Ep. 26 - Coalition-building & #NoCopAcademy ft. Monica Trinidad & Debbie Southorn

enDecember 13, 2018

Bourbon 'n BrownTown

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What was the main topic of the podcast episode?

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About this Episode

GUESTS
Monica Trinidad is a visual artist and organizer, born and raised on the southeast side of Chicago. She is a co-founder of For the People Artists Collective, a radical squad of Black artists and artists of color in Chicago who create art for Chicago's most powerful justice movements. Monica creates artwork to cultivate the practice of hope and to spark imagination in both organizers immersed in the day-to-day spadework of movement building and in every resident in Chicago. Her work is currently in permanent collection at DuSable Museum of African American History. You can listen to her every week on the Lit Review podcast, a literary podcast for the movement, with her co-host Page May, founder of Assata’s Daughters.

Debbie Southorn is a queer abolitionist who works for the American Friends Service Committee in Chicago, where she supports community-based efforts to end police violence, surveillance and militarism. She’s also a founding member of the People’s Response Team, and serves on the National Committee of the War Resisters League.

From #NoCopAcademy: “#NoCopAcademy is a grassroots campaign launched by Assata’s Daughters, Black Lives Matter - Chicago, People’s Response Team, For The People Artists Collective, and 100+ grassroots organizations to mobilize against Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plans to spend $95 million for a massive training center for Chicago Police in West Garfield Park on the city’s West Side. The city’s quiet unveiling suggests they are trying to avoid public scrutiny of this latest spending scheme, but we will not be robbed of our resources quietly. We refuse any expansion of policing in Chicago, and demand accountability for decades of violence. We will fight for funding for our communities, and support each other in building genuine community safety in the face of escalating attacks.”

OVERVIEW
As two adult lead organizers in #NoCopAcademy, Monica and Debbie outline their journeys into activism, noting how they both cut their teeth in organizing in the 2000s in resistance to the Iraq War. The group discusses Chicago’s history of radical organizing from the Rainbow Coalition in the 1960s, to We Charge Genocide in 2014, to Reparations Now and Justice 4 LaQuan. BrownTown and guests dissect what the larger Invest/Divest framework means in terms of #NoCopAcademy as positioned against reformist arguments of piecemeal solutions to systemic problems. Recorded about a month after Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that he would not run for a third term in February 2019, BrownTown listens to Monica and Debbie’s reaction to the newst, organizers’ relationship with his administration, and the (presumed) effectiveness of public shaming people in power. With coalition-building at the helm, Monica and Debbie are clear to describe #NoCopAcademy as a campaign first-and-foremost with a coalition built around it, rather than a coalition taking on several campaigns over its tenure (like R3 Coalition Chicago). Coalition work is difficult but, at times, necessary. Debbie elaborates, giving a nod to musician, activist, and Black Feminist Bernice Johnson Reagon’s reflections on the subject, as well as noting some of the endorsing organizations who throw down for #NoCopAcademy through their own unique perspective, experience, and analysis (noted: i2i in the Lunar New Year parade, SURJ, etc.). Last but certainly not least, the group takes their hats of to the youth who consistently spearhead the campaign, and look forward to the next iteration of the fight, the upcoming municipal election season, and what it means for the future of Chicago.

Find out more about the campaign at NoCopAcademy.com and @NoCopAcademy on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook.

Follow Monica on Twitter, Instagram (personal / work), and Facebook. Learn more about her and buy her work at MonicaTrinidad.com.

Follow Debbie on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, and learn more about her work with American Friends Service Committee.

CREDITS: Intro song Cops Shot the Kid by NAS. Outro music by Fiendsh. Audio engineered by Genta Tamashiro. Episode photo by David of BrownTown.

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GUEST
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Mentioned Topics & More Info:

All Out for Palestine - Action Toolkit
Black and Palestinian Organizing Toolkit
Epistemicide according to BnB Alum Ricardo Gamboa
White House funding for Weapons Sales in Israel (In These Times)
Why Journalists Must Speak out About Gaza (In These Times)
South Africans in Israel (Middle East Eye)
Confronting colonialist propaganda, Zionism and the Civilized/Holy (TRiiBE)
Biden says he has 'no confidence' in Palestinian death count (Reuters)
White House walks back Biden’s claim he saw children beheaded by Hamas (Aljazeera)
The Ferguson-Palestine connection (1, 2, 3)
Hoda Katebi on holding your institutions accountable
Pro-Palestinian Protesters take Chicago's Lakeshore Drive
Chicago Elected Staffers demand Ceasefire Resolution (1, 2)
"Israeli Diaper Forces"
George Khoury of USPCN

