In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from OBI Director john a. powell and Assistant Director Stephen Menendian about the recently released book they co-authored, called Belonging without Othering: How We Save Ourselves and the World . The interview was conducted by Ivan Natividad, who is OBI's assistant director of communications. Learn more at belonging.berkeley.edu/whobelongs . For a transcript of the episode, please click here: https://belonging.berkeley.edu/podcast-belonging-without-other...
Nov 21, 2024•1 hr 3 min
This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April. This session is titled "Land, Culture, and Belonging: Place-based Community Advocacy." It looks at the redevelopment of the Henry J. Kaiser Center in Oakland, which was the location of our conference. A private developer who was granted a long-term lease by the city to reopen the venue had negotiated a communi...
Aug 01, 2024•1 hr 19 min
This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April. This session is titled "Leaning into Paradox: How We Can Block, Bridge & Build Our Democratic Future Together." It includes two speakers from the Horizons Project who engage the audience on those three seemingly paradoxical approaches: how to come together to block the threats to our democratic values; the...
Jul 12, 2024•32 min
This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April. This session is titled "Democracy in Crisis: The Courage to Re-Humanize One Another." It focuses on a project called Bridging for Democracy (B4D), which is developing strategies for grassroots organizations working in different parts of the country to bridge across racial, ideological, and urban-rural divides ...
Jul 11, 2024•1 hr 3 min
This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April. This session is titled "Using Data to Advance Belonging without Othering." It looks at a set of domains at the intersection of data and civil society, such as racialized policing and surveillance, housing and eviction, and belonging metrics. Panelists include Amy Lee, who is an organizing member of the Anti-Ev...
Jul 08, 2024•42 min
This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April. This session is titled "Expressions of Belonging," and it offers a mix of stories, insights, and diverse approaches to advancing belonging at an array of organizations at different scales and locations. It includes panelists David T. Hsu, who is a Director at Omidyar Network; Liz Baxter, who is the CEO of the ...
Jul 08, 2024•1 hr 18 min
Episode Note This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April. This session is titled "Xenophobia, Resistance, and the Future of the Immigrant Rights Movement." It includes panelists Annette Wong, who is the Managing Director of Programs at Chinese for Affirmative Action; Karim Golding, founder of the Law Library; Lawrence Benito, who is the executive directo...
Jul 03, 2024•1 hr 34 min
Episode Notes This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April. This session is titled "Resisting Austerity: Keeping Public Infrastructure Public." It includes panelists Donald Cohen, founder and executive director of In the Public Interest; and Joey Algier, who is the Community Engagement and Communications Coordinator for The Water Collaborative of Greater ...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 1 min
Episode Notes This episode is part of a series of talks and panel discussions recorded during the breakout sessions of our Othering & Belonging Conference that took place in Oakland this past April. This session is titled "Bridging Through High School Ethnic Studies," and was curated by OBI's Hossein Ayazi. It includes panelists from the UC Berkeley High School Ethnic Studies Initiative, Julie Yick, Mike Espinoza, Jason Muñiz, and antmen pimentel mendoza. Together with the audience they expl...
Jul 02, 2024•1 hr 4 min
Episode Notes In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from Darrell Owens, who is a policy analyst at California Yimby, and a writer on Substack who focuses on housing, planning, displacement, mobility and other issues. He just authored a new piece called Segregation or Integration which combines data on housing policy with his personal experiences growing up in Berkeley living in different neighborhoods. And we also have with us Stephen Menendian who will give us his thoughts on the article. Ste...
Jan 18, 2023•55 min
In this episode, we speak with Sharon Dunn and Gwen Johnson — two members of Hands Across the Hills (HATH), a grassroots group working to build bridges between communities in rural Western Massachusetts and in the Eastern Kentucky coal country. Formed in the wake of the 2016 election, this group seeks to build empathy and unity between diverging perspectives through structured dialogue and cultural exchange. Sharon and Gwen share their experiences and the lessons they draw, illuminating how a br...
Aug 31, 2022•50 min
Welcome back to Cultures of Care, a special new miniseries from Who Belongs? hosted by Evan Bissell and Giovanna Fischer. This series celebrates people that practice collective care in unconventional and insurgent ways. Visit the project, read more about our interviewees, and check out transcripts for this episode at https://belonging.berkeley.edu/cultures-of-care . In this episode, we hear from photographer Naima Green and DJ Rich Medina. Naima is an artist, photographer and educator from New Y...
