether the NFL saw the footage then, or not until this week. Rice and his girlfriend were married subsequent to the attack, spurring understandable concern from experts and survivors (domestic violence rarely happens just once, and usually escalates with each incident). Others blamed Janay Rice for staying with and marrying the man who had knocked her unconscious. Financial scholar and commentator (and Louisville native) Dr. Boyce Watkins penned an open letter to Janay Rice, praising her for her decision to stay with her abuser. We read an excerpt from his letter on this week’s show—specifically this passage, which was widely scorned on social media: For every woman who made the mistake of staying in a relationship with a perpetually abusive man, there is another woman who is glad she made the choice to keep her family together. Some will call these women stupid or the product of male manipulation; I call them heroes, ultimate mothers, and powerful people. At the very least, women deserve to have a say in what happens to their families without paternalistic eavesdroppers forcing them to do something they don’t want to do. With black families being torn apart left and right by the pitfalls of extreme feminism, we should appreciate situations where someone isn’t seeking to throw the baby out with the bathwater and destroying their family at the drop of a hat. Dr. Story points out that while most domestic and sexual violence is intra-racial, black women feel pressure to excuse the violence visited upon them by black men. “Black women have been living with these things in silence for fear that if they air it, they’re somehow race traitors or they’re selling their man out.” She calls for black male thinkers and writers to speak up when high-profile black men commit violent crimes against black women. “You got contempt for Darren Wilson? You need to have contempt for Ray Rice,” she explains. “Both parties felt as if it was their right to be able to do anything they wanted to a black body.”

You know her from her groundbreaking work as the TransGriot, and a frequent commentator on Strange Fruit. We know her as our Auntie Monica! Award-winning blogger Monica Roberts stopped by the Strange Fruit Studios on a recent visit to Louisville, and we checked in with her about the state of trans human rights. While Monica's blog covers a little bit of everything—"sports, feminism, human rights, whatever I feel like talking about," she says—the overarching focus is the lives of transgender women of color. Why a trans women of color blog rather than a general trans women blog? "Trans people of color experience a transition much differently from our white counterparts," Monica explains. "We are impacted negatively by racism that we deal with in our parent society, and even in the LGBT ranks." Even within the transfeminine community, there are challenges unique to different segments of the population. "The issues that I face as a trans woman of African descent, and the issues that a trans woman of Latina descent faces are two different issues," she says. "I don't have to deal with, like a Latina woman does, being jacked up on the street for immigration issues. But both of us do have to deal with stop and frisk." We also take you along as we visit an after-school spoken word poetry workshop, where high school students—largely LGBTQ and African American—work through tricky subjects like oppression and identity, through their writing. And in our Juicy Fruit segment, we get an update on Michael Sam, released by the Rams, picked up by the Cowboys' practice squad, and obsessed over by ESPN when it comes to showering with the team. We also talk about a conservative commentator who thinks gay people should pay more for life insurance, and learn about Dr. Story's first book, "Patricia Hill Collins: Reconceiving Motherhood."

In many ways, Nick and Bianca Bowser are very typical parents. They have two children; Kai is three and Pax is one. "We are exhausted all the time," Nick laughs. "We both work at a bar, so we both work at night, so there's very little sleep." The thing that sets this family apart, and has recently landed them on the Riki Lake show and in international headlines, is something strangers on the street usually don't even notice: Nick and Bianca are both transgender. Nick was assigned female gender at birth, and Bianca was assigned male. Neither has undergone full surgical transition (partially because it's so expensive), so when they decided to have children, they were able to conceive. Nick and Bianca are part of our own community right here in Louisville, and Nick stopped by this week to share their story. We were curious about why they chose to go public with their family's story, when they otherwise have no problem passing. "We want people who are like us to be able to get help if they need help," he explains. There's a mountain of different issues that trans people have to face, and we feel as thought bringing our story to the public and letting them know, hey, we really are normal, but there's something different about us. We have a family. We've had children. We're the same as everybody else. But we had to face all these other obstacles because you (as a whole) don't understand who we are, so were discriminated against because of that. In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we focus on the so-called anti date rape nail polish, "Undercover Colors," and how it's been criticized as just another instance of putting the onus on women to prevent rape. Dr. Story talks about how she teaches her classes about rape and gendered violence, but says college students in general are still woefully uninformed about consent. "They just really have no idea what equals consent, what is actually rape," she says. "A lot of times young people are saying in classes that they don't really even think about consent when they are about to engage in a sex act, period." And, of course, we couldn't let this week go by without delving into Beyoncé's legendary performance on the VMAs, the giant F-word she flashed at the world, and how we still live for her.

Nick Bowser and his wife Bianca are both transgender, and have made national headlines for following their own unique path to parenthood. This week, we'll talk to Nick about what it means to be a family, and his hopes for the future of the trans movement. In Juicy Fruit we focus on the anti-date-rape nail polish that's been in the news this week, and the state of consent on college campuses. And, of course, Beyoncé at the VMAs! Strange Fruit posts on Saturday morning at strangefruitpod.org, and airs Saturday night at 10pm on 89.3 WFPL.

On our very first episode EVER (September, 2012), we talked about how, when someone comes out of the closet in the black community, the first thing people ask is, "Does your mama know?" Until a person is out to their mama, they're not really 100% out. We had no idea what the show would become, so we were very experimental. That first week, Dr. Story took a recorder to campus and we made a montage of folks asking the question!