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GUEST
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Black Chicago Renaissance (TRiiBE)
Love and Struggle Photos
#SadBoyEnergy (The Prelude) (Chicago Reader)
Testimonies from the Land: A photo essay (South Side Weekly)
Damon Williams’ "One Hundred Other Jobs" post
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GUESTS
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Mentioned Episodes:

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GUESTS

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CREDITS: Intro soundbite and episode photo from I Like It Like That by Pete Rodriguez. Outro music is Try A Little Tenderness by Otis Redding. Audio engineered by Kiera Battles.

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BONUS - #NoCopTOBER ft. Freedom X

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GUEST

Freedom X is a Chicago South Side revolutionary who was a youth organizer during the #NoCopAcademy campaign from 2017-2019.

For all things #NoCopAcademy, visit Linktr.ee/NoCopAcademy. Peep NoCopAcademy.com for campaign information (Toolkit, Timeline, Chant Playlist, etc.); follow on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter; and visit SoapBoxPO.com/NoCopAcademy for all things documentary related! Announcements will also be made via SoapBox Newsletter, sign up!

Public screenings as of 10/6
- 10/7: International Social Change Film Festival (Chicago)
- 10/10: Announcement for November screenings and more
- 10/15: Gary International Black Film Festival (Gary, IN)
- 10/16: Campaign-produced Screening Malcolm X College (Chicago)
- 10/21: International Social Change Film Festival (Atlanta)
No Cop City Anywhere by Benji’s Hart (In These Times)
Ep. 26 - Coalition-building & #NoCopAcademy ft. Monica Trinidad & Debbie Southorn

CREDITS: Intro from No Cop Academy: The Documentary teaser trailer. Outro from the #NoCopAcademy chant playlist! Audio engineered by Kiera Battles.

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GUESTS
Avalon Betts-Gaston is a Chicago native, non-licensed attorney, ordained minister, and passionate advocate to dismantle, change and build a legal system focused on humane justice and harm reduction, not just punishment. Avalon made her public debut as an advocate at a young age when she convinced her fellow Congressional pages to protest apartheid outside of the South African embassy in Washington, D.C. This passion against various societal injustices continued throughout her life and was super-charged and focused on the criminal legal system after she was wrongfully convicted in 2015. She is the first known formerly incarcerated Board Chairperson for Community Renewal Society, and is also on the FreeHer Campaign Advisory Council, a board member of Chicago Votes, a 2022 JLUSA Leading with Conviction Fellow, and is currently the Project Manager at the Illinois Alliance for Reentry & Justice.

Tommy Hagan is the Co-Director of the REAL Youth Initiative. He has spent the last 8 years working to build power with currently incarcerated people in the United States. As a student at the University of Chicago, he helped launch the Bridge Writing Workshop, a weekly creative writing workshop at Cook County Jail. Tommy also participated in and co-wrote a published report on Northwestern University’s Children and Family Justice Center’s Reimagining Youth Justice Project. From this report, Tommy helped launch the Final 5 Campaign - a coalition fighting to close the 5 remaining youth prisons in Illinois. Part of the Irish diaspora, Tommy is dedicated to ending practices of settler colonialism, imperialism, and military occupation.

Learn more about CDI on their site and their SoapBox page; follow them on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

Mentioned in episode:

#StopCopCity RICO charges & #NoCopAcademy
The Willie Lynch Letter and the Making of a Slave
Ruth Wilson Gilmore - racism definition & "Abolition Geography"
Bella BAHHS' January 6th article (TRiiBE)
Dylan Rodríguez on Millennials Are Killing Capitalism
“We can’t have #LandBack without #WaterBack” --Pueblo Action Alliance’s #WaterBack campaign
Water access struggles (US): 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
Water access struggles (Internat'l): Honduras, Palestine, Bangladesh

CREDITS: Intro from the SoapBox-produced Coalition to Decarcerate Illinois press conference video on April 21, 2022. Outro song Wavy by Tobe Nwigwe. Audio engineered by Kiera Battles.

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Be on the lookout for future screenings of One Million Experiments and new episodes from Bourbon ’n BrownTown including our 100th episode!

