In this episode we interview two of the founding members of The Wind & The Warrior, Ife Afriye Kilimanjaro and Nana Korantema. In 2020, The Wind & The Warrior led a Sacred Waters Pilgrimage to connect Black and Native culture-bearers and advocacy leaders working to address the climate crisis for ritual and conversation. Throughout the pilgrimage, they made 7 stops along the Mississippi River. In each stop The Wind & The Warrior coordinated with local Native womxn to connect through ritual and conversation. Ife Afriye Kilimanjaro and Nana Korantema share with us how their journey allowed them to create bridges between Black and Native womxn and between humans and Mother Earth.

This episode of Who Belongs? is part of a new series of podcasts focused on telling bridging stories. Throughout the series we’ll talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. This project is led by OBI’s Blueprint for Belonging project (B4B), and hosted by program researcher Miriam Magaña Lopez. This project is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc.

Visit our website at https://belonging.berkeley.edu/bridging-belonging-case-series to explore all of the case studies in the Bridging to Belonging series.

In this episode we interview Byb Bibene. Byb is a professional performer, choreographer, dance artist, director and dance educator originally from the Republic of Congo. Currently he lives in the Bay Area in California. Byb has participated in the African Diaspora Dialogues hosted by Nunu Kidane and Gerald Lenoir. In our last episode, we got to hear from Nunu and Gerald about what it means to organize dialogues. In this conversation, Byb shares his experience as a dialogue participant and how he’s incorporated bridging into his own professional work. To learn more about Byb Bibene’s work please go to mbonguifest.org and kiandandadt.com.

This episode of Who Belongs? is part of a new series of podcasts focused on telling bridging stories. Throughout the series we’ll talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. This project is led by OBI’s Blueprint for Belonging project (B4B), and hosted by program researcher Miriam Magaña Lopez. This project is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc.

Visit our website at https://belonging.berkeley.edu/bridging-belonging-case-series to explore all of the case studies in the Bridging to Belonging series.

In this episode we hear from Gerald Lenoir and Nunu Kidane about their work on bridging African American and African immigrant communities through dialogues. Gerald is OBI’s identity and politics strategy analyst and was the founding executive director of the Black Alliance for Just Immigration (BAJI). Nunu was a founding member of BAJI and is currently the director of Priority Africa Network.

Gerald and Nunu share their experience facilitating Diaspora Dialogues, which are intentional conversations used to bridge African American and immigrant communities. Listeners will learn how the dialogues are organized and get tips on how to replicate this work.

This episode of Who Belongs? is part of a new series of podcasts focused on telling bridging stories. Throughout the series we’ll talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. This project is led by OBI’s Blueprint for Belonging project (B4B), and hosted by program researcher Miriam Magaña Lopez. This project is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc.

Visit our website at https://belonging.berkeley.edu/bridging-belonging-case-series to explore all of the case studies in the Bridging to Belonging series.

In this episode we interview UC Berkeley Professor and OBI Director john a. powell. john a. powell is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of civil rights, civil liberties, structural racism, housing, poverty, democracy, and othering, bridging and belonging frameworks-- which he has been critical in developing and translating between academia and fields of practice. In this interview, Professor powell breaks down the definitions of othering, bridging and belonging. Through storytelling he elucidates how both interpersonal and structural othering occurs, and how people and organizations have been successful in addressing it. He gives advice to listeners so that we can all play a role in co-creating a society where everyone belongs.

This episode of Who Belongs? is part of a new series of podcasts focused on telling bridging stories. Throughout the series we’ll talk to leaders implementing bridging work and individuals who have experienced the bridging transformation. This project is led by OBI’s Blueprint for Belonging project (B4B), and hosted by program researcher Miriam Magaña Lopez. This project is funded by The Annie E. Casey Foundation, Inc.

Visit our website at https://belonging.berkeley.edu/bridging-belonging-case-series to explore all of the case studies in the Bridging to Belonging series.

In this episode of Who Belongs? we look at the impacts of minimum wage increases with Michael Reich, a Professor of Economics and Chair of the Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics at UC Berkeley.

