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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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....

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,...

Last week Trump announced he had eliminated an Obama-era fair housing rule put in place in 2015 to reverse patterns of residential segregation that have been in place for many decades. The move was widely seen as both an attack on integration and also a racial fear mongering strategy to appeal to his white base of supporters three months before the election. To talk about the purpose of the 2015 Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, the consequences of its elimination, and what we need...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we speak with Gerald Horne, Professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston, and author of more than 30 books. Professor Horne has written on a spectrum of issues and events including the early settler colonial period of the US, the Haitian and Mexican revolutions, labor politics, civil rights, profiles of WEB Du Bois and revolutionary artist Paul Robeson, just to name a few. His most recent book is The Dawning of the Apocalypse:...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from Erin Kerrison, an Assistant Professor of Social Welfare at UC Berkeley, to discuss her thoughts on transforming social structures and imagining futures beyond police following the murder of George Floyd. Professor Kerrison’s work investigates the impact of structural disadvantage, concentrated poverty, and state supervision on health outcomes of individuals and communities marked by criminal justice intervention. For more information and a...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from Adam Hochschild, a prominent historian, journalist, and a best selling author who wrote King Leopold’s Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa, among many other books. He's also a lecturer in Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. Professor Hochschild gives us his take on the efforts around the world to topple statues and other monuments that memorialize historical figures known for their brutality and racism, including...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we’re bringing back john a. powell, our director at the O&B Institute, and professor of Law and African American studies at UC Berkeley, to talk about the ongoing events in Minneapolis following the police killing of George Floyd, and why he’s remaining optimistic about some of the glimmers of hope he sees in an otherwise very upsetting and traumatic situation.

In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from john a. powell, a professor of Law and African American studies at UC Berkeley. He’s also the director of the Othering & Belonging Institute. In the interview professor powell offers historical context for the conflict over this question of when to reopen the economy, and the government’s authority to impose shelter-in-place orders. This issue has been framed as one that pits freedom against equality, but as profesor powell points out these two...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from a three-guest panel of Berkeley faculty who provide various perspectives on the different forms of racism we’ve been witnessing since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. We hear about the experiences of Asian Americans who are facing a surge in hate crimes, the disparate impacts on black and brown communities in terms of the rates of death, and about how politicians are using the crisis to engage in racial fear mongering. But the panelists don’t...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we speak with Alex Boskovich, who is the Government Relations Officer at the Alameda County Community Food Bank based in Oakland, which collects and distributes food and other resources to about 300 partner organizations throughout Alameda county, including food pantries, churches, senior centers, schools, and other organizations. Just prior to the outbreak of COVID-19 the food bank had partnered with the Othering & Belonging Institute’s Civic Engagement...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we’re looking at the reality facing undocumented immigrants and migrant farmworkers in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. We hear from three researchers who discuss some of their recent and upcoming articles that look at ICE raids targeting immigrant communities despite shelter-in-place orders, as well as the conditions of farmworkers who are putting themselves at risk in order to keep the country fed. For articles mentioned in this episode visit: 1....

In this episode of Who Belongs? we speak with Ian Haney Lopez, a professor of law here at UC Berkeley, about his new book: “Merge Left: Fusing Race and Class, Winning Elections, and Saving America.” The book puts forward the argument that the left can re-frame racism as a weapon of the rich by crafting messages that fuse race and class and build a cross-racial movement needed to beat powerful fear-based messaging and racial dog whistles. He gives us his take on the messages he hears coming...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from two guests, Erika Washington and Quintin Savwoir from a civic engagement group in Nevada called Make it Work - Nevada. In the interview they discuss a recent survey they conducted of black women in their state to learn about the issues that are most pressing to them and how they feel about the candidates running in the 2020 presidential election. Erika is the executive director of Make it Work - Nevada, and Quentin is the group's political...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from two guests about a year-long initiative at UC Berkeley marking the 400th anniversary of the start to slavery in North America. The initiative includes weekly events with scholars, activists, and artists from around the country reflecting on the enduring legacies of slavery and Jim Crow, looking at the Civil Rights era, our current era, and also trying to imagine a future based on justice, reconciliation, and belonging. The two guests are Denise...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we hear from Alicia Garza, one of the founders of the Black Lives Matter movement and the principal of the Black Futures Lab, which is an organization that engages Black voters year round and works to stop corporate influence in progressive politics. Alicia recently authored a paper for the Othering and Belonging Institute, titled, “Identity Politics: Friend or Foe?” which this episode draws from. Alicia also gives her take on some of the candidates running in...

In this episode of Who Belongs? we speak with Michael Gomez Daly, the director of the Inland Empowerment coalition, and Sky Allen, who is the coalition's census coordinator, about their efforts to mobilize people in southern California's Inland Empire ahead of the 2020 Census. This episode is another installment of the Civic Engagement Narrative Change project series, with the interview conducted by project researcher Josh Clark. For a transcript visit:...

In this episode of Who Belongs?, we hear from journalist and author Lawrence Lanahan about his new book called The Lines Between Us: Two Families and a Quest to Cross Baltimore’s Racial Divide. The book weaves together three storylines about people trying to overcome a host of barriers to opportunity and integration in hyper-segregated Baltimore and its suburbs. The book is the culmination of years of research and reporting on segregation in Baltimore, and draws from Lawrence’s 50-episode...

This episode of Who Belongs? is another installment of our Civic Engagement Narrative Change project series, with project researcher Josh Clark interviewing two guests: The first is Robert Greenwald, an award-winning producer and director who has a new film coming out on September 25 called “Suppressed: The fight to vote”, about voter suppression in the 2018 gubernatorial election in Georgia, and Carol Anderson, Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of the book...

In this episode of Who Belongs? host Sara Grossman interviews Christine Wong Yap, who became the Haas Institute's first Artist in Residence in the fall of 2018, about her "Places of Belonging" project, which was recently featured in a KQED report here: https://www.kqed.org/arts/13850669/christine-wong-yap-asks-where-do-you-feel-a-sense-of-belonging Learn more about the Haas Institute's Artist in Residence program here: https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/air You can also find an earlier...

In this episode of Who Belongs? Sara Grossman speaks with Agata Lisiak, a professor of migration studies at Bard College Berlin, about her work on Eastern European migration to the Western Europe, the experiences of migrant mothers in particular, and the relationship between gentrification and language in European cities. For a transcript of this interview visit: https://haasinstitute.berkeley.edu/whobelongs/lisiak