CREDITS: Intro audio mixing by Kiera Battles. Episode music credits: Contact by Anitek, Sunrise Drive by South Londo HiFi, Intelligent Galaxy by The Insider, Roy by Blanked, Spilled Beans by Gurty Beats, Life Is by Cosimo Fogg, Merry Bay by Ghostwriter Official, Catch My Breath by Ambient Boy, Be Quiet by Jahzzar, Ashes by AANI - produced by Adlai, mixing/mastering by Nicky Young.

enSeptember 14, 2023

Ep. 97 - Progressive Latinas in the New Chicago City Council ft. Alderpersons Rossana Rodriguez & Jessie Fuentes

BrownTown chops it up with Alderhomies Rossana Rodriguez (33rd) and Jessie Fuentes (26th) in the inaugural recording within the Harambe Studios at the SoapBox office. Chicago City Council is now the most Black and Latine, the most queer, the most politically left, and with the most female leaders in the city's history (and in some cases, currently in the country). With that, the gang discusses Mayor Johnson first 100 days, progressive city policy, the relationship between representation and the co-struggle for liberation, Twitter trolls, and everything in between.

GUESTS
Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez (33rd), now in her second term, is the Chair of the Committee on Health and Human Relations for the Chicago City Council. Rossana was born and raised in Puerto Rico and started organizing at six years old when her community had to fight for access to running water. Organizing soon became a fundamental part of her life and remains her main tool within her work in government. Rossana came to Chicago after austerity and budget cuts forced her to leave her job as a drama teacher in Puerto Rico. She originally moved to Albany Park to work as a theatre director with a youth theatre company 14 years ago and chose to stay and organize around housing, education, immigrant rights, and mental health. She is the chief sponsor for the Treatment Not Trauma legislation and continues to organize with grassroots organizations to transform Chicago. Follow Rossana on Facebook, Instagram, (personal, political) and Twitter (personal, ward). Stay up to date with her City Council work and 33rd ward services at Rossanafor33.org.

Alderperson Jessie Fuentes (26th) is a queer Latina grassroots organizer, educator, and public policy advocate with over a decade of experience in education, criminal justice reform, affordable housing, community development and sustainability. A lifelong Chicagoan and resident of the Northwest side, Jessie spent most of her formative years growing up and working in Humboldt Park. Through personal resilience, community support and restorative justice, Jessie turned her most traumatic life experiences into tools to uplift others facing similar circumstances. In her previous roles as an educator and Dean of Students at Roberto Clemente Community Academy and as an organizer around issues of violence prevention, housing affordability, and re-entry for returning citizens, she convened and connected community stakeholders to create community-driven solutions to the biggest problems facing Humboldt Park. Jessie recently served as the Director of Policy and Youth Advocacy at the Puerto Rican Cultural Center. She Co-chaired the Violence Prevention program of the Illinois Latino Agenda and is also a Founding Member of the Illinois Latino Agenda 2.0, focusing on community development and Latine equity. Follow Jessie on Facebook (personal, political), Instagram (personal, political), and Twitter (personal, political). Stay up to date with her City Council work and 26th ward at Jessiefor26thward.com.

Mentioned in episode:

Ep. 90 - Electoral & Radical Politics 4.0 ft. Alderman Byron Sigcho-Lopez & Alderperson-elect Jessie Fuentes
Ep. 91 - Narratives in Media & Documenting Movements 2.0 ft. Morgan Elise Johnson
Ep. 94 - Police Abolition 2.0 ft. District Councilors David Orlikoff & Ashley Vargas
Sh*t Talks: Studio Sessions - People Power & Electoralism
Chicago’s Progressive Alderpeople Retain Seats, Look To Expand Influence On City Council — And Even Mayor’s Race (Block Club)
Chicago Is About To Have The Gayest City Council In The Country (Chicago Magazine)
We Have the Most Diverse City Council in Chicago History (Chicago Magazine)
Brandon Johnson, LSCs, and police in schools (WBEZ)
Treatment Not Truma (1, 2) and the 2022 referendum
Bring Chicago Home and One Fair Wage
Contentious Co-governance (In These Times)

Opinions on this episode only reflect David, Caullen, Rossana, and Jessie as individuals, not their organizations or places of work.

CREDITS: Intro soundbite of Rossana Rodriguez at the 2020 Freedom Square action. Outro song Contra Todo by iLe. Audio engineered by Kiera Battles.

enAugust 18, 2023

Ask this episode Anything

What was the main topic of the podcast episode?

Summarise the key points discussed in the episode?

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