Apr 20, 2022•37 min
In this episode of Who Belongs?, we're debuting Cultures of Care, a special new miniseries hosted by Evan Bissell and Giovanna Fischer. This series celebrates people that practice collective care in unconventional and insurgent ways. Care is an essential, immediate and practical way to create belonging. Perhaps most vitally in our urgent times, at the heart of each profile you will find provocations that are seeds for reshaping society and how we relate to each other and the world. Visit the pro...
Apr 04, 2022•28 min
In this episode we speak with two of the founding members of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, the President Desmond Meade and the Political Director Neil Volz. Together, Desmond and Neil have been working on restoring the rights of people who have a prior felony conviction, referred to as returning citizens. In 2018, they were successful in passing amendment 4 that restored the right of over 1.4 million Floridians to vote. How were they successful getting 65% of Floridians to support th...
Dec 22, 2021•57 min
In this episode we speak with Reverend Ben McBride. Ben McBride is a spiritual leader and longtime activist for peace and justice in the Bay Area. McBride serves as a national leader around reconstructing public safety systems and gun violence prevention work. In 2014, McBride launched the Empower Initiative to support bridging and belonging work across the country. McBride shares how he conceptualizes the building, bridging, belonging, and becoming frameworks. He outlines how cultural and struc...
Dec 15, 2021•1 hr 2 min
In this episode we interview with Debbie Lacy. Debbie is the founder of Eastside for All, which serves communities outside of Seattle, WA including Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Issaquah and Sammamish. Eastside for All has a mission to transform East King County into a place where racial, economic and social justice are realized, and belonging is made possible for communities of color. Debbie shares about her Build for Belonging Initiative and specifically her use of the co-creation framework as ...
Dec 08, 2021•43 min
In this episode we speak with Angel Mortel and Aleena Gonzalez. Angel is a lead organizer with LA Voice, which is a multi-racial and multi-faith community organization that awakens people to their own power and trains them to organize together. LA Voice has been implementing the Belong Circles with their partner network, including at Dolores Mission Church. Aleena Gonzalez is a high school student that is part of the Dolores Mission community who has participated in Belong Circles and is now lea...
Dec 01, 2021•42 min
In this episode we speak with Ashlin Malouf-Gashaw. Ashlin is the Chief Formation Officer at PICO California, the largest multi-racial faith-based community-organizing network in the state. PICO is leading The Belong Movement, which aims to address the polarization and racial anxiety across California by bridging across race, faith and status through facilitated Belong Circles. Ashlin shares the intention and design behind the Belong Circles, and how anyone, including our listeners can implement...
Nov 24, 2021•43 min
In this episode we speak with Roberto Bedoya. Roberto is the Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Oakland in California. He developed the City’s Cultural Plan, titled, Belonging in Oakland. Throughout his career Roberto has consistently advocated for inclusion and belonging in the cultural sector. In our conversation, Roberto shares how he’s utilized belonging in his city planning work through intentional grant giving, and encouraging city departments to re-think how Oakland residents intera...
Nov 17, 2021•26 min
In this episode we speak with Tamia Dantzler & Dashley Concepcion. Tamia is an alum and Dashley is a current student at El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. In a previous episode we spoke with Frances Lucerna, founding principal of El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. We heard from Frances about the school design and intentions, in this conversation Tamia & Dashley share with us their personal experience. They tell us what it has meant to be students at a school that makes them f...
Nov 10, 2021•35 min
In this episode we speak with Frances Lucerna. Frances is the founding principal of El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice. El Puente Academy for Peace and Justice is a public school located in the Southside community of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York City. El Puente is Spanish for ‘the bridge’ - which is exactly what the school is doing: creating bridges between the school and students, parents and the community. Frances shares how she and other community leaders created and designed a sch...
Nov 03, 2021•39 min
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 r...
Oct 27, 2021•42 min
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...
Oct 20, 2021•38 min
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 conversat...
Oct 13, 2021•47 min
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 storytell...
Oct 06, 2021•46 min
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 ...
Feb 26, 2021•27 min
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 A...
Feb 04, 2021•39 min
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 o...
Jan 09, 2021•1 hr 8 min
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-Musl...
Dec 19, 2020•50 min
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...
Oct 15, 2020•28 min