The federal minimum wage has been frozen at $7.25 an hour since 2009. That's an annual income for a full time worker of just $15,000. But a few weeks ago Senator Bernie Sanders and other progressive legislators introduced the 2021 Raise the Wage Act, which would gradually increase the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. After 2025 the minimum wage would continue to increase to keep up with inflation without having to introduce new legislation every few years. The lawmakers had been trying to get this act included in the coronavirus relief package so it could be passed with a simple majority, but on Thursday we learned that's probably not going to happen because of an archaic Senate rule, meaning it would need to be introduced as a standalone bill and require 60 votes to pass, which is unlikely.

Our guest Michael Reich is a leading expert on minimum wage research and has published extensively on the topic, including a recent study on how minimum wage hikes reduce racial wage gaps between black and white workers. So we'll discuss that, as well address some of the common critiques of minimum wage increases.

Check back for a link to a transcript of this interview.

In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from Jacinta González, an organizer with Mijente, a non-profit which leads campaigns to educate and organize around issues concerning immigration, detentions and deportations. Jacinta explains how ICE and other law enforcement agencies are using surveillance technologies to target immigrant communities and other communities of color, and gives us her take on what the new administration in Washington must do about it. This interview was conducted by Emnet Almedom, a policy analyst here at OBI.

For a transcript of this interview visit https://belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs/ice-tech

In this episode of Who Belongs?, we hear from three thinkers and members of the OBI faculty — john a. powell, Ian Haney López, and Emnet Almedom — on the situation unfolding in the wake of the Washington D.C. riots. This past week, we saw remarkable scenes of violence take place at the country’s Capitol Building. Our guests will help us make sense of what happened, how race and class politics shaped the events, and what social solidarity can offer us moving forward.

This episode is a recording of a live Q&A titled “Storming the Capitol: Trumpism’s Last Stand” which took place on January 8, 2021. The recording has been lightly edited for concision.

john a. powell is the Othering & Belonging Institute director and Professor of Law. Ian Haney López is a Professor of Law and author of the book Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America. Emnet Almedom, an analyst at the institute, moderated this event.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit https://belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs/storming-the-capitol

In this episode of Who Belongs?, we speak with two activists based in France — Yasser Louati and Houria Bouteldja — about the intensification of Islamophobia and state repression unfolding in the country following Samuel Paty's gruesome murder. Our guests help us understand the current situation as it relates to the country's history of racist marginalization and terror attacks, what strategies affected communities must embrace to combat Islamophobia, and what this means for Muslims and non-Muslims alike.

Yasser Louati is a human rights advocate and head of the Justice & Liberties for All Committee. Houria Bouteldja is a decolonial activist, author, and founding member of the Party of the Indigenous of the Republic. The music heard at the introduction is “La carte de residence” performed by Algerian singers Sliman Azem & Cheikh Nourredine.

For a transcript of this episode visit https://belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs/Islamophobia-in-france

In this episode of Who Belongs? we speak with Lara Kiswani, Executive Director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center based in San Francisco, and Theresa Montaño, professor of Chicana and Chicano Studies at California State University, Northridge, to discuss the efforts to develop an ethnic studies curriculum in California. On September 30, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed Assembly Bill 331 which would have made ethnic studies a high school graduation requirement across the state. For more than a year, Professor Montaño has been a part of an advisory committee tasked with drafting a model curriculum based on the anti-racist principles of ethnic studies.

The curriculum provides sample lesson topics on things like housing segregation, Central American immigration, Filipino labor organizing, and indigenous struggles over land, just to name a few. Lara Kiswani’s organization, AROC, is part of the coalition promoting the inclusion of lessons related to the experiences of Arab Americans. The guests help us understand why ethnic studies is needed, why the bill was vetoed, and what comes next.

For a transcript of this episode visit https://belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs/why-newsom-vetoed-ethnic-studies

In this episode of Who Belongs?, we speak with Carroll Fife, an organizer, mother, and director of the Oakland office of the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment, also known as ACCE. Earlier this year, she was involved in coordinating the #Moms4Housing campaign in which the five Black women took over a vacant home on Magnolia Street in Oakland. She joins us to speak about the history of speculative housing and its impacts on the Black community, the looming eviction crisis, houselessness, and police violence.

For a transcript of this episode visit https://belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs/eviction-crisis-speculative-housing-carroll